decoded_text stringlengths 4.18k 47.6k |
|---|
ecstatic response to her personal history.
Hillary Clinton's Historic Night [was] Marred By Contradiction And Dissent. If you watched the final night of the Democratic Convention on television at home or at a watch party, it might have seemed like everything went pretty well for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. [...] But not everything was quite as it seemed. Inside the convention hall, hundreds of Bernie Sanders delegates wearing florescent yellow T-shirts and seated in small clusters within their state sections kept causing trouble.
Must Protect Hillary's Optics — Thousands of Trump Supporters Turned Away By Democrat Mayor and Fire Marshal in Columbus. Thousands were turned away from a Trump Rally today in Columbus Ohio as it appears the political arm of the DNC, via the Democrat Mayor Andrew Ginther, and Democrat Fire Marshal Kevin O'Conner, blocked attendance to the Trump event. Moments before going on stage to a restricted audience of 1,000, Donald Trump informed the media of the political manipulation.
Media Silent On Bill Clinton Double Rape Bombshell. The U.S. news media has entirely ignored the newsworthy confirmation from Juanita Broaddrick that she was allegedly raped not once but twice by Bill Clinton during the same infamous encounter in 1978. The story was splashed as the main banner of the Drudge Report for much of the day on Wednesday [7/27/2016], after Bill Clinton brandished Hillary's purported credentials as a champion of women on Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention here. In addition to its massive general readership, the Drudge Report is read widely throughout the day as a tip sheet of sorts by many in the news industry.
No Mention of Clinton Foundation During DNC Convention. After nearly three days of speeches and video propaganda one major part of Democrat Nominee Hillary Clinton's life's work has gone virtually unmentioned during the Democrat National Convention in Philadelphia. Even as speaker after speaker lauded Hillary's career in public life, no mention of the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation has been uttered from the dais. It seems strange that a $2 billion charity that has purportedly done such great things all across the world has not rated a single word in Philly.
Israeli/American Flags Burned By Leftists Outside DNC. Assorted leftists danced while burning Israeli and American flag outside the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday [7/26/2016] in Philadelphia, PA. At various points, chants of "intifada" were heard in support of the "Palestinian" national movement.
Philly police say uniformed cops were barred from DNC floor. Some Philadelphia police officers say they were barred from patrolling in uniform on the floor of the convention while it was in session — spurring claims that Democrats are anti-law enforcement. Rudy Giuliani on Thursday first raised the issue of uniformed cops not being allowed to mingle with delegates on the floor. "Philadelphia police officers are not in the convention hall. They're not allowed in uniform," said Giuliani, a Donald Trump adviser who was monitoring the Democratic convention.
Giuliani: Uniformed Police Officers Not Allowed on Democratic Convention Floor. Thursday [7/28/2016] on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," in an appearance from the site of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the convention "the most anti-police" and "the most anti-law enforcement" he had ever seen. However, he also said that according to "high-ranking police officers" in Philadelphia, uniformed law enforcement was not allowed on the floor of the convention.
Hey, Media — Remember When Obama Attempted To Manipulate The Election In Israel? Oh, what seemingly short and highly selective memories does the Mainstream Media have when it comes to foreign countries attempting to manipulate the election outcomes of other nations. You know, like Barack Obama did just recently in Israel?
What The Media Is Not Telling You About The Mass Stabbing In Japan In Which Nineteen People Were Slaughtered. There was a mass stabbing that happened in Japanned in which 19 people were killed: it was a result of Japan's demonic and evil society.
Under strict gun laws, Japan's mass killers must rely on knives instead. Japan's homicide rate makes the United States look like a war zone. Consider that Tokyo is five times larger than Chicago. And yet, in 2014, Tokyo tallied a mere 11 homicides. Chicago racked up 416 — a difference of more than 3,500 percent. When mass killings do strike Japan, the killer is unlikely to carry a gun. He is invariably armed with a knife. It's one of the few lethal weapons that a homicidal Japanese person can acquire.
How big was the walkout from the DNC when Hillary nominated? The level of media bias in reporting the Democratic National Convention is as high as I have ever seen outside of North Korea and the old Soviet bloc. The GOP convention was declared a disaster many times during its four-day run, but the DNC, reeling from revelations of the rigging of the primary contests, is getting far more benign descriptors, as the media avert their eyes from unpleasant realities. [...] Imagine, for a moment, that Ted Cruz delegates had walked out on the GOP convention. Would the media have interrupted its coverage of the convention floor to follow the out and give them plenty of air time to speak their minds? Or, would they have just "chilled"?
Media Continues To Ignore Chaos Surrounding Democrat Convention. Protests in the street, and angry delegates inside, but you wouldn't know it if you simply watched the Mainstream Media coverage of the Democrat Convention this week. Hundreds have been marching in the streets of Philadelphia every day since Sunday — but those marches have been given a near total media blackout.
Remember when Ted Kennedy asked the Soviets for help defeating Reagan? The Democrats are desperately diverting attention away from their rigging the nomination fight by charging that Russia is interfering in our election. But there was a time when going to Moscow to help defeat the other party didn't seem to disturb Democrats. In fact, with the help of friendly media, the entire incident has been sent to the memory hole.
75 Percent Positive Response to Donald Trump Speech — So CNN Trashes Its Own Poll. Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in Cleveland during a momentous week in political history. On Thursday night [7/21/2016], Trump gave a one-hour-and-fifteen-minute speech accepting the Republican nomination. The speech was so overwhelmingly well-received among the crowd that the media did not know what to do to tear it apart.
Democrat Debt: DNC Reveals It Is $2.5 Million In the Hole As Convention Costs Loom. Twenty-four hours before the start of the Democratic National Convention here, convention fundraising chief Jason O'Malley revealed the DNC is $2.5 million short of paying for the festivities. The revelation was buried in the 26th paragraph of the Sunday [7/24/2016] "brunch edition" of Politico's Playbook, which is billed as the "must-read briefing on what's driving the day in Washington."
Media belatedly wake up to DNC email disaster as '60 Minutes' plays down a scoop. In the space of 48 hours, the hacked DNC emails went from a B-minus story to the only story. You could feel the drama metastasizing, hour by hour, here in Philadelphia. When I arrived at the scene of the Democratic convention on Saturday, the media were largely treating the dump of nearly 20,000 leaked emails as an intriguing sidebar. It did not make the front page of the New York Times or Washington Post or dominate sites like Politico. In fact, on Sunday morning, I spent several minutes searching the Times website before finding a day-old piece buried on the politics tab. Nor were the embarrassing emails the subject of constant cable chatter.
The Black Heroes Who Took Down the Freddie Gray Hoax. Once again, Judge Barry G. Williams handed the Freddie Gray lynch mob a decisive defeat, shredding the prosecution's case against Lt. Brian Rice, the highest ranking police officer targeted by the mob. Judge Williams stated firmly that, the court "cannot be swayed by sympathy, prejudice or public opinion." Instead he insisted that it had to follow the law. [...] Not only is their Freddie Gray hoax being destroyed, trial by trial, based on the lack of evidence, but the destroyer is an articulate and principled African-American judge. Worse still, Judge Williams had prosecuted police misconduct cases for the Justice Department. And when he takes apart the Gray hoax, as he has done in multiple trials, it's from the standpoint of a uniquely qualified expert. You can see why the media is staying away.
Bike trails becoming a center of black on white mob violence. Urban bike and jogging paths are becoming synopsis with black on white mob attacks and media censorship. Groups of young blacks look for vulnerable whites to brutally beat up. Little, if anything, of value is stolen. Racial hatred seems to be the primary motive in most of these attacks. The race of the attackers are often aggressively censored by the media. The attacks are blamed on "a lack of lights" or a "lack of security."
23 Seconds on ObamaCare Exchange Failures All Year, from Broadcast Evening News. The Affordable Care Act crisis is continuing, but you wouldn't know that if you relied on ABC, CBS or NBC for your news. On July 5, CNBC called Connecticut's state co-op "financially unstable," noting that "HealthyCT is the 14th of 23 original ObamaCare co-ops to fail since they began selling health plans on government-run Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges." A few days later, on July 8, Oregon's co-op became the 15th to fail. Illinois followed on July 12. CNN Money grimly reported on July 14 that "Seven remaining ObamaCare co-ops prepare survival strategies." The same article noted that "many struggled early on," adding "[e]ither they increased enrollments too fast, and then could not keep up with rising health costs, or they could not gain enough members to help spread their costs." [...] Yet, the morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC, which were quick to promote the Affordable Care Act, have been silent on this ongoing health care crisis.
Media Out To Lunch on Fraud Indictment of Democratic Congresswoman. Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown was indicted on 24 federal charges on Friday [7/8/2016] related to a "fraudulent education charity," as CNN.com put it on Friday. However, viewers of CNN's on-air coverage, as well as those who watch MSNBC and the Big Three networks' morning and evening newscasts, would know nothing of this indictment, as these TV outlets have yet to cover it, as of Monday morning. Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News aired a full report on a new exhibit at a Philadelphia museum; while ABC's GMA devoted a full report on Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda's final appearance in the play. To their credit, PBS NewsHour devoted an 18-second news brief on the fraud charges against the Florida politician: [...]
The Curious Case of Philando Castile — Falcon Heights, MN Police Shooting. By now everyone is aware of the officer involved shooting of Philando Castile that became a viral BLM activist case as a direct result of his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds (aka Lavish Reynolds) live-streaming the aftermath from their vehicle. [...] During the uploaded video narration Ms. Reynolds stated the police officer pulled them over for a broken tail light. There are several aspects of the narrative as told that didn't pass the sniff test, however, something about the "tail light" just didn't seem to make sense. Especially when you consider it was daylight when they were pulled over; and where — in the aftermath media video — it can be noted the tail lights were operable. Upon further evaluation something is missing. We believe we have identified a very important missing element.
Confirmed — Philando Castile Was an Armed Robbery Suspect, False Media Narrative Now Driving Cop Killings. The Falcon Heights, Minnesota police shooting of Philando Castile is based around an entirely false narrative. Castile and Ms. Diamond Reynolds (Facebook video uploader) were pulled over by police because Castile matched a BOLO Alert for an armed robbery suspect from four days prior. Unfortunately, the false statements in the video — which have gone viral, and are being pushed by the mainstream media — have created a backlash against police officers.
Minnesota Officer Was 'Reacting to the Presence of a Gun,' Lawyer Says. A lawyer for the suburban police officer who fatally shot a black man during a traffic stop said on Saturday [7/9/2016] that the race of the driver, Philando Castile, played no role in how his client responded, and that the officer "was reacting to the presence of a gun" when he opened fire. The comments from the lawyer, Thomas Kelly, provided the fullest accounting yet of Officer Jeronimo Yanez's version of the shooting Wednesday night, even as many details remain unclear.
Attorney: Minnesota Hispanic Officer Jeronimo Yanez Was Reacting To Philando Castile's Gun — Not Race. Matt Finn just reported for Fox9 News in Minnesota confirming some details and adding a few more after discussion with Yanez attorney and investigators:
• Officer Jeronimo Yanez is Mexican not Asian as claimed by Diamond Reynolds.
• Philando Castile and Diamond Reynolds did not comply with instructions to keep their hands "up, visible and don't move them".
• There was a handgun "visible" on the lap of Philando Castile.
• Officer Yanez reacted to the gun and Philando Castile's movements.
• Confirmation again that officer Yanez did pull over Castile and Reynolds as an outcome of Castile fitting the profile from the armed robbery July 2nd.
Lawyer: Castile [was] pulled over because he matched robbery suspect. A St. Anthony police officer pulled over Philando Castile because he was driving with a broken tail or brake light and he believed that Castile looked like a suspect from an armed robbery nearby that was reported a few days earlier, the officer's attorney told the Star Tribune on Sunday [7/10/2016]. "All he had to have was reasonable suspicion to pull him over," attorney Thomas Kelly said of his client, Jeronimo Yanez. Kelly said his client shot Castile the night of July 6 in Falcon Heights "after he reacted to the actions of Mr. Castile." "This has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with the presence of a gun," Kelly said. "Deadly force would not have been used if not for the presence of a gun."
Narrative starts to fall apart in Minnesota police shooting. Much of what we think we know about the shooting of Philando Castile by police in Minnesota is false. But we shouldn't be surprised, because the media sticks to The Narrative. You know, the near mandatory narrative that the American media can apply to any instance of a white person (or even a "White Hispanic") killing a black person. An innocent and sympathetic black person has been victimized by white racism. We saw this in the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, with significant facts utterly repressed by the media.
Police audio in deadly Minnesota traffic stop could change everything. An alleged recording of police audio claims to have captured the moments before Philando Castile and his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds were stopped by a Minnesota police officer, questioning Reynolds account of what happened. Reynolds claimed, in the video she took of Castile as he laid dying, that they were pulled over for a broken tail light. However, the audio recording makes no mention of that.
Update:
Woman Who Famously Live-Streamed Her Boyfriend's Police Shooting is Arrested for Hammer Attack. Diamond Reynolds, the woman who famously live-streamed the controversial fatal police shooting of Philando Castile, has been arrested in connection with a vicious attack that left another woman with serious injuries. Reynolds, Dyamond Richardson, and Chnika Blair were apprehended Thursday [3/23/2107] in St. Paul, Minnesota, after allegedly attacking a woman with a hammer Tuesday night [2/28/2017], and leaving the scene in a silver truck.
Obama Gun Control doesn't work: 3 children among at least 60 shot over holiday weekend in Obama's hometown of Chicago. Gun control is a favorite topic of Democrats to divert attention from real issues such as Islamic terrorism. But, in the real world of the city of Chicago with the toughest gun control laws in the country, people are shot in droves day in day out. Gun homicides are up an astounding 50%. And the national media doesn't report any of this strictly for political reasons.
Child Sexual Assault Cover-Up in Idaho. The recent sexual assault of a five-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, and the reaction by public officials and the media amounting to a cover-up dramatically illustrate, yet again, how the West battles against the harsh reality of unlimited Islamic immigration. The incident occurred June 2 at the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls where prosecutors allege a 5-year-old girl was sexually assaulted. Two juvenile suspects, boys, ages 14 and 10, were detained, charged and released. A third, a 7-year-old boy involved in the incident, was not charged. The boys are from Iraqi and Sudanese families, but it's unclear if they are refugees or how long they've been in the community.
Islamic State Arrests Growing in Muslim Brotherhood Front Group's Backyard: Indiana. The FBI's June 21 arrest of an 18-year old-suburban Indianapolis high school student on charges of attempting to join the Islamic State (ISIS) elicited all the usual protestations of disbelief from local politicos, school spokespeople, and media outlets. To the extent the arrest was covered at all, it contained rich details of the cooperative steps taken by federal, state, and local enforcement to monitor, track, and finally arrest the suspected terrorist as he attempted to board a Greyhound Bus. None of the local coverage of Brownsburg High School student Akram Musleh's arrest made any mention of ties he might have had with local Islamists, let alone who those Islamists might be. Nor was Musleh the first Muslim arrested in Indianapolis on terror support charges. Last February, local authorities charged six people with material support for terrorism. In its only story on those arrests, the Indianapolis Star proclaimed the reason for their presence in Indiana "was unclear."
What are military UN trucks doing in Virginia? 'Bemused motorists spot white 'combat vehicles' on the interstate. Military U.N. vehicles have been spotted in Virginia, shocking motorists and sparking conspiracy theories. The white trucks, equipped with large off-road tires, were seen being transported on Interstate 81 on Friday [6/24/2016]. They appear to be Alpine Armoring's Pit-Bull VX SWAT Truck models. Jeff Stern posted photos of the vehicles on Facebook, writing: 'Can't begin to tell you how many of these I passed today on 81 near Lexington VA. Interesting times ahead!'
Eyewitness: UN Troops In Texas: "30 UN Vehicles Fully Loaded With Combat Prepared Troops". An eyewitness Facebook post warning is going viral that shares one Vietnam Veterans recent experience down in Dallas, Texas. The warning, reposted by American Gun Rights-Texas who are requesting confirmation of this post, warns of 30 United Nations vehicles, fully loaded with combat prepared troops, driving down I-30 towards Garland, Texas. Are these UN troops here preparing for economic collapse in America? Is this related to Iran ships approaching the US border?
UN military vehicles seen rolling down Virginia interstate. What were United Nations vehicles doing in Virginia on Friday [6/24/2016]? That's what motorists were left to wonder when they saw UN tactical vehicles — with bulletproof glass — on a flatbed truck and rolling down Interstate 81. Jeff Stern posted several photos of Facebook and added the description, "Can't begin to tell you how many of these I passed today on 81 near Lexington, VA. Interesting times ahead!"
UN Tank Vehicles Spotted Moving Across U.S.: "Peace Keepers and Potential for Civil Unrest". Is the occupation of America imminent? While few could say what is coming, there have been some curious sightings that hold ominous tones, as military vehicles and equipment for foreign forces have been sighted on U.S. highways.
What's really behind the ongoing push for gun control? It's not politically correct to say it, but most homicides are gang bangers killing other gang bangers, gang bangers killing people standing near their gang banger targets or gang bangers killing people they've targeted for crime. Your chance of dying from a gunshot if you are not a gang banger or not committing suicide is 0.0005417721518987342 percent. The media won't tell you that.
TV News Feasts on Trump Controversies While Ignoring Hillary's Scandals. Voters who have relied on the network evening newscasts for information about the 2016 presidential candidates saw four times more airtime devoted to controversies involving presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump than to the scandals surrounding his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Indeed, the only Clinton scandal to receive more than a minimal amount of attention from the networks during the primaries was the ongoing investigation of Clinton's use of a private e-mail server and her mishandling of classified information while serving as Secretary of State. The networks paid little or no attention to a host of other Clinton controversies that likely would have been big news if they had been associated with her GOP opponent.
The Media Rightly Covers the Tragic Shooting in Orlando, But Why Does It Ignore Abortion? Tragedies such as abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and assisted suicide target our most vulnerable and helpless populations, and they breed a philosophy which discounts the sacred value of human life. In a real sense they are the ultimate hate crimes. The casualties of Roe v. Wade are massive — more than 58 million unborn babies and counting. And this massive casualty list doesn't even take into account the collateral damage inflicted on mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and grandparents. Sadly, we will not hear the names of these unborn victims read by cable news anchors or pop stars. In most cases, they have no names. But they are deserving of honor and respect. And they must not be forgotten.
The Insidious Power of the Media Disinformation Campaign for Hillary Clinton. While it is certainly true that the chief editor of a major newspaper or the producer of a network newscast has the ability to spike or kill a story, which is essentially their way of "ignoring" the news if you will, what is more subtle, deceitful — and dare I suggest corrupt — is their penchant to frame a story to fit a specific narrative. They no longer report the news, but they do shape a message. There is not a finer example of the media ignoring the facts and shaping a message than what we are witnessing regarding Hillary Clinton's email server, the classified material on that server, as well as the case of the missing emails. The media have embraced the Clinton campaign's narrative that there is "nothing to see here," that there wasn't some "mishandling email controversy," at most, or repeat Secretary Clinton's own bogus statement, "using a personal e-mail was permissible" as "other Secretaries of State did the same thing." Other excuses have been thrown against the wall to see if something will stick, such as, she was "trying to protect her privacy" or "she was clueless about how regular emails work on a conventional computer."
France to shut down up to 160 mosques. In the wake of the November 13 Paris terrorist attacks that claimed more than 130 lives, the French government is ordering up to 160 mosques to be shut down in the coming months. Raids have revealed large stashes of weapons and ammunition. The government's emergency powers grant it the right to take this extraordinary measure, and mosques that are unlicensed or have a history of "preaching hatred" are being singled out. One of France's chief imams, Hassan El Alaoui, said last Wednesday, "According to official figures and our discussions with the interior ministry, between 100 and 160 more mosques will be closed because they are run illegally without proper licenses, they preach hatred, or use takfiri speech. Takfiri speech involves sectarian slurs leveled by one Muslim against fellow Muslims.
France Raids Mosques, Finds Weapons-Truth!. Reports that mosques in France have been raided and shut down in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th are true. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on December 2nd that French officials had shut down three mosques and had detained 22 people who were believed to have participated in "Islamist radicalization." In one of the mosques, located about 22 miles east of Paris, authorities seized a 9mm revolver, a hard drive and documents, the Wall Street Journal reports.
15 Facts About The Imploding U.S. Economy That The Mainstream Media Doesn't Want You To See. The following are 15 facts about the imploding U.S. economy that the mainstream media doesn't want you to see:
[#1] Industrial production has now declined for nine months in a row. We have never seen this happen outside of a recession in all of U.S. history.
[#2] U.S. commercial bankruptcies have risen on a year over year basis for seven months in a row and are now up 51 percent since September.
[#3] The delinquency rate on commercial and industrial loans has been rising since January 2015.
[#4] Total business sales in the United States have been steadily dropping since the middle of 2014. No, I did not say 2015. Total business sales have been in decline for nearly two years now, and we just found out that they dropped again.
[#5] U.S. factory orders have been dropping for 18 months in a row.
[#6] The Cass Shipping Index has been falling on a year over year basis for 14 consecutive months.
[#7] U.S. coal production has dropped to the lowest level in 35 years.
[...]
Finally! IRS Lists Tea Party Groups It Targeted, Nets Refuse to Report. After more than three years of stonewalling the IRS has finally released an almost complete list of organizations that the tax agency scrutinized in the Tea Party targeting scandal, but you wouldn't know that if you got your news from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks. In fact, it's been 587 days since any network reported on the IRS scandal, when CBS This Morning made a mention of it on October 28, 2014. NBC last noted the targeting scandal 614 days ago and it's been over two-years — a whopping 760 days — since ABC last mentioned it on the May 8, 2014 Good Morning America.
New York Magazine scrubs article on lack of Clinton press conferences. A New York Magazine blog post defending Hillary Clinton's shortage of press conferences was scrubbed Thursday [6/2/2016] so that its justification for the Democratic front-runner's lack of media availability is now barely recognizable. "The headline and force of the opinion overstepped the mark, so we edited the post and noted that it was edited," magazine spokeswoman Lauren Starke told the Washington Examiner's media desk.
Nets Cover Gorilla Death 6x More Than ISIS Christian Beheading. It's the very definition of absurdity: the networks have covered the death of one gorilla more than the deaths of 21 Christians beheaded by ISIS for their faith. On Saturday [5/28/2016], a gorilla named Harambe was shot after a toddler fell into the animal's enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. The broadcast networks routinely prioritize animal life over human life, and Harambe was no exception. Last year, masked ISIS militants forced 21 Coptic Christians to their knees before beheading them on camera. Donning orange jumpsuits, the Christian men were martyred on a LThe Sunday Herald was the only newspaper to call for a Yes vote in the independence referendum, the anniversary of which falls this week. One year on, we are as sure as ever that it was the right thing to do, even though the referendum was lost.
We did not advocate independence for its own sake, as an expression of cultural superiority or as an attempt to cut Scotland off from the world. Rather, it was to promote the ideals of a fairer, more equal society – one which seems increasingly difficult to achieve within the confines of a United Kingdom dominated by the Westminster establishment.
The actions of the Conservative government since the referendum have only confirmed our pessimism about the future of the UK and our confidence that independence must be Scotland's destiny.
The gradgrind economics of welfare reform; the imposition of English Votes for English Laws; the attempt to abolish the Human Rights Act; the narrow hostility to Europe; the lack of common humanity with regard to the refugee crisis. We do not cite these as defects in the English character - they are not - but as defects of a political system which remains inimical to change and alien to Scottish sensibilities.
There was a time when the United Kingdom stood for very different values: the National Health Service, the welfare state, anti-colonialism, internationalism. The European Convention on Human Rights which Tories of today bemoan, was in part drafted by UK lawyers under the guidance of Winston Churchill.
But those days are long passed. It is the UK which now defines narrow nationalism, recoiling from European cooperation and refusing to accept responsibility for victims of conflicts in which we participated, and in some cases started.
The National Health Service is being privatised. Tax credits are being withdrawn from poorer families, while the wealthy are exempted from death duties. Scottish MPs are to be excluded from votes in Westminster. Is this really what they meant by “better together”?
Scotland is a country in its own right and always has been. The Union Treaty of 1707 was between two sovereign nations. Scotland relinquished her parliament but not her national identity or institutions like the kirk, the education system and the law.
It may not have been explicit in the Acts of Union that Scotland had the right to review this partnership. But Scotland is not and never has been a colony of England or the “RUK”. It never relinquished the right to self-determination, the cardinal principle of international law and the foundation of the United Nations Charter.
We believe as strongly today as we did a year ago that Scotland can and must exercise this right to self-determination. To live in the kind of society that Scottish citizens wish to live in, it is necessary to repatriate political and economic authority from Westminster. To halt Scotland's relative economic decline and preserve our interests in Europe, we need the full autonomy that is every nation's right.
Nor do we believe that the negative result in the 2014 independence referendum can be seen as the end of this matter. It is clear that Scotland rejected independence under a form of duress.
The refusal to permit Scotland to continue using the pound, the common property of the Union, was a direct threat to Scotland's economic livelihood. Financial institutions like Standard Life threatened to leave Scotland creating a climate of financial uncertainty.
Scots were told that they might be be denied membership of the European Union, of Nato. The UK-based press egregiously misrepresented independence as a crass attempt to seize diminishing North Sea oil wealth. The BBC's reputation for impartiality was placed under severe strain.
Scots were promised something approaching “devo max” if they voted No, even “near federalism”. But the Smith Commission has been described as a “shambles” even by the former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell. The Scotland Act is at best a damp squib, at worst an attempt at social dumping - forcing Scotland to shoulder the welfare burden of a rapidly ageing population without the growth policies to pay for it.
Any doubts about Scotland's desire for self-government should have been dispelled by the Tsunami general election. The party of independence now dominates Scottish politics with 56 our of 59 MPs in Westminster and an overall majority in Holyrood. Unionist parties have been pushed to the margins.
Another referendum on independence can only be a matter of time, and we are confident that the result will be a resounding Yes. Scotland must prepare the ground now, as the Catalans are doing, for a future as a fully self-governing state. There is work to be done on the currency, debt, defence, relations with Europe and the rest of the United Kingdom.
It is not enough for the Scottish National Party merely to win elections; it needs to update, in the light of experience, the voluminous Independence White Paper of 2013. The middle classes and pensioners have understandable anxieties about financial security which should be addressed.
This need not be a contentious or divisive project, but rather the envisioning of a better nation. Scotland is already “independent in the mind”, as the saying goes. Now it is a matter of making Scotland independent in the real world.Spread the love
Outspoken former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura excoriated President Donald Trump over the weekend for disregarding campaign promises to be a ‘man of the people’ — and that he “is following in the footsteps of every president that came before him: he thinks the Government knows what is best for us.”
Ventura, whose history as a WWE professional wrestler and brash style has been loosely compared to Trump’s, slammed the president as a carbon copy leader of each preceding administration — particularly in regard to draconian cannabis legislation and the prison-industrial complex — in a post to Facebook.
“I thought Donald Trump ran his campaign as ‘a man of the people.’ Someone who vowed to end the corporate takeover of our government, someone who vowed to bring jobs back,” Ventura asserted. “Even thinking about reversing state law and making legalized recreational marijuana illegal is going against the people’s will. This is going against job creation and a reliable part of a state’s economy. The citizens of these states VOTED to make recreational marijuana legal. It wasn’t the politicians, it was WE THE PEOPLE. Obviously President Trump is following in the footsteps of every president that came before him: he thinks the Government knows what is best for us.”
Since Inauguration Day, critics have blasted Trump for not only failing to drain the swamp as promised but for actively padding top positions with the same Big Bank financiers and industry insiders the American public was told would be booted from Washington.
Denouncing the former reality game show host turned president might not be news in itself, but the style similarities in the seemingly far-flung political ambitions of Trump and Ventura — including popular support as outsiders to the establishment — put the two unlikely politicians on a plane not shared by the Washington career set.
But the former wrestler, whose meteoric rise to the Minnesota governor’s mansion — following a four-year stint as mayor of Brooklyn Park — took the state by storm, kept the best interests of his constituents at heart.
While keeping hard-working citizens out of prison and able to work should seemingly be a priority for any person in power, Ventura lambasted Trump’s failure to dismantle the nefariously cordial relationship between for-profit prisons and the criminalization of drugs for keeping cages full of nonviolent offenders.
Almost pleading with followers to heed warning signs the drug war-based system still functions as legal and financial quicksand for all unfortunate enough to be ensnared, Ventura exposed the true impetus for keeping substances like cannabis highly illegal — and why Trump’s failure to follow voters’ opinions is evidence his administration will be more of the same industry-loyal policy-as-usual.
“He’s been president for a little over a month,” Ventura continued, “and he’s already forgotten that ‘We the People’ are the Government! AND he’s planning on reinstating private prisons? Let’s connect the dots: Private prisons need to be 80 – 90% full to be profitable. If they aren’t, then states pay a fine. Non-violent drug offenders make it possible for private prisons to be full.”
Rather than take cues from legalization and decriminalization of cannabis in a quickly amassing cadre of states, White House press secretary Sean Spicer stumbled awkwardly through an ostensible explanation on the moral differences between medical and recreational weed, as the media grappled with an announced plan to crackdown using marijuana’s official federal illegality.
“I do believe that you’ll see greater enforcement of [recreational marijuana],” Spicer said in a daily press briefing. “There’s two distinct issues here: medical marijuana and recreational marijuana. I think when you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people.
“The states where [medical marijuana] is allowed, in accordance with the appropriations rider, have set forth a process to administer and regulate that usage, versus recreational marijuana. That’s a very, very different subject.”
Of course, Spicer’s odd choice to illustrate the (nonexistent) dangers of recreational cannabis by summoning the national opioid epidemic wholly dismisses a number of studies and anecdotal tales showing the plant — and other Schedule 1 substances, such as psychedelics — can actually move addicts away from the actual, dangerous painkillers.
Ventura surmised the president’s fealty to the prison industry means Americans would be deprived of the few cannabis freedoms won through decades of work to dispel anti-pot propaganda woven into public thought by deft politicians connected to the cagey alcohol industry.
Like it or not, Trump has not and will not live up to popular appeals made on the campaign trail — nor would have any of the other candidates, necessarily. Ventura’s post implores everyone to consider Trump the same as almost any ruler, and as such, to expect the profitable business of caging people for ingesting a plant to experience a boom.
“Reverse legalized recreational marijuana, and private prisons will remain full,” Ventura concluded of coming legislation. “That’s his plan, people.”Bitcoin is now generally understood to be A Thing, and a particularly exciting one at that. Once-fashionable skepticism for its own sake is quickly becoming less click-worthy than this gripping Stephensonian saga written in real time. Take care you don’t go overboard. I’ve done it myself. I’m sure I still do, in some way or another. There are many trees and the forest is still taking shape. And boy, can those trees captivate. This presents new problems.
Visions receive more attention than game plans. We know we want to “decentralize,” at least. Growing pains notwithstanding, the old ways simply will not do. Power corrupts, we are reminded from birth. The worst get on top, fewer learn later. Men are not angels but too many of them still run the world. No, our doomed synthetic seraphocracy must go.
We say we desire the opposite: A way to remove the need for trust in human judgment among the commanding heights. Or, as the Telegraph put it yesterday, an “anarchic future where centralised power of any kind will dissolve.” Imperial obsolescence or a Techno-Leviathan, depending on your ideological bent. Creatively destroying our inherited repositories of human derp and replacing them with a null set. Well, more like a mostly-unbreakable cryptographic constitution that enforces institutional neutrality. Upon this first-best taxis will a constellation of (monotonic) cosmos proliferate. Good Things should follow, in whatever form you please.
In its most basic form, this cryptoinstitutional utopianism belies a seductive, but incomplete, understanding of both human social systems and of Bitcoin’s potential.
Let’s |
Assange’s teenager claim in a tweet and called the DNC “so careless.”
Contact us at editors@time.com.Ricardo Moraes / Reuters Rhythmic gymnasts perform during the inauguration ceremony of the Athletes' Park in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 6, 2011. The park will serve as recreation space for Olympic athletes
Out on the far west side of Rio de Janeiro, in a zone where a host of Summer Olympics events will take place five years from now, stands a great example of how to plan for a major sporting event. And how not to.
On one hand, there is the Athletes' Park, an $18 million 1.3 million-sq.-ft. (123,000 sq m) space for competitors' relaxation between events. Formally opened in July, the park was delivered early, on budget and will be a "legacy venue" that the general public can use before and after the 2016 Olympics. But just a few miles away is the 970,000-sq.-ft. (90,000 sq m) Pan village, built to house athletes during the 2007 Pan American Games. Today, almost four years after the athletes moved out and Brazilian residents moved in, part of the village and the roads around it have caved in, sunk by the effects of haphazard, last-minute construction. (See a long photographic history of Olympic politics.)
The question is, Which example will Brazil be known for after it hosts both the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics two years later? Aside from racing to build venues for those events, the country is adding the infrastructure necessary to meet the demands of its booming economy and on both counts, Brazilians seem as anxious as they are energized. As encouraging as the Athletes' Park may be, Brazil's World Cup preparations are late and over budget, and officials now acknowledge they took so long to start work at some sites that temporary structures may have to be used. The proposed bullet train between Rio and São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, stalled in the planning stages. More generally, public-works programs across the country are routinely late, over budget and subpar: new metro lines often shut down during rush hours, cracks have appeared in recently built government buildings and highways have developed craters just months after being inaugurated.
A big part of the problem, say watchdogs, are the kickbacks and cronyism that are still too common in Brazilian officialdom. "Everything is a pretext for corruption," says Gil Castello Branco, secretary-general of Contas Abertas, an NGO that monitors public spending. But at least in Rio, the confident young mayor, Eduardo Paes, is determined to change that and to make sure that his city's Olympics chiefs avoid the mistakes made so far by Brazil's World Cup organizers. "We are using London," host of the 2012 Summer Olympics, "as our model in terms of timing and planning," says Paes. "By the end of this year, all the major infrastructure projects will have started. Everything is ahead of schedule" for 2016.
To its credit, Rio has already begun work on roads, metro lines and venues, and it plans to revitalize its run-down port area, as well as integrate hundreds of hillside favelas, or slums, with the rest of the beach-beautiful metropolis they overlook. But while Paes has turned the city around since taking office almost three years ago, he still has to prove that he can reverse Rio's reputation for not following through. It secured the Pan Am Games, for example, with pledges to build a ring-road system, a new state highway and 34 miles (55 km) of new metro line none of which ever materialized. (Read about Rio giving its favelas< a makeover.)
Equally big worries are cost and quality. The Pan Am Games are believed to have cost at least six times the original $177 million budget, and the bills for stadiums being built or renovated for the World Cup are swelling as well. Revamping Rio's iconic Maracanã stadium its third facelift in 11 years will exceed $600 million, and the cost of the new São Paulo site slated to hold the World Cup's opening match has jumped from an original estimate of $205 million to $480 million.
Then there's the shadow of construction standards cast by the Pan village, a bucolic assortment of colorful apartment blocks interspersed with pools and gardens alongside picturesque lagoons. When the apartments were sold off after the 2007 Games, residents' complaints were almost immediate. Within less than a year, parts of the grounds and access roads collapsed because the city had done the work in a hurry after the builder in charge of the project went bust. "They needed to do it quick because if they didn't, there wouldn't be any [Pan Am] Games," says resident Fábio Yaksic. "And this is what happens when you do work [too] quickly."
Studies have since concluded the apartment buildings are safe, and the city has promised to invest $2.5 million to stabilize the affected areas. Officials, however, can't guarantee other roads and gardens won't give way, infuriating residents. But Paes points out the debacle was a previous administration's, and few would dispute that he's done an admirable job restoring a degree of respect and optimism for a city that is now seeing less crime and more investment than at any time in decades.
Still, given Rio's history and the lack of any positive legacy from the Pan Am Games skepticism abounds. More examples like the Athletes' Park, and fewer like the Pan village, would help alleviate it.
See photos of what becomes of Olympic stadiums.Things are likely to be a little quiet here in Swampland today, as we are packing up and moving to a new Washington Bureau. Part of the process is trying to figure out what to take and what to toss. I’m agonizing over things like whether to throw out my notes from the 1996 Bob Dole campaign, or that pamphlet that a Lyndon LaRouche supporter once gave out that was headlined: THE PURE EVIL OF AL GORE. (I never did get around to reading that story inside on “Al Gore and Adolf Hitler.” Or the one on “The Conspirators on Al Gore’s Secret Team.”)
But there are some artifacts that you come to realize are real treasures. Like my favorite press release of all time. It is dated July 19, 1994, and was issued by then-Senator Howell Heflin’s office. That morning, the Senator had been dining in the Capitol with some Alabama reporters, and suddenly felt a sniffle coming on. The reporters were aghast when the Senator reached into his pocket, pulled out a bit of fabric and began to wipe his nose with … a pair of ladies underwear. Hence the following:
STATEMENT OF SEN. HOWELL HEFLIN
HANDKERCHIEF
JULY 19, 1994 I mistakenly picked up a pair of my wife’s white panties and put them in my pocket while I was rushing out the door to go to work. Rather than take a chance on being embarrassed again, I’m going to start buying colored handkerchiefs.
Yep, that’s one press release that I’m hanging on to.A rocket-bearing Iranian military vessel confronted an American battleship in the Gulf and warned it to stay away from a damaged Iranian fishing boat, Tasnim news agency reported Sunday, but the U.S. Navy denied any direct contact with Iranian forces.
The American battleship turned away after the warning from the Iranian vessel, which belonged to the naval branch of the Iranian army, according to Tasnim. The Iranian military vessel then towed the fishing boat, which had sent out a distress signal after taking on water, back to shore.
The agency did not specify when the incident, close to the strategic Strait of Hormuz, took place.
In statement, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) said the coastal patrol USS Tempest, operating in the Gulf of Oman on Sept. 6, heard the distress call of an unidentified small boat about 75 nautical miles from the Tempest’s position.
At the same time the motor vessel Nordic Voyager, much closer to the boat in distress, offered help and had made visual contact with it. The Tempest offered to support the Nordic Voyager which declined the offer, NAVCENT said.
Following the radio traffic from a distance, USS Tempest heard the Nordic Voyager coordinate additional Iranian Navy help for the vessel in distress to tow it back to Iran.
“At no time was there any direct contact between the U.S. and Iranian maritime forces,” NAVCENT spokesman Chloe Morgan said.
Tensions have been on the rise between the Iranian and U.S. military in the Gulf in recent months.
In August, an unarmed Iranian drone came within 100 feet (31 metres) of a U.S. Navy warplane as it prepared to land on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, a U.S. official said at the time.
And in July, a U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots when an Iranian vessel in the Gulf came within 150 yards (137 metres) in the first such incident since President Donald Trump took office in January, U.S. officials said.
Years of mutual animosity had eased when Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran last year as part of a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But serious differences remain over Iran’s ballistic missile programme and conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
The Trump administration, which has taken a hard line on Iran, recently declared that Iran was complying with its nuclear agreement with world powers, but warned that Tehran was not following the spirit of the accord and that Washington would look for ways to strengthen it.
During the presidential campaign last September, Trump vowed that any Iranian vessels that harass the U.S. Navy in the Gulf would be “shot out of the water.”
First Published: Sep 10, 2017 20:51 ISTWe have a lot of workshops and classes happening in the area these days. We have just learned that local poet /activist/ musician (and occasional slammer) Victorio Reyes will be leading the “Intro to Creative Writing” class at the Arts Center for the Capital Region. To register for the class you can follow this link.
Here is the class description:
Join us for an introductory creative writing class where students will create original pieces, workshop each others work, and analyze the styles of radical writers from Sonia Sanchez to Gabriel Gárcia Marquez, from Adrienne Rich to KRS 1. The class will focus on poetry, fiction and creative non fiction. We will have fun but we will also challenge ourselves. This class is for all levels of writers. If you’ve never written creatively but have an interest, this class is for you; if you’ve won a Pulitzer Prize, this class if for you, too. Reyes will be featured in the upcoming anthology of emerging writers: Chorus, published by MTV Books and edited by Saul Williams. Victorio Reyes is an activist, poet, and musician. In 2001, Reyes published his first book of poetry, The Rebirth of Krazy Horse – poems for the struggle. Currently an MFA student at Vermont College of Fine Arts, he makes his home here in the Capital Region. Reyes is a member of the Hip Hop group, Broadcast Live; the group’s most recent release, Boomerang Metropolis, reached #25 on the College Music Journal Hip Hop Charts. Reyes has also received acclaim for Ghetto Hippie a current events blog of commentaries and poetry from a radical perspective.
There are scholarships available for this exciting new writing class. If you are interested, email Victorio for more information.Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg informed reporters today that his recent fine from Riot Games may interrupt the construction of his personal money castle by up to 43 minutes, much to the dismay of the young TSM midlaner.
Bjerg’s castle, The Bjergsfort, is a continuation of the popular tradition among the members of Team SoloMid to erect extravagant palaces out of the money they earn. The custom started rather modestly in Season 2, when Reginald rebuilt the TSM gaming housing using $100 bills glued together with gold mortar, but recently has expanded significantly, with anywhere between one and two mansions per player. These residences are often operated and maintained by a staff composed entirely of ex-pros from other games who are paid exclusively in retweets and residual stream viewers.
Despite being the newest member of TSM, Bjerg had planned to hold the opening ceremony of his money castle on March 31, complete with ice sculptures of all seventeen Danish Royal Family members and a functioning Legoland. Now, Bjerg predicts that the $2,000 fine from Riot Games, due to “some rule violation or whatever,” could delay completion by nearly an hour as he wheelbarrows emergency funds from a nearby money warehouse.
“I guess the only good part is that Dyrus has agreed to let me stay in the Big Pillow for a few more days,” said Bjerg, referring to Dyrus’ mansion, a two-acre pillow stuffed with dollar bills and the feathers of extinct birds.
ESEX reports that the delay will not affect the economy of the greater Los Angeles area, as Cloud 9’s liquid silver powered space ships remain operational, their diamond hulls glistening in the California sun.Asparagus is not a very finicky vegetable – I think it tastes good almost any way it’s prepared, but here is a preparation that really showcases its flavor and texture at its best. I wanted to share with you my favorite way to enjoy this versatile veggie.
After years of eating boiled or steamed asparagus, I finally was inspired to try oven-roasting it, and have never looked back! I find I get the most consistent results in my toaster oven, but the oven works just fine for this purpose too. This is another one of those recipes that’s all about simplicity: just a few select seasonings and let the veggie be the star. The high heat brings out its subtle sweetness, while the garlic-infused olive oil, salt and pepper round out the savory vegetal flavor. Serves 3-4 as a side dish, but it’s so good you might just devour it all by yourself…
Ingredients:
1 bunch (around 1 lb) of fresh green asparagus (make sure the buds are nice and tight and intact, not getting mushy)
1 Tbsp garlic-infused olive oil (I used Trader Joe’s), though regular extra virgin olive oil gives you good results too
1/2 tsp fresh, coarsely ground black pepper
1 tsp coarse grained sea salt (I recommend a fleur de sel)
If using a regular oven, preheat to 450F. Wash your asparagus stems and then trim off their fibrous bases (I find that if you bend them near the bottom, they snap off easily right where the fibrous part ends).
Line a small baking tray with foil and then add the asparagus, olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss until evenly coated.
Place in your toaster oven at 400F (or into your regular oven at 450). Roast for about 10-15 min. You will hear it sizzling as it cooks. It is done when the stalks are a bright, intense green but their color has not dulled, and the edges of the buds are starting to brown and crisp. Enjoy!
* While this is how we regularly enjoy our asparagus, sometimes you want to do something more elaborate…so stay tuned for my next post, which will incorporate this roasted asparagus into a very yummy dish!
Advertisements10k Wizard (as loyalists insist on calling the clunkily renamed “Morningstar Document Search”) closes its doors on Aug 31st. Intelligize, the legal search platform, struck an endorsement deal with them, leaving financial users out in the cold. Consequently, we have been fielding a ton of questions as to how we match up as a 10K Wizard alternative, and thought it would be wise to collate our thoughts here.
Intuitive and user-friendly document search
This is the meat ‘n potatoes of 10K Wizard. Sentieo allows you to quickly search through all electronically filed SEC filings and EDGAR archives, and the Smart Synonyms and Smart Filters functionality helps you drill down to exactly what you are looking for fast. And yes, you can do this on all your mobile devices too.
Run traditional boolean searches in a non-traditional platform
Advanced search never looked so sexy.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Live Without Redlining and Xray-ing
It’s 2016. Why are you doing this manually?
Search Less With Sentieo Alerts
Paradoxically, even though we are really good at search, we want you to search LESS. Wouldn’t it be nice if your system did searches FOR you and just gave you a notification when something you care about pops up?
Of course, with Sentieo, the question is not “can you do this”, but rather, “where do you want it?” Our notifications run the gamut of mobile, email, and in-app. So you can close your eyes and still not miss a thing.
We not only want you to search less; we really, really want you never to have to search twice. All your annotations and comments are automatically saved in our Notebook — no more siloed functionality or stress in saving work with 10K Wizard. If you are a Portfolio Manager working with a team of Analysts, rest assured, collaboration is built right in.
Easily access all of your saved work anytime, anywhere, even offline — all of your work done in Sentieo automatically saves so you’re always covered… call us the real wizard.
Financial Modeling, You’ve Never Had It So Easy
Extract tables like a boss and automate the financial modeling process with our Time Series, Similar Tables, and Table Stitching functionality. We’ve written plenty about them in prior posts demonstrating how we use this in everything from Airlines to Internet Radio to Grocery Stores, and suffice it to say that our users absolutely L-O-V-E the data extraction features.
What To Do When Gandalf the Grey is Gone
Basically, how we compare ourselves to 10K Wizard is pretty much like Gandalf-before-the-Balrog and the souped-up Gandalf after. Except its 2016 so we insist on adding a touch of technology and modernity. Whenever you run into anything from hedge fund hotels to value traps, Sentieo is your go-to tool for fundamental analysis.
To see why Sentieo should be your 10K Wizard replacement, simply go to Sentieo.com and sign up for a free trial. If you would like to continually receive content related to topics of interest in the markets, don’t forget to subscribe to the Sentieo Blog so that we can notify you of new posts by e-mail.CLOSE Sinai Miller, 9, just wanted to sell Girl Scout cookies. But on the afternoon she was supposed to sell them in her neighborhood, she was hit by a stray bullet before getting more than a few steps out her front door. Robert King / The Star
Shanita Miller sits with her daughter Sinai Miller, 9, as she heals from being shot in the leg while she and her two young sisters were preparing to sell Girl Scout cookies in their Indianapolis neighborhood Feb. 3, 2014. (Photo11: Matt Detrich/The Star)
INDIANAPOLIS — Nine-year-old Sinai Miller had been waiting all day to get her hands on her Girl Scout Cookies so she could start selling them door-to-door around her apartment complex.
Sinai (pronounced sih-NYE) had talked about the cookies when she woke up Tuesday. She had talked about the cookies when she got home from school.
After finishing her homework, she pointed out to her mother that it was almost 4:30, the time she was supposed to meet in the complex's clubhouse with the other girls to pick up cookies and start knocking on doors.
But she never made it to the pickup.
Just as Sinai took a few steps outside her apartment, with one of her sisters next to her, the gunfire started.
Her mother, Shanita Miller, was just inside the door, zipping up the coat of another daughter. When she heard the shots, she pushed two of her daughters back into the apartment. But Sinai darted past all of them in silence.
She went further inside the apartment and then started hollering.
“What did I do wrong? Why did this happen?” Sinai Miller, 9
"Mama, mama, mama. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt."
Shanita Miller asked her what hurt. And then she pulled up the girl's pant leg. Sinai was covered in blood.
The wound from a stray bullet — its source still unknown to police — missed bone and artery, entering and exiting the girl's calf without doing major physical damage. After a trip to the hospital, Sinai was back home in her own bed, her calf wrapped with thick gauze.
It is believed to be the first time in the United States — and certainly in Indiana — that a Girl Scout has been shot while involved in a cookie sales project, according to the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana.
"We cannot complete our mission to build girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place when they are afraid to play in their own neighborhoods," said Deborah Hearn Smith, chief executive of Girl Scouts of Central Indiana.
The Girl Scout council, which operates troops in 45 counties, has created a Web page so Sinai can continue to meet her cookie goals while recuperating.
Those who wish can reserve a $4 box online or by calling (877) 474-2249; you'll be contacted for payment after filling out the online form. If you live outside Central Indiana, you'll have to pay shipping to get the cookies or you can donate them to Operation: Cookie Drop for delivery to active and retired military in this area.
We are so sad that one of our Girl Scouts was injured last night during a random act of violence. Our thoughts are with her and her family. — Girl Scouts of Central Indiana (@girlscoutsIN) February 4, 2015
Looking for a way to give back? When stocking up on #GirlScout cookies donate a box to Operation Cookie Drop! http://t.co/rzP6wmnOuD — Girl Scouts of Central Indiana (@girlscoutsIN) February 5, 2015
As of late Thursday, more than 2,000 boxes had been purchased in Sinai's name.
In wake of the violence, Sinai has been left with many questions.
"What did I do wrong?" she asked her family. "Why did this happen?"
The answer to the first question — nothing — is obvious.
Sinai is a kid who just stepped outside her door. Beyond that, Sinai is an A- and B-student as a third-grader at Fox Hill Elementary, her mother said. She likes to help her younger sisters with their schoolwork. She's gregarious and kind.
After the shooting Sinai's biggest concern — aside from the pain — was about the field trip, a trip to a roller rink, that she would be missing Friday, Miller said. Sinai asked if she might go another time.
The why question is more difficult.
Let's help the 9-year-old Girl Scout who was shot sell cookies. http://t.co/pGu7Vigxxgpic.twitter.com/cJAFX3CWQj — IndyStar (@indystar) February 5, 2015
Shanita Miller and her boyfriend, Mark Chandler, don't have an answer. Two days ago they thought their apartment complex was safe. Now, they're looking to move. They're also wondering what kind of city Indianapolis is when a 9-year-old girl gets shot on her way to a Girl Scout meeting.
Investigators said witnesses reported seeing a person's arm sticking out the window of an SUV and firing indiscriminately. After the shots were fired, the SUV took off.
"It hurts our heart that we have to sit up here and cry about this, but what steps are we supposed to take with this," Chandler said. "This just don't happen. It isn't supposed to happen."
Clearly, though, it happens in Indianapolis.
In the past year, a 16-year-old boy died after being shot in the belly while riding his bike on a summer night. A 14-year-old girl survived a gunshot wound to the back suffered while sitting in a car. A 13-year-old honor roll student was critically wounded at a birthday party.
“We cannot complete our mission to build girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place when they are afraid to play in their own neighborhoods.” Deborah Hearn Smith, Girl Scouts of Central Indiana
Statewide, 82 children died from firearm injuries from 2011 to 2013, according to the Indiana State Department of Health. Over that same period, 190 children were treated for firearm injuries.
The Girl Scouts have guidelines for cookie sales, starting with an assessment of a neighborhood's safety, Smith said. Girls are never to go out alone; at least two girls and one adult are preferred. Never are they to go into a house.
None of those rules was broken here.
Six months ago, the Girl Scouts released a study that said 1 of 7 girls in Indiana experienced violence in their neighborhoods.
"This just drives that home," Smith said.
It was driven home to Sinai on her doorstep. On her first night after the wound, the girl jumped out of her sleep at noises as common as the sound of her sister getting up to go to the bathroom, proof that some wounds aren't fixed with a bandage.
"I feel like the situation is that my baby is going to be scarred," her mother said.
Contributing: Tim Evans, Shari Rudavsky, Justin Mack, Cathy Knapp and Joe Tamborello, The Indianapolis Star.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1D2ks7iBeeps, boops, whistles and clangs; perhaps some of the noisiest games ever made, those upright bowling machines, tucked into the corners of all the choicest watering holes, are the unsung heroes of our Friday nights. So here are the Pressure Life top 5 spots to practice your micro 7-10 split in Cleveland.
Which ones did we miss? Sound off in the comments below!
5) The Harbor Inn- 1219 Main Avenue; Cleveland, Ohio
One of the older bars in Cleveland, Harbor Inn is known for is affordable cuisine and strong dart game, but its ten pins are no slouches either.
4) Bobby O’s- 16013 Detroit Avenue; Cleveland, Ohio
Patrons who gave reviews of Bobby O’s were terse but direct: “nice dance floor, quaint, strange crowd, good darts and games, cheap and fun” Like the bar itself, the reviews are not flowery, rather, a bare-bones appraisal of a strong contender.
3) ABC Tavern- 1872 West 25th Street; Cleveland, Ohio
A fixture of Ohio City for the past 20 years, ABC reopened in 2009 and hasn’t thrown a gutter ball yet.
2) Iggy’s- 13403 Madison Avenue; Lakewood, Ohio
Above a “dive bar” while still flying under the radar of swankier establishments, Iggy’s finds a happy medium and a relaxed atmosphere that is not only great for live music but ten frames as well.
1) Prosperity Social Club- 1109 Starkweather Avenue; Tremont, Cleveland, Ohio
Considered “cool, but not pretentious” by Cleveland.com, Prosperity is on the upswing, balancing a trendy clientele without sacrificing familiarity.What goes up must come down—that was the gist of Samsung’s Wednesday earnings report. The company revealed that profits for its mobile business slid a whopping 64 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014. That’s really bad news considering Samsung remains the world’s top phone manufacturer. (For now.)
But there’s a reason for everything. Samsung’s phone business is feeling pressure from Apple on three key fronts: brand identity, software simplicity, and hardware sophistication. Samsung might be the reigning King of Android, but if it wants to continue to rule the entire smartphone world, it will need to get serious about overhauling its business, and, dare I say it, borrow strategies from Apple.
Samsung needs a personality
When I see an Apple or Google commercial on TV, I instinctively know which company is making the pitch, even before a product pops on screen. Both companies send such distinct marketing signals: Apple’s commercials are overtly emotional, and are usually set to some kind of acoustic soundtrack. Google’s ad spots, either for Android or Nexus devices, show how Android gear will help edify our lives. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve teared up over that one commercial with the little girl who wants to go to space.
But Samsung’s advertising spots have never appealed to me emotionally. Sure, Samsung’s got a memorable slogan—“The Next Big Thing”—but why do I want what’s next? Why is my current gadget always not good enough?
Samsung’s commercials often feel like they’re more about showing off talent (see the Kristen Bell spot above) rather than illustrating how Samsung gadgets improve our lives. But the branding problem goes beyond TV advertising. Even Samsung keynotes—videocast to would-be phone buyers around the world—lack a specific identity (other than oftentimes being just plain bizarre). Where Apple cultivates cults of personality around its presenters, Samsung wheels out executives no one really knows.
Bottom line: Samsung’s marketing arm needs to stop whatever it’s doing, and explore a top-down overhaul designed to capture the hearts and minds of a broad, diverse user base. At its keynotes, it should employ just one very personable executive to highlight a few of the wonderful, key features of its next “big” device. And when that device finally goes on sale, its TV spots should focus on explaining the features that justify that “next big thing” tag in a human, resonant way.
Samsung needs a simple UI
Google’s stock KitKat (left) and Samsung’s TouchWiz Nature UX (right) are vastly different UIs, though they’re built on top of the same code.
Samsung’s TouchWiz Nature UX is gaudy and busy, and while there are certainly worse Android overlays out there, that’s no excuse when you’re the largest Android device manufacturer in the world. Apple’s iOS is far, far from perfect. It doesn’t really do that much. But it’s generally dead-simple, and that’s why mainstream normals love it.
Step one: Ditch the bloatware, Samsung. Apple doesn’t tack on any bloatware to its devices, even when a carrier begs them to. Step two: Cut down on the UI overlay. We know you’re obsessed with becoming a platform in and of itself, but near-stock software typically runs the best on Android devices. This approach would also speed up your ability to roll out faster updates when Google revises Android itself.
Finally, enthusiasts want pure Android, not over-customized versions of it. So appeal to a passionate base that can evangelize your products. From there, a broad base of consumers will follow.
Thankfully, there are already rumors that Samsung is on the path to UI simplicity. Let’s just hope it sticks to it.
Samsung needs better looking phones
Samsung has shown it’s capable of sophisticated industrial design with the recently launched Galaxy Alpha and the Galaxy Note 4, but it’s still seen as the company with big, plastic phones. As competition increases both stateside and overseas, design will become ever-more important. That’s right: Don’t assume “emerging markets” will accept commodity-caliber hardware. Apple is kicking ass in Asia, and brands in China are selling relatively well just because their products resemble the iPhone.
Michael Homnick Nope! That’s not metal! It’s just plastic on the Galaxy S5.
Of course, Samsung shouldn’t design iPhone rip-offs. But it does need to convince consumers that owning one of its smartphones is a status move. That’s exactly how Apple has convinced (fooled?) its iPhone users. And 74.5 billion iPhones later, we see that it’s working.
A new year, a new Samsung
This was not a good week for any company to announce that its mobile business is faltering. But it is a new year, and we’ve yet to see what Samsung has on the horizon. I’m already optimistic, as there was murmuring about metal casings on the Samsung earnings call. One representative outright said, “We are planning to increase the adoption of metal cases within our product lineup.” Good!
Samsung knows it’s in trouble, and that it’s got a rough year ahead. But if it can skew its smartphone business to be more consumer-facing, more simple, and more premium, it can reverse the tide and help keep Android on top for at least another year.Electronic dance music promoter SFX Entertainment is considering filing for bankruptcy.
The potential restructuring comes after founder and CEO Robert Sillerman strung investors along a ten month takeover process that included multiple failed bids, in addition to a flurry of capital infusions to keep the money losing company afloat. For SFX, which listed its shares on the Nasdaq at a valuation exceeding $1 billion in Oct. 2013, a filing would cap the company's stunning unraveling.
Read More: The Fall Of SFX Entertainment
Initially, investors flocked to SFX's shares in hopes that Sillerman would be able to roll-up the fragmented EDM industry and create a live entertainment powerhouse similar to an effort in the 1990s where he spent $1.2 billion buying regional music promoters before selling the venture (also called SFX) to Clear Channel for $3.3 billion in 2000. Those assets were central to Live Nation's takeover of Clear Channel a few years later. Then in the 2000s, Sillerman created a vehicle that acquired the Elvis Presley estate and TV show American Idol, before selling the business, CKX, to Apollo Global in 2011.
With SFX Entertainment, Sillerman raised $260 million in the 2013 stock offering, giving him currency to buy EDM festivals in the United States, Europe and Latin America. Those included TomorrowLand, Mysteryland, Life In Color, Electric Zoo and Sensation. SFX also sold some $300 million in debt to fund its expansion.
By the beginning of 2015, Sillerman had assembled a powerhouse in the EDM business with over $350 million in annual revenues; a direct competitor to Live Nation. The only problem was amid this expansion, SFX was unable to deliver the profits it had promised to investors. As losses mounted and investors lost trust, SFX began quickly burning through its cash. In February 2015, Sillerman offered to take SFX private, a bid he improved months later.
However, as the deal moved towards a close in June, SFX sold shares in secondary stock offering that indicated the company was running into financial difficulty. FORBES first reported on the troubling implications of these stock sales, in addition to SFX's extensions to the take-private bid. Filings reviewed by FORBES later showed that SFX sold some stock to tap its revolving credit facility, which had been amended to be fully collateralized.
Ultimately, Sillerman was unable cobble together financing or JV partners for his take private bid. He reneged on the deal in August.
Days after pulling out of the deal, Sillerman told FORBES, “we don’t have enough time on this call to talk about the mistakes I made,” when discussing how his company had fallen in such disarray. Nonetheless, he offered an upbeat tone and a "zero percent chance" the company would go bankrupt.
Weeks later, on Sept. 17, Sillerman cut a deal to inject a further $30 million to keep SFX afloat. And a month after the capital infusion, he returned to SFX with a new non-binding $175 million takeover proposal. However, between the initial cash infusion and the new take-private offer, Sillerman was unable to complete a $15 million leg of the cash infusion, as FORBES first reported. In November, he withdrew the non-binding bid.
On Dec. 31, GoldenTree Asset Management assigned SFX's revolving credit facility to Calayst Fund Limited Partnership V and entered a forbearance agreement. Thursday, SFX said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it has hired FTI Consulting as a chief restructuring officer. Bankruptcy is now on the table.
For Sillerman, a filing will be a painful end to what's been a disastrous venture into EDM. He owns roughly 40% of SFX's outstanding stock, in addition to preferred shares. Here's what SFX said about its potential bankruptcy:San Francisco duo, The Dodos, will be performing at the Southgate House Revival on Monday May 5th! They are tour in continued support of their acclaimed 2013 album, Carrier (which you can sign up to win HERE). A new 7" Record Store Day single with the Magik*Magik Orchestra. Carrier arrived in stores late August of last year on Polyvinyl Records to excellent reviews in Rolling Stone, Paste, Filter, Blackbook and Pitchfork, amongst others.
An album of firsts, Carrier is the band's first to be recorded in their hometown of San Francisco, allowing for less time constraints and a more pressure-free experience than past out-of-state sessions had afforded. Although John Vanderslice's Tiny Telephone studio was initially selected for its analog-friendly setup, the duo were happy to find themselves working within a supportive community of like-minded musicians that included engineers Jay and Ian Pellicci, both of whom assisted in the production of Carrier, as well as the Magik Magik Orchestra, which appears on several tracks. It was also the first album in which principle songwriter Meric Long wrote the lyrics for, before forgoing his usual acoustic guitar, to write on an electric. As a result, the album The Dodos crafted is refreshingly sincere: just eleven songs that are beautiful and solid and true and honest.
The Dodos will be joined by locals Even Tiles at The Southgate House Revival on Monday, May 5th. Do not miss out on this show!
Enter to win tickets to this show as well as a copy of their album Carrier, HERE!
The Dodos
w/ Even Tiles
The Southgate House Revival
Monday May 5th
8p Doors / 9p show
$12 ADV / $15 DOSAlabama governor says he can no longer vote for Trump
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said he could no longer vote for Donald Trump in wake of the GOP presidential nominee’s sexually charged words about women.
Bentley comments came as state Alabama U.S. Reps. Martha Roby and Bradley Byrne, on Saturday called for Trump to step aside from the GOP ticket. Trump is under fire for his remarks about him groping women in a 2005 recording.
Roby was one of the first Republicans to speak out |
government relations for an energy company, and plays a mean game of golf. Like friend #1, she is uber-connected at home and across the country, politically and socially, and enjoys private time with her husband, stepchildren, and friends.
If you asked these women to describe their lives, they’d both probably have few complaints. However, according to a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, friend #1 should be rejoicing, while friend #2 should be grousing. Why? Because while Victoria is the best place to be a woman in Canada, Calgary is the third-worst.
The CCPA study used five criteria in its ranking: economic security, leadership, health, personal security, and education. It focused not on overall well-being, but on the gap between men and women, by measuring “the access women and men have to the public goods available in their community, not the overall wealth of a community.” In other words, the study pulls women out of their personal context, particularly family status, and evaluates them in isolation, a bit curious for an organization that hails from the it-takes-a-village side of the social divide.
It’s also disingenuous, as the well-being of women is directly affected by that of the other people in their lives, such as the earning power of their partner (who according to 2011 Statistics Canada data, is of the opposite gender in 99% of couples). Oshawa, which the study ranks 10th overall, has one of the highest gender wage gaps: men’s full-time average wages are $66,100; women’s, $38,500. Yet the city also has one of the smallest poverty gaps between the genders, 7 per cent of men and 8.5 per cent of women, likely the result of sharing economic benefits within households.
Meanwhile, Calgary, Edmonton and Waterloo (average household incomes $89,490, $87,930, and $77,040, according to the latest data) rank as the worst three cities for women while Victoria, Gatineau, and Quebec City (average household incomes, $77,820, $81,040 and $76,450) rank as the best. But if you’re living in one of those households, whether a man or a woman, you likely enjoy a similar standard of living despite gender income disparity.
In other words, more health-care funding, please, and hurrah for public-sector unions.
Studies are done for a reason, of course, generally to prompt action on some level, and in this case, calling on government to take specific measures to advance women’s equality in the place where it lags. As a solution to the wage gap, for example, the study concludes at page 8 that “Without growth in the predominantly female occupational sectors, women will continue to find themselves underemployed. Without investments in the sectors that do the most to narrow the pay gap (education and nursing, for instance), women will continue to take home less money for the same amount of work.”
In other words, more health-care funding, please, and hurrah for public-sector unions, which the study lauds for encouraging “robust wage-setting policies” (or as some would describe it, holding governments hostage at election time).
But wait a minute — isn’t this somewhat hypocritical? On the one hand, the study slams male-dominated occupational fields for being, well, male-dominated, but on the other hand, it calls on governments to pump more money into fields that are female-dominated so more women can work in them. Isn’t that just growing the so-called “pink ghetto?” Why not call for more men to go into nursing instead of construction, to “equalize” the genders in both fields?
To be fair, the study does have its merits. On issues of safety, it is useful, if disturbing, for Ottawa to realize that it has a rate of sexual and intimate partner violence more than double the average for the top 25 cities. On issues of health, it’s important to know whether men and women have equal access to care, though I don’t see why the study focuses so much on Pap smears, a test men obviously do not have: it would be better to compare on non-gendered illnesses such as heart disease. With regard to education, less so: it’s actually the men who need help, since we already know women outnumber men in university enrolment. And ultimately, educational pursuits, like work, ultimately fall into the realm of personal choice.
[np_storybar title=”Read & Debate” link=””] Find
Full Comment on Facebook
[/np_storybar]
Which brings us back to my two friends, who stand as proof that in very different places, you can rise to the top whether you’re a man or a woman, depending on what you choose to do and how much effort you put into it. Different sectors and industries offer different risks and rewards. Personal priorities will continue to determine many of life’s choices. And our lives will be shaped by that of those around us. In other words, it’s not about geography: the best place to be a woman is the place you make for yourself.
National PostThe Indiana Pacers have made the playoffs in five of the six previous seasons, quietly establishing themselves as one of the more well-rounded teams in the NBA. Unfortunately, they haven’t broken through the Eastern Conference Finals since the 1999–2000 season, when Larry Bird still led the charge. But now, heading into the 2016–17 season, people are completely overlooking the Indiana Pacers — and they shouldn’t be.
This offseason, Indiana made moves that could truly push them over the top, and potentially contend with the likes of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics for the Eastern Conference crown. They not only addressed multiple areas of need, but added a few key scorers who should be able to ease the pressure off Paul George. Let’s break down exactly what makes the Indiana Pacers title contenders in 2016–17. We’ll explain why people shouldn’t sleep on this team.
First off, we’re going to include a coaching change as an “addition,” largely due to the fact that it’s a change of culture, which the Indiana Pacers should welcome. Nate McMillan is the new leading man in Indiana. While Frank Vogel did a great job, McMillan should be able to get this team to rally around him, while building a strong offensive mindset for the unit as a whole. Now for the trade talk.
The Pacers chose to trade their No. 20 overall pick for Thaddeus Young, which was a brilliant move. In a day and age where so many young players from the draft flame out or prove they aren’t ready early in their careers, the Pacers proved they are in win-now mode by adding an offensive talent like Young. In 2015 with the Brooklyn Nets, Young averaged 15.1 points, and nine rebounds per game. Those are some strong numbers, and playing alongside of George should just make them even better.
Then, there was the Jeff Teague trade, which resulted in the Pacers trading up-and-down guard George Hill in a three-team deal for Teague. The former Hawk saw his numbers decline a bit last season, averaging 15.7 points with 5.9 assists, but Atlanta also opted to give more minutes to Dennis Schroder, which resulted in Teague’s minutes decreasing as well. Overall, the 28-year-old is still one of the more talented point guards in the league, and we maintain that he was a great addition to the Indiana Pacers.
The final two additions: signing big man Al Jefferson and drafting former Iowa State star Georges Niang in the second round of the 2016 NBA Draft. Jefferson will be a perfect player to come in and offer some bench scoring for this group. Niang will do the exact same thing — and likely do it sooner than many people believe. This offseason, the Indiana Pacers not only bolstered their starting roster, but they improved their bench as well.
The Pacers, across the board, look ridiculously dangerous. Here is their projected starting five, as well as their top bench players:
Point guard: Jeff Teague
Shooting guard: Monta Ellis
Small forward: Paul George
Power forward: Thaddeus Young
Center: Myles Turner
Bench: Al Jefferson
Bench: Rodney Stuckey
Bench: Aaron Brooks
Bench: C.J. Miles
Bench: Georges Niang
Bench: Lavoy Allen
Overall, the Pacers are not only talented pretty much across the board, but they have depth as well. This is something Indiana hasn’t had in quite some time, and overall, it will be massively beneficial for them to be able to rest guys like George, Teague, and Young over the grind of an 82-game season. It wouldn’t be the slightest bit shocking to see the Pacers finish in the top three in the Eastern Conference, and possibly make the conference finals once again.
From there, we all know anything can happen, and after LeBron James had the Pacers’ number over the past few seasons, George and company could be looking at a chance for some serious redemption when all is said and done. While everyone else is ignoring the Pacers at this point, we’re going to send some praise in their direction.
Statistics courtesy of ESPN.com and Basketball-Reference.com.
More from Sports Cheat Sheet:LOS ANGELES -- In a surprise twist that will challenge Honda's carefully cultivated reputation as a leader in green vehicles, the Clarity all-electric model debuting this spring will have only about 80 miles of range on a single charge, Automotive News has learned.
That figure puts the Honda well behind the Chevrolet Bolt's 238-mile range and nearly every other battery-electric vehicle on the market. And it leaves Honda to tackle a tough problem: how to build a cutting-edge brand image around its Clarity line of electrified vehicles with a battery EV whose range barely tops that of a Nissan Leaf circa 2010.
The shortfall is not a failure of its engineering, Honda says, but the unavoidable result of its choices.
The automaker defined two parameters that were nonnegotiable: the physical size of the Clarity platform -- which the EV shares with the Clarity plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell models -- and the cost of the battery-electric version, which is expected to start around $35,000 before any tax credits or incentives (pricing hasn't been announced).
With those hard points, Honda didn't leave itself any leeway to fit a longer-range battery, which would have been heavier and costlier.
"A pillar of the Honda brand is affordability, and if Honda came out with some obscenely priced long-range electric car, what does that do for the brand?" Steve Center, vice president of environmental business development at American Honda Motor, told Automotive News. "Most of our customers would not be able to acquire it."
Just how big a handicap the modest range figure will be remains to be seen. Thanks to regulatory pressures in California and other states, the number of electric and electrified vehicles on the market is expanding rapidly. While consumers haven't gravitated to these vehicles in large numbers, those who do will soon be able to choose among many similarly priced options that offer varying combinations of size, range and brand cachet.
"To some degree, it's all white space," said Stephanie Brinley, senior analyst for IHS Markit, "and the market is going to spend the next several years figuring it out and where people want to buy in the spectrum of size and range. You just need to get it out there and see how people react."
Honda sees itself as well-positioned. The automaker says its three-model approach with the Clarity series lets customers choose their path to electrification.
That assumes that they choose a Honda at all, and aren't turned off by the 80-mile figure. But Honda argues that with any of the EVs on the market, buyers are forced to make tradeoffs involving size, range or price.
Chevy's Bolt is affordable and long-range, but small. Tesla's Model S and X are large and long-range, but costly. The Tesla Model 3 will be less costly and long-range, but, again, small and possibly not even attainable until next year. The second-generation Nissan Leaf is expected to be small and inexpensive, but still modest in range. And Hyundai's forthcoming Ioniq EV will work the middle of the road in range, price and size.
That leaves an open path for Honda to market a large, well-equipped but affordable car for people who aren't prone to range anxiety. Honda is basing much of its confidence on its experience with the Fit EV. That car also got roughly the same range, yet the main complaint Honda says it heard from the roughly 1,100 U.S. customers was about its diminutive size.
Honda didn't disclose volume expectations for the Clarity BEV, but Center expects to beat the Fit EV "by a whole lot," he said. Many of them will be current Fit EV owners.
"These people want a battery car and they know what they do and where they go," Center said. "They're very rational and they don't need to lug around or charge up a 300-mile-range battery because that costs them electricity."The hack of notorious cheating website Ashley Madison €" whose uber-classy motto is "Life is short. Have an Affair" €" is continuing to cause embarrassment around the country. And now, it's the Air Force's turn.
As the Aspen Times recently reported, website RoadSnacks.net has analyzed more than 32 million leaked accounts and come up with lists of the cities nationwide where the website is most popular. Topping the list in Colorado is none other than the U.S. Air Force Academy nearby Colorado Springs. USAFA has 464 accounts out of a population of 3,711, or 12.5 percent of the population. Colorado Springs itself is eighth on its' state's Ashley Madison list, with 6.6 percent of the population on the site (and probably also rushing to delete their browser histories).The philosopher Harry Frankfurt claimed in a recent, highly praised book that “one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit,” but a far bigger problem for the modern world is stupidity. “Against stupidity even the gods contend in vain,” grumbled Friedrich Schiller, more than two centuries ago, and the papers bring evidence every day that it remains as popular as ever.
Only this week we heard the former head of investment banking at RBS admit that he hadn’t really understood the complex financial instruments he urged his staff to buy. While the stupidity of others – bankers, for instance – may be frustrating and expensive, the really tough challenge is trying to detect and defeat our own stupidity. Everyone is stupid sometimes, even the most brilliant, if stupidity means poor reasoning, entrenched mental habits and unexamined assumptions.
A classic example is the splitting of the uranium atom. Until 1938, the world’s top physicists carried the unexamined assumption that atomic nuclei couldn’t be split into two. This left them baffled for several years by the strange results observed when uranium was bombarded with slow neutrons. What was going on? Finally Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch worked it out between them, and told Niels Bohr. “Oh, what idiots we all have been!” was his instant, forehead-slapping response. Some say the real stupidity at that point was telling the politicians and generals, and it is certainly true that wars regularly offer particularly chilling examples of the results of stupidity, but so many of the other sources of misery in the world could be ameliorated if only we were a little better at spotting the flaws in our own reasoning and beliefs.
Spotting the varied types of political stupidity is the new stamp collecting; and the contrast between the intelligence of politicians and the dumbness of their blunders is often jaw-dropping. To become Defence Secretary probably requires considerable gumption; you fly to lots of diplomatically sensitive meetings around the world surrounded by thick curtains of security and confidentiality - so to let the best man from your wedding tag along describing himself as your "special advisor" is correspondingly daft.
Interestingly, stupid government decisions often arise not from individual stupidity but from many clever politicians and civil servants with different aims that conflict with and frustrate each other. How else to explain a debt-wracked country like ours spending billions building an aircraft carrier which on completion will go indefinitely into mothballs?Let's talk about the state of {{champion:28}} Evelynn overhaul and visual update. As much as I would love her to get a new model and skins, the situation is not looking so good as IronStylus said that we won't be seeing any updates on Evelynn this year. This saddens me because this should've happened when Riot reworked her kit, but instead we will have to wait for god knows how many years. But let's not focus on the negativity and talk creativity. I hope IronStylus-senpai notices us and my (and other people if they would like to join in) ideas will help developing the new backstory for the Widowmaker. If I recall correctly the general idea was that Evelynn is **not** a succubus, but she wears heels. I like that. And I would like to share my thoughts on what origins Evelynn might have. {{champion:28}} **Background** Even Evelynn herself does not know where she comes from originally. As a child she was taken to the Shadow Isles by an unknown secret organization that seeked power in Runeterra. She does not remember her life before that and does not remember her parents nor does she feel any compassion about it. On the Shadow Isles they performed a mystical ritual on her empowering her with the mystical powers of vampirism. There she was raised and taught the ways of dark magics in order to become a loyal assassin to the organization that once brought her there. She mastered the art of charm, disguise and murder on her way to becoming a skillful and merciless killer who feeds off her victims' suffering. Since for everyone else she did not exist, she had to master the art of being invisbile for anyone else as she traveled around Runeterra and back 'home' to Shadow Isles. For the time being she was under control of her masters and she loyally served them as an assassin. But in her own mind she was never loyal. Mystical vampirism did not completely dim her mind as she was fully aware of her actions. But she did not know any different, because people who raised here here - she thought of them as of her parents - only showed her the cruel side of the world. But the more she travelled on her secret missions which involved seducing, scamming and assassinating people, the more she learned about life and how it is not all about killing and lying. As she was passing thousands of people by being invisible, she could hear and see what they speak of and how do they live and it was so different from what she ever knew. This slow realization led to her starting to hate her so called parents and feeling that they are ruined her as a person and turned her into a killing machine only to serve their own purpose. The only thing kept her from breaking free was the seek for more knowledge as she didn't feel that she have learned everything yet. But as the time came by she became stronger and turned against the organization, using all the powers they once gave her against them. Since then she has been travelling the Runeterra burdened by her own curse, but at the same time putting her obtained skills to a good use. However, she sworn to herself to never take any political side anymore as she religiously avoids being anyone's weapon of war. Unable to live a complete normal life due to her natural thirst for human suffering she found herself alienated from everyone which only fuels her desire to hunt for careless not suspecting victims. However, as she built up her reputation in Runeterra she has proven herself as a skillful assassin, powerful ally and dangerous enemy. **Note**: The idea was that she was actually born in Zaun but was stolen from her family as a child by a secret organization (Black Rose or similar) because she has shown good potential for being experimented with vampirism (finding happiness in other people's despair?). **Note 2:** Updated the lore. **P.S**. Sorry fo the grammar and weird phrasing. I'm not a native English speaker.
Title
Body Cancel
SaveIf our code has obvious faults, we are very motivated to improve it. However, at some point we decide that our code is “good enough” and move on.
Typically this happens when we think that the benefits of improving our existing code are smaller than the required work. Of course, if we underestimate our return of investment, we can make the wrong call, and it can hurt us.
This is what happened to me, and I decided to write about it so that you can avoid making the same mistake.
My "Test With Spring" course helps you to write unit, integration, and end-to-end tests for Spring and Spring Boot Web Apps: CHECK IT OUT >>
Writing “Good” Unit Tests
If we want to write “good” unit tests, we have to write unit tests that:
Test only one thing. A good unit test can fail for only one reason and can assert only one thing.
. A good unit test can fail for only one reason and can assert only one thing. Are named properly. The name of the test method must reveal what went wrong if the test fails.
. The name of the test method must reveal what went wrong if the test fails. Mock external dependencies (and state). If a unit test fails, we know exactly where the problem is.
If we write unit tests that fulfil these conditions, we will write good unit tests. Right?
I used to think so. Now I doubt it.
The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions
I have never met a software developer who decided to write crappy unit tests. If a developer is writing unit tests, it is a lot more likely that he/she wants to write good unit tests. However, this doesn’t mean that the unit tests written by that developer are good.
I wanted to write unit tests that are both easy to read and maintain. I have even written a tutorial that describes how we can write clean tests. The problem is that the advice given in this tutorial is not good enough (yet). It helps us to get started, but it doesn’t show us how deep the rabbit hole really is.
The approach that is described in my tutorial has two major problems:
Naming Standards FTW?
If we use the “naming standard” that was introduced by Roy Osherove, we notice that it is surprisingly hard to describe the state under test and the expected behavior.
This naming standard works very well when we are writing tests for simple scenarios. The problem is that real software is not simple. Typically we end up naming our test methods by using one of these two options:
First, if we try to be as specific as possible, the method names of our test methods become way too looooooooong. In the end, we have to admit that we cannot be as specific as we would want to because the method names would take too much space.
Second, if we try to keep the method names as short as possible, the method names won’t really describe the tested state and the expected behavior.
It doesn’t really matter which option we choose because we will run into the following problem anyway:
If a test fails, the method name won’t necessarily describe want went wrong. We can solve this problem by using custom assertions, but they aren’t free.
It is hard to get a brief overview of the scenarios that are covered by our tests.
Here are the names of the test methods that we have written during the Writing Clean Tests tutorial:
registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndDuplicateEmail_ShouldThrowException()
registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndDuplicateEmail_ShouldNotSaveNewUserAccount()
registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndUniqueEmail_ShouldSaveNewUserAccountAndSetSignInProvider()
registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndUniqueEmail_ShouldReturnCreatedUserAccount()
registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAnUniqueEmail_ShouldNotCreateEncodedPasswordForUser()
These method names aren’t very long, but we must remember that these unit tests are written to test a simple registration method. When I have used this naming convention for writing automated tests for a real life software project, the longest method names have been twice as long as our longest example.
That is not very clean or readable. We can do a lot better.
There Is No Common Config
We have made our unit tests a lot better during this tutorial. Nevertheless, they still suffer from the fact that there is no “natural” way to share configuration between different unit tests.
This means that our unit tests contain a lot of duplicate code which configures our mock objects and creates other objects that are used in our unit tests.
Also, since there is no “natural” way to indicate that some constants are relevant only for specific test methods, we have to add all constants to the beginning of the test class.
The source code of our test class looks as follows (the problematic code is highlighted):
import org.junit.Before; import org.junit.Test; import org.junit.runner.RunWith; import org.mockito.ArgumentCaptor; import org.mockito.Mock; import org.mockito.invocation.InvocationOnMock; import org.mockito.runners.MockitoJUnitRunner; import org.mockito.stubbing.Answer; import org.springframework.security.crypto.password.PasswordEncoder; import static com.googlecode.catchexception.CatchException.catchException; import static com.googlecode.catchexception.CatchException.caughtException; import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat; import static org.mockito.Matchers.isA; import static org.mockito.Mockito.never; import static org.mockito.Mockito.times; import static org.mockito.Mockito.verify; import static org.mockito.Mockito.verifyZeroInteractions; import static org.mockito.Mockito.when; @RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class) public class RepositoryUserServiceTest { private static final String REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS = "john.smith@gmail.com"; private static final String REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME = "John"; private static final String REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME = "Smith"; private static final SocialMediaService SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER = SocialMediaService.TWITTER; private RepositoryUserService registrationService; @Mock private PasswordEncoder passwordEncoder; @Mock private UserRepository repository; @Before public void setUp() { registrationService = new RepositoryUserService(passwordEncoder, repository); } @Test public void registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndDuplicateEmail_ShouldThrowException() throws DuplicateEmailException { RegistrationForm registration = new RegistrationFormBuilder().email(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).firstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).lastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isSocialSignInViaSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER).build(); when(repository.findByEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS)).thenReturn(new User()); catchException(registrationService).registerNewUserAccount(registration); assertThat(caughtException()).isExactlyInstanceOf(DuplicateEmailException.class); } @Test public void registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndDuplicateEmail_ShouldNotSaveNewUserAccount() throws DuplicateEmailException { RegistrationForm registration = new RegistrationFormBuilder().email(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).firstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).lastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isSocialSignInViaSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER).build(); when(repository.findByEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS)).thenReturn(new User()); catchException(registrationService).registerNewUserAccount(registration); verify(repository, never()).save(isA(User.class)); } @Test public void registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndUniqueEmail_ShouldSaveNewUserAccountAndSetSignInProvider() throws DuplicateEmailException { RegistrationForm registration = new RegistrationFormBuilder().email(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).firstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).lastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isSocialSignInViaSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER).build(); when(repository.findByEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS)).thenReturn(null); registrationService.registerNewUserAccount(registration); ArgumentCaptor<User> userAccountArgument = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(User.class); verify(repository, times(1)).save(userAccountArgument.capture()); User createdUserAccount = userAccountArgument.getValue(); assertThatUser(createdUserAccount).hasEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).hasFirstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).hasLastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isRegisteredUser().isRegisteredByUsingSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER); } @Test public void registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAndUniqueEmail_ShouldReturnCreatedUserAccount() throws DuplicateEmailException { RegistrationForm registration = new RegistrationFormBuilder().email(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).firstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).lastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isSocialSignInViaSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER).build(); when(repository.findByEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS)).thenReturn(null); when(repository.save(isA(User.class))).thenAnswer(new Answer<User>() { @Override public User answer(InvocationOnMock invocation) throws Throwable { Object[] arguments = invocation.getArguments(); return (User) arguments[0]; } }); User createdUserAccount = registrationService.registerNewUserAccount(registration); assertThatUser(createdUserAccount).hasEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).hasFirstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).hasLastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isRegisteredUser().isRegisteredByUsingSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER); } @Test public void registerNewUserAccount_SocialSignInAnUniqueEmail_ShouldNotCreateEncodedPasswordForUser() throws DuplicateEmailException { RegistrationForm registration = new RegistrationFormBuilder().email(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS).firstName(REGISTRATION_FIRST_NAME).lastName(REGISTRATION_LAST_NAME).isSocialSignInViaSignInProvider(SOCIAL_SIGN_IN_PROVIDER).build(); when(repository.findByEmail(REGISTRATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS)).thenReturn(null); registrationService.registerNewUserAccount(registration); verifyZeroInteractions(passwordEncoder); } }
Some developers would claim that unit tests that look like the above example are clean enough. I understand this sentiment because I used to be one of them. However, these unit tests have three problems:
The essence of the case is not as clear as it could be. Because each test method configures itself before it invokes the tested method and verifies the expected outcome, our test methods become longer than necessary. This means that we cannot just take a quick peek at a random test method and figure out what it tests. Writing new unit tests is slow. Because every unit test has to configure itself, adding new unit tests to our test suite is a lot slower than it could be. Another “unexpected” downside is that this kind of unit tests encourage people to practice copy-and-paste programming. Maintaining these unit tests is a pain in the ass. We have to make changes to every unit test if we add a new mandatory field to the registration form or the change the implementation of the registerNewUserAccount() method. These unit tests are way too brittle.
In other words, these unit tests are hard to read, hard to write, and hard to maintain. We must do a better job.
My "Test With Spring" course helps you to write unit, integration, and end-to-end tests for Spring and Spring Boot Web Apps: CHECK IT OUT >>
Summary
This blog post has taught us four things:
Even though we think that we are writing good unit tests, that is not necessarily true.
If changing existing features is slow because we have to change many unit tests, we are not writing good unit tests.
If adding new features is slow because we have to add so much duplicate code to our unit tests, we are not writing good unit tests.
If we cannot see what situations are covered by our unit tests, we are not writing good unit tests.
The next part of this tutorial answers to this very relevant question:The North America qualifier for The King of Iron Fist Tournament 2016 finally concludes after an extensive interstate tour, and five hours of top-tier Tekken action.
There were twenty players who managed to qualify for the North America finals. These players got in through the numerous events of the Tekken tour or through the Last Chance Qualifier which was held the day before.
The event started off with a four pool round robin which selected eight players for the main tournament including: Kane, ITS | Spero Gin, ITS | Princess Ling, Circa | Anakin, Circa | Speedkicks, JustFrameJames, Mr. Naps, and BXA Kodee. Out of these eight players, only the top three would be able to represent North America in the Japan Finals.
The first player to get a representative slot was Circa | Anakin who went straight for the winners finals by defeating fellow competitors ITS | Princess Ling and Kane. Circa | Anakin is one of the top players from the entire Tekken tour, and repeatedly forfeited his slot in the tournament in order to join the other Tekken tour events.
Next up to win a representative slot was Mr. Nap. He barely got out of pools, but went straight for the winners finals as well by defeating fellow competitors BXA Kodee and Circa | Speedkicks. Mr. Naps was the American representative in the 2013 Global Championship for TTT2, as well as in the King of Iron Fist Tournament in 2015. Both tournaments did not end well for Mr. Naps, but now he has a chance to return to the biggest Tekken stage.
Finally, the last to represent North America in the Japan finals was ITS | Princess Ling. He’s one of the youngest players in the tournament, and is well known in the competitive scene for being one of the best Xiaoyu players from North America. ITS | Princess Ling was sent to the losers bracket early by Circa | Anakin. However, he worked his way to the losers finals by defeating fellow competitors ITS | Spero Gin, Circa | Speedkicks, and Kane.
The winners finals started of incredibly intense with Mr. Naps winning the first match against Circa | Anakin with an unbelievable slow-motion double K.O. He continued his impressive Bryan play and managed to send Circa | Anakin to the losers bracket, while moving on to the grand finals.
This result led to ITS | Princess Ling going against Circa | Anakin in the losers final. Even though Circa | Anakin took an early first match, ITS | Princess Ling managed to even out the sets and even getting another one over his opponent. Circa | Anakin’s experience over the young Tekken player however proved its persistence when he took two straight sets afterwards instead. With that, Circa | Anakin proceeded to the grand finals, and sat ITS | Princess Ling down in third place.
In the grand finals, Mr. Naps steamrolled over Circa | Anakin as if he was in a rush to finish the tournament. He took three straight sets over Circa | Anakin while losing barely any rounds at all. It was an impressive show from Mr. Naps as if he was declaring to the world that he is still the top Tekken player from North America.
The results are as follows:
Champion: Mr. Naps
2nd: Circa | Anakin
3rd: ITS | Princess Ling
4th: Circa | Speedkicks
5th: Kane
5th: BXA | Kodee
7th: JustFrameJames
7th: ITS | Spero Gin
Big congratulations to these players, and we’ll be seeing Mr. Naps, Circa | Anakin, and ITS | Princess Ling at the King of Iron Fist Finals in Japan on December 10, 2016! Be sure not to miss the biggest Tekken tournament of the year!
http://www.unifiltekken.com/feat/mr-naps-circa-anakin-and-its-princess-ling-will-be-representing-north-america-at-the-king-of-iron-fist-finals/ http://www.unifiltekken.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Champion.png http://www.unifiltekken.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Champion-150x150.png Featured Foreign News Finals,King of Iron Fist Tournament 2016,North America,T7FR,Tekken,Tekken 7 Fated Retribution,Tekken Tour Finals The North America qualifier for The King of Iron Fist Tournament 2016 finally concludes after an extensive interstate tour, and five hours of top-tier Tekken action. There were twenty players who managed to qualify for the North America finals. These players got in through the numerous events of the Tekken... porukun Paul Gabriel Fuentes porukun052594@gmail.com Author Competitive Tekken player and Tekken news writer for Unifiltekken and eSports Inquirer. Wishes he had a better rig and more money for the recently released games.
Comments
commentsCherikee Red is a brand of cherry-flavored soft drink. Its name is a play on the name of the Cherokee Indian Tribe.
The Cherikee Red brand debuted in 1969 as a product of Cotton Club Bottling and Canning Company in Cleveland, Ohio.[1][2] The product was initially bottled by Cotton Club, the A.J. Canfield Company in Chicago, the Crystal Soda Water Company of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Will G Keck Corporation's Laurel Springs Beverage division in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.[citation needed] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Cherikee Red brand was distributed by D & M Management, Inc. (Davidsville, PA), an independent beverage distribution firm, in the West Central Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and the Northern Virginia areas. As of 2010, the brand is owned by the American Bottling Company of Plano, Texas, a subsidiary of Dr Pepper Snapple Group.[3][not in citation given]
References [ edit ]New to Chapter II – UI Upgrades
Hello everyone! Here at HEX we are constantly looking to improve our game and your experience with it. While not strictly part of the campaign, today we would like to cover some UI changes that will be part of our next big update.
Pack opening and chest spinning are an important part of HEX. It is where you go to beef up your hoard and ride a vortex of card-collection goodness. You may recall that we recently improved both the Battlegrounds and Store experiences. In that same vein, we are improving the look and clarity of the pack opening UI. Let’s take a look!
Well well well
The first thing to notice is that we moved our interface for increased clarity. Now, in all of our major screens, players get a list of choices on the left followed by corresponding content on the right. This change establishes consistency which helps new players intuit how our menus work. Just this small change can greatly improve menu navigation for everyone. In addition, we’ve broken out your collection into separate tabs based on category. As your collections get larger, you will have more and more content to scroll through. For established players, this could get cumbersome quickly. The natural solution was to separate our display to present a smaller list that is easier to read. Plus, if you are feeling like spinning some chests, now all you need is a single click to find everything you have to spin.
This is how we roll
Speaking of spinning chests, we have improvements for this screen as well. Previously, we used a collection of symbols to communicate rewards from the Wheels of Fate. This kept our menus nice and |
of Byzantine civilization with the Slavic world, in exactly the same period when it encountered Islam, is exceedingly instructive. Given that not only were the two encounters contemporary, but that each of these two newer societies had the double Byzantine heritage (i.e., the Hellenic and the Christian) from which to select, we have before us two cases that lend themselves readily to comparison. In the early ninth century the majority of the Slavic world was just beginning to emerge, or had only recently emerged, from a chaotic heroic age when the Slavic tribes, ununified and uncoordinated, had expanded from north-central Europe eastward into the Ukraine and Russia, southward into the Balkans, and westward into present-day Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria. These splintered tribal societies were, in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, largely devoid of any higher political concepts and organization. The Slavs were illiterate, possessing neither alphabet nor writing, prior to the mid-ninth century. Their religion constituted a type of Indo-European paganism with many similarities to the paganism of Greece, India, and Iran. The archaeological evidence for the level of their material culture testifies to a very underdeveloped state, as their pottery did not know even the potter's wheel. Beginning in the late sixth and continuing for a good part of the seventh century, the south Slavic tribes pushed into a substantial portion of the Balkan peninsula, destroying in its northern and central sections all the essential institutions of Byzantine civilization: towns, administration, Christianity, and schools and education. By the early ninth century, however, and in the case of the Bulgarian state which only slowly was Slavonized, the south Slavs had come into contact with the Carolingian and Byzantine empires and with Western and Byzantine civilizations. Gradually, under this influence and with the internal evolution of higher state forms, the south Slavs entered the more evolved civilizations of their neighbors. When the Moravian prince Sviatopluk appealed to the Byzantine emperor for Christian missionaries, the basileus sent out to Moravia the mission of saints Cyril and Methodius. Being bilingual, knowing both Greek and one of the south Slavic dialects, these two brothers and their monks began a massive program of conversion, which involved the creation of the first Slavic alphabet and the translation of the Christian holy books and a portion of Christian literature. Further, they brought with them concepts of state, church, and society which were pervasive. Though their mission ultimately failed in Moravia, where the Latin clergy replaced the Byzantines, their labors were transferred to the Bulgarian kingdom. In Bulgaria, the khan Boris had been forced to accept baptism and conversion at the hands of the Byzantine state and church: Boris was baptized with the emperor as his godfather and the Byzantine armies as guarantors. He enforced the new religion on his recalcitrant Bulgarian aristocracy, suppressing their insurrection in a bloody fashion. He had sent his son Symeon to study in Constantinople, where he was made a monk and received a thorough education in both the Hellenic and Christian cultural heritages of Byzantine civilization. When he returned to Bulgaria he had an excellent knowledge of ancient Greek literature, his favorite authors having been Demosthenes and Aristotle. Indeed, the Latin bishop Liudprand of Cremona refers to him as half-Greek. But as a monk and future Bulgarian archbishop, he was steeped in patristic, hagiographical, liturgical, and theological writings. He had returned to Pliska, his father's capital, a Bulgarian version of the Byzantine educated and cultured man. He was imbued with the whole politico-cultural concepts of Byzantium which gave a special'character to church-state relations. In short, Symeon had been captured by Byzantine civilization. When his older brother rebelled, Boris slew him and, in 893, promoted Symeon to the Bulgarian throne. The history of his reign, which ended with his death in 927, marks the profound Byzantinization of the Bulgarian kingdom and its subjects, the creation of the first golden age of Bulgarian literature, and the first effort of the Bulgars to take over the Byzantine state and to make of their kings Byzantine emperors. Symeon created a major translation and literary center at his new capital of Preslav, where, in the monastery of St. Panteleimon, St. Naum and the Bulgarian ruler presided over this literary work. If we look at the works of translation, as well as those of composition, we see that they come almost exclusively from the Christian tradition of Byzantine civilization. The ancient Greek authors are absent. Symeon reformed the Slavic alphabet of Cyril and Methodius creating the Cyrillic alphabet, the basic form still used by many southern and eastern Slavs today. He and his colleagues proceeded to the massive work of translating religious texts from the Greek: the church fathers, theological treatises, religious poetry, hagiographical and apocryphal literature. A few Byzantine chronicles were also translated, though the more formidable Greek historians of the Byzantine tradition were not. In the south of the Bulgarian kingdom, St. Clement created a school for priests and monks primarily concerned with the mass conversion of the Slavs. Thus the approach of the Bulgarians to literary activity was even more strictly functional. They needed religious books to assist in the education of the first generation of Slavic priests, and texts which would assist them in the liturgy, canon law, and in the sermonizing of their new flocks. The dialect of Cyril and Methodius, known today as Old Church Slavonic, became the Latin and Greek of the Slavic world, a universal language for the cultural and religious life of the majority of Slavs. Symeon's labor not only culminated in the first golden age of Bulgarian literature, but this Slavonized Byzantine literature became the model for later Serbian, Rumanian, and Russian literatures. Together with Christianity, Symeon and the Bulgars adopted the entire political and artistic culture of Byzantine civilization. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this Slavonized Byzantine civilization appeared in Serbia; in the eleventh century it had appeared and spread in Kiev, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was to shape the politico-cultural life of the Rumanian principalities. In some respects the Bulgars were to play a role in disseminating much of Byzantine civilization, recalling that of the Syriac Christians in the diffusion of elements of Byzantine civilization to the Islamic world. There is one obvious and very great difference. The Slavs borrowed only the Christian element from Byzantine civilization, but they adopted it in toto. The Muslims avoided this Christian element, and took the scientific-philosophic baggage of Hellenic culture. Why the difference? The difference is due to the different stage of development of Islamic and Slavic societies. The latter was characterized by illiteracy and the absence of a systematic educational system. The former fell heir to the late ancient Greek educational system and its intellectual life, as embodied in the Syriac schools of the caliphate. The Slavic world was to know the Greek classical culture only much later, and then from the Latin West. In the tenth and eleventh centuries it was not yet time for them to deal with such a sophisticated body of knowledge. In many ways the most complex and dynamic relation with the two strands of Byzantine civilization was that of the Latin West. Whereas it is true that Western and Byzantine societies went their own ways after having split off from ancient Hellenic civilization and the Roman Empire, and that their separation was sealed by the Great Schism of the two churches in 1054 and the conquests of the' Fourth Crusade, relations remained, nonetheless, close. The Papacy, Venice, and the other Italian cities entered into an ever closer relation with declining Byzantium from the late eleventh century onward. The Lalin West underwent, basically, three periods of influence emanating from Byzantine civilization. The first was that of late antiquity, culminating in the aborted effort of the Roman senator Boethius to translate all Greek writings into Latin. In this period, Latin translations appeared of the Gospels, the Pentateuch, and other Greek religious texts. In the second wave of Greek influence, Aristotle and Galen were transformed into Latin from their Arabic versions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, thus exercising important influence on both Latin medicine and theology. But as of this time the Latin West had only a very imperfect and often marginal knowledge of the Greek texts, whether from the Hellenic or from the Christian strand. It was the rise of Humanism and the Renaissance in Italy- primarily in Florence, Venice, and Rome-that radically altered this relationship. The rise of early modern culture and society in Italy and the school system involving the studio luimanitatis led to the development of humanism and to the restudy of the Latin classics. Once this had been effected, the Italians turned to the prototypes of ancient Latin literature, that is, ancient Greek literature. Petrarch and Boccacio gave substantial impetus to this development. It is important to note that aside from the intimate contacts with Byzantium, there was a substantial body of Greek-speaking population still living in southern Italy and Sicily, and that the classical texts were being read there by Byzantine scholars as well. Italians began to come to Constantinople to study Greek, to read the classics with their Byzantine teachers, and to collect the Greek manuscripts. Then Manuel Chrysoloras went to teach Greek at the University of Florence in 1397. With the coming of George Pletho to Florence the impetus was given for the founding of the famous Florentine academy. And finally, with the fall of Constantinople many Byzantine scholars fled to Italy, especially to Venice. Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) brought together a board of scholars to translate all Greek writings. In short, the Italian humanists translated much of the corpus of Greek literature, both the Hellenic and the Christian. Marsilio Ficino, head of the Florentine Platonic Academy, alone translated the entire corpus of the Platonic dialogues and Plotinus as well. The impact of the massive translation of both the pagan and Christian Greek texts-in the fields of literature, medicine, science, theologv, patristics, and homiletics-had a profound influence not only on the culture of the Italian Renaissance but on that of the entire European world down to our own time. The Italians, as the first modern people, were in a position to make use of the entire range of Hellenic and Christian Byzantine texts, literature, theology, and science. The impact, thereafter, on Western civilization, literature, and education was incalculable. Thus, whereas the Islamic world took only a portion of the Hellenic strand of Byzantine civilization, and the Slavs only the religious strand. Western civilization became the most nearly complete heir and continuator of the double heritage of Byzantine culture, remolding and reinterpreting this heritage within its own society. In closing, I will address the continuity of Byzantine civilization within its own homeland, the lands of the former Byzantine Empire and Tsarist Russia. The most direct heirs remain the modern Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs, Rumanians, Russians, Ukrainians, and all their foreign diasporas in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The Greeks, by way of history and modern ideology, have embraced both ancient Greece and Byzantium as their heritage. The Christian strand of their culture remained constant, even during the long night of Muslim Turkish rule. They remained in contact with their Hellenic heritage through their language and education, but especially through the contacts of their intellectuals with Venice and Padua. The Bulgars, Rumanians, Serbs, Russians, and Ukrainians retained as their living heritage the Christian strand of Byzantine civilization, having been introduced to the classics much later by Western Europeans. Despite Stalin and Lenin, who had conceived the plan of murdering the religious strand of Byzantine civilization, two generations after the inception of world Communism, it seems that the church fathers will, as they always have, preside over the burial even of that entire system. When Demetrios I, archbishop of Constantinople and the 269th ecumenical patriarch, visited his Orthodox flock in America during July of 1990, President George Bush, the State Department, and the U.S. Congress greeted him as the spiritual leader and father of 250,000,000 Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe, and gave him the reception of a head of state. Byzantine civilization lives, and its religious strand will now return to its original function in Eastern Europe as a spiritual and ethical leader of its adherents. References: A.J. Toynbee, A Study of History, abridgement of vols. I-VI by D. C. Somervell (New York and London, 1969), 1-43. Greek Education
W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).
Ibid. Paideia. Tlic Ideals of Greek Culture, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1969).
P. Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin. Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture a Byznnce des origines au Xe siècle (Paris, 1971).
H.I. Marrou, A History of Education m Antiquity (New York, 1956).
M. Mullett and R. Scott, eds., Byzantium and the Classical Tradition (Birmingham, 1981).
P. Speck, Die kaiserliche Universität von Konstantinopel (Munich, 1974).
S. Vryonis, "The Orthodox Church and Culture," in The Patriarch Athenagoras Institute at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, California, Occasional Papers 1 (n.d.). Byzantine Civilization, Goths, Syriacs, Armenians N. Adontz, Armenia in the Period of Justinian. The Political Conditions Based on the Naxnriir System, tr. with partial revisions, a bibliographical note, and appendices by N. G. Garsoian (Lisbon, 1970), 162-63.
M. Bang, "Expansion of the Teutons (to A.D. 378)," chap. 7 in Cambridge Medieval History (1911), I, 212-13.
A. Baumstark, Aristoteles bei den Syrer vom V. bis VIII. Jalirhtindert (Leipzig, 1900).
De. L. O'Leary, How Creek Science Passed to the Arabs, 2nd ed. (London, 1951).
A. Sanjian, "David Anhaght (the Invincible): An Introduction," in David Anhaght: The Invincible Philosopher, ed. A. Sanjian (Atlanta, 1986), 1-15.
F. Werde, ed., Stamm-Heyne's Ulfilas, oder die uns erhaltenen Denkmäler der gotischen Sprache. Text, Grammatik, Wörterbuch (Paderborn, 1908). Byzantium and Islam: First Phase C. Becker, Islamstudien. Vom Werden und Wesen der islamischen Welt (Leipzig, 1924), I, 1-39.
H.A.R. Gibb, "Arab-Byzantine Relations under the Umayyad Caliphate," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958), 219-33.
I. Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century (Washington, 1989).
G. von Grunebaum, "The Moslim Town and the Hellenistic Town," Scientia (1955), 364-70.
S. Vryonis, "Byzantium and Islam. Seventh-Seventeenth Century," East European Quarterly 2.3 (1968), 205-40. Byzantium and Islam: Second Phase
G. Bergstrasser, Hunain b. Isliaq und seine Schule (Leipzig, 1913).
F. Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (Berkeley, 1975).
M. Steinschneider, Die arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen (Graz, 1960).
M. Ullmann, Islamic Medicine (Edinburg, 1978).
Ibid. Die Medizin in Islam (Leiden, 1970).
G.E. von Grunebaum, "Muslim Civilization in the Abbasid Period," in Cambridge Medieval History, ed. J. Hussey (Cambridge, 1966), IV. 1, 663-95.
Ibid. "Parallelism, Convergence and Influence in the Relations of Arab and Byzantine Philosophy, Literature and Piety," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964), 89-111.
S. Vryonis, "The Impact of Hellenism. Greek Culture in the Muslim and Slavic Worlds," in The Greek World. Classical, Byzantine, and Modern, ed. R. Browning (London, 1985), 251-62.
R. Walzer, Greek into Arabic. Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1962).
G. Wiet, "L'Empire néo-byzantin des Omeyyades et l'empire néo-sassanide des Abbasides," journal of World History 1 (1953-54), 63-71. Byzantine Civilization and Slavdom
M.S. Iovine. The History and the Historiography of the Second South Slavic Influence, dissertation (Yale University, 1977).
D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe 500-1453 (London, 1971).
I. Sevcenko, "Remarks on the Diffusion of Byzantine Scientific and Pseudo-scientific Literature among the Orthodox Slavs," Slavonic and East European Review 59 (1981), 321-45. Cyril and Methodius A. Dostal, "The Byzantine Tradition in Church Slavic Literature," Cyrillo-Methodianum 2 (1972-73), 1-6.
F. Dvornik, Byzantine Missions among the Slavs; SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970).
G. Soulis, "The Legacy of Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 19 (1965), 19-43. Bulgaria E. Georgiev, "T'rnovskata knizovna skola i negotovo znacenije za razvitieto po ruskata, sr'bskata i rum'inskata literatura," in T'rnovska knizovna skola 1371-1971. Mezdunaroden simpozium, Veliki T'rnovo 1972 (Sofia, 1974).
Istorija na Bylgarija (Sofia, 1981-82), vols. II, III.
Istorija un bylgarskata literatura, 1: Starobulgarska literatlira (Sofia, 1962).
B.A. Rybakov, Izbornik Svjatoslava 1073 g. (Moscow, 1977).
Serbia J. Hristic, ed., Srpska knjizevnost u knizhevnoj krititsi, 1: Stara knjizhevnost (Belgrade, 1972).
G. Ostrogorsky, "Problèmes des relations byzantino-serbes au XIVe siècle," Main Papers, II, Thirteenth International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 1966), 41-55.
G. Soulis, "Tsar Dusan and Mount Athos," Harvard Slavic Studies 2 (1954), 125-39.
A.E. Tachiaos, "Le monachisme serbe de Saint Sava et la tradition hésychaste athonite," Hilandarski Zbornik 1 (1966), 83-89. Byzantine Civilization and Rumania I. Barnea, O. Iliescu, and C. Nicolescu, eds., Cultura Bizantina in Romania (Bucharest, 1971).
Istoria Literaturii Romane (Bucharest, 1970).
E. Turdeanu, Les principautés roumaines et les Slaves du Sud: Rapports littéraires et religieux (Munich, 1959). Byzantine Civilization, Kiev and Moscow E. Golubinski, Istorija Riisskoi Tserkvi (Moscow, 1901- ).
J. Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia. A Study of Byzantine-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1980).
A.E. Tachiaos, Epidraseis ton liesychasmou eis ten ekklesiastiken politiken en Rosia, 1328-1406 (Thessaloniki, 1962). Byzantine Civilization and the West
Byzantium H.-G. Beck, Theodoros Metocliites. Die Krise des byzantinischen Weltbildes im 14. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1952).
R. Guilland, Essai sur Nicephore Cregoras. L'homme et l'oeuvre (Paris, 1926).
F, Masai, Pléthon et le Platonisme de Mistra (Paris, 1956).
J. Verpeaux, Nicephore Choumnos. Homme d'état et humaniste byzantin (ca. 1250/1255-1327) (Paris, 1959).
E. de Vries-van der Velden, Theodore Metochite. Une reévaluation (Amsterdam, 1987).
S. Vryonis, "The 'Freedom of Expression' in Fifteenth Century Byzantium," in La notion de liberté au Moyen Age. Islam, Byzance, Occident, éd. G. Makdisi, D. Sourdel (Paris, 1985), 261-73.
Ibid. "Crises and Anxieties in Fifteenth Century Byzantium: And the Reassertion of Old, and the Emergence of New, Cultural Forms," in Islamic and Middle Eastern Societies, ed. R. Olson (Brattleboro, 1987), 100-125. The West
D. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice. Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (Cambridge, 1962).
P.O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought. The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanistic Strains (New York, 1961).
A. Rabil, ed.. Renaissance Humanism. Foundation, Forms and Legacy (Philadelphia, 1988), vols. I-III.
G.C. Selley, The Renaissance. Its Nature and Origin (Madison, 1962). Byzantine Civilization after Byzantium
N. Iorga, Byzance après Byzance (Bucharest, 1935).
Istoria tou ellenikou ethnous (Athens, 1974, 1975), vols. X-XI.
Istoria Rominiei (Bucharest, 1964), vol. Ill.
Istorija na Bylgarija (Sofia, 1983), vol. IV.
Istorija naroda lugoslavije (Zagreb, 1959), vol. II.
S. Vryonis, "The Byzantine Legacy and Ottoman Forms," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23-24 (1969-70). 251-308.
Ibid. "The Byzantine Legacy in Folk Life and Tradition in the Balkans," in The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe, ed. L. Clucas (Boulder-New York, 1988), 107-48.
Ibid. "The Greeks under Turkish Rule," in Hellenism and the First Greek War of Liberation (1821-1830). Continuity and Change, ed. N. Diamandouros et al. (Thessaloniki, 1976), 45-58.
On the political and cultural significance of glasnost for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, see the remarks of President George Bush in: Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1990; Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1990; New York Times, July 14, 1990. Link: Speros Vryonis. Byzantine Civilization, a World Civilization / Сервер восточноевропейской археологии, (http://archaeology.kiev.ua/pub/vryonis.htm). Source: Speros Vryonis. Byzantine Civilization, a World Civilization // Byzantium: a World Civilization. Washington, 1992. С. 19-35.The Golden State Warriors and their fans are (rightly) focused on celebrating a championship right now. But with their 105-97 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night, the Warriors put the finishing touches on a run that was no ordinary title-winning season. The Warriors’ 2014-15 campaign should go down as one of the greatest single seasons in league history.
Golden State’s journey started with the unrealized potential of previous years. The 2013 team overachieved under second-year head coach Mark Jackson, but an ousting in the first round of the 2014 playoffs and a lack of harmony between Jackson and management sent Golden State looking for new leadership going into this season. After Steve Kerr spurned the New York Knicks to take the Warriors coaching job and the smoke cleared on the rest of the offseason’s transactions, our numbers said the Warriors had the most talented team in basketball.
But our crystal ball didn’t foresee how dominant the Warriors would be. During the regular season, Golden State crushed their competition in a way that hadn’t been seen since the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls. Golden State won 67 games, tied for the sixth-most in league history, and its schedule-adjusted points-per-game margin (as measured by Basketball-Reference.com’s Simple Rating System, also known as SRS) ranked seventh all-time. The team became just the fourth in NBA history to outperform the league average by 6 points of efficiency on one side of the ball — in the Warriors’ case, offense — and by 4 points on the other. Moreover, the team’s Elo rating at the end of the regular season was second only to that of the record-setting 1996 Bulls.
After those 67 wins, though, there were lingering concerns about Golden State’s ability to win in the postseason.
Unlike other dominating squads from the past, the Warriors were relative greenhorns on the postseason stage — in a sport in which playoff experience does seem to have a tangible effect. Their 288 dynasty points over the preceding five seasons were the fewest ever by a team with an SRS of +8 or better and tied the 2014 Clippers for the second-fewest by a +6.5 SRS team. Out of the 95 historical teams with anywhere near as much regular-season success as the Warriors had in 2014-15, Golden State owned (at best) the fourth-worst postseason pedigree over the half-decade beforehand.
Relatedly, while the Warriors dominated our power ratings all season long, their talent level was less proven than that of their stronger peers atop the all-time SRS list. For instance, while the aggregated multiyear Statistical Plus/Minus talent projection was an absurd +10.9 for members of the 1996 Bulls, +10.4 for the 1997 Bulls and +9.2 for the 1992 Bulls, Golden State’s +7.5 rating was more akin to the 2009 Cavaliers’ +7.1 mark. Simply put, the Warriors hadn’t been good enough for long enough to generate a higher talent rating, which might also suggest the potential for postseason regression.
Not to mention that the Warriors also played a fast-paced, 3-point heavy style that traditionalists were still not convinced could win an NBA championship. While there’s little evidence that such a team is more prone to slumps, no team that led the league in pace had won a title since the 1972 Lakers, and no team had ever won after using more than 29 percent of their field-goal attempts on 3-pointers. The NBA’s conventional wisdom was that those types of teams couldn’t win a title because their supposedly gimmicky strengths would surely abandon them when the pressure was on.
The Warriors hopefully put those myths to rest with a championship run that counts among the best of the past three decades. It wasn’t without its moments of concern. Golden State trailed 2 games to 1 against both Memphis and Cleveland. But on the whole, the Warriors’ postseason performance ranks eighth among champions since 1984 after accounting for their scoring margin, the SRS ratings of their opponents and the location and leverage index of each game:
If we don’t adjust for leverage and therefore have the ability to measure playoff SRS going back to 1950, Golden State’s 2015 title run ranks 16th among all 66 NBA champions in that span. By that measure, the Warriors might not pass the 1971 Bucks or 1996 Bulls — both of whom followed up the two best regular seasons of all time by SRS with two of the three best playoff runs ever — on the list of best single-season teams ever, and it might even open up the door for the 1986 Celtics to slip ahead of them on the basis of a superior postseason performance.
(Although, it’s worth noting that Golden State wrapped up the playoffs with the second-highest Elo rating on record and that they played in a league with nearly twice as many teams as Milwaukee did in 1971. But I digress.)
Half the fun of these GOAT arguments is splitting hairs with different stats, but the most important thing to realize is that these Warriors firmly belong in that conversation. This might be the start of something even bigger for the franchise, or it could be a stand-alone championship. But for at least one season, we just witnessed a team that could legitimately be compared to Jordan’s Bulls, with hardly any hyperbole necessary.
For fans of basketball history on this championship morning-after, that’s worth appreciating and celebrating.These are fricking FABULOUS! I found them reposted all over Tumblr and tracked them back to creator George at MONKEY PANDEMONIUM! We salute you, sir! Which one will you be sending to your sweetheart? I’m partial to the Data one, but that’s because I have a cyborg thing. Yeah, yeah, you guys know that already. They are all incredible tho. Anyone who receives one of these is special indeed.
Monkey Pandemonium!
*speling errers
*screencaps
*men
*old TV/fandom
*law enforcement
*other
13th January 2013
Photoset with 9,934 notes
okay, TNG valentines with the worst puns and pick-ups I could think of
uhhh the background is an edited version of this which I can’t find the original source for but I think it’s the official ST site?
feel free to reuse and repost but please link back to me or this post
Tagged: star trekstar trek: TNGvalentinesvalentines daychetan bhagat s half girlfriend movie deepika arjun to play riya madhav
New Delhi: Author Chetan Bhagat's ‘half girlfriend' has been in news much before its release for being adapted into a film. Speculations were made as in who will play the role of the lead characters – Madhav, Riya, Rohan and Rani Sahiba?
Since Alia Bhatt has earlier given an award winning performance in 2 States (Chetan Bhagat's another book turned in to a film), so Alia Bhatt became the right choice for the film. In just few days, another name popped up, it was ‘Heropanti' actress Kirti Sanon.
But after reading the book, we have zeroed-in on a few names that are just apt for playing the lead roles.
Madhav Jha - Our hero he's crass and rustic but tall and handsome and of course a prince at the same time, only Arjun Kapoor in the current lot can justify this role. As he is tall, handsome and has done movies like Ishqzaade, Gunday and upcoming Tevar, so he has a rustic touch in him, essential for the role.
Riya Somani – Our heroine, who else but leggy lass Deepika Padukone will suit for this role. If we go by the author's description, Riya is five feet, nine inches tall, plays basket ball, has a long neck, long arms, and legs has brown eyes and long hair. Our Dippy who's also tall and plays badminton is just perfect for this role as she matches the description given in the book with athletic body and sharp features.
Rohan – Rohan Chandek, who is Riya's husband in the story, should be played by Aditya Roy Kapoor. As this versatile actor has an elite personality and great acting skills. Aditya will be able to manage the role of London-based hotelier well.
Rani Sahiba – Nobody else but Ratna Pathak Shah can play the role of Rani Sahiba. Ratna who recently won hearts with her performance in Sonam Kapoor's Khoobsurat can very well play the role of an elegant lady, who may have not left with anything royal, but still carries the legacy forward.People under the age of 18 should not be allowed to enter nightclubs or bars that become nightclubs after 11pm, police on the island propose, according to a report by TV2 Fyn.
“On some level we think that it is easier to administrate, both for young people as well as for establishment owners, if rules are the same all over Funen,” Janne Svärd, lead consultant with Funen Police, told TV2 Fyn.
Current rules stipulate that people under 18 are allowed to enter bars and restaurants until 2am, providing they do not consume alcohol whilst there.
But police say it is difficult to make sure youngsters are sent home at the right time and to prevent them from drinking alcohol, and are now calling for a change to the rules.
Authorities on Denmark's second-biggest island have therefore been requested by police to change the requirements for the issue of licenses to sell alcohol.
READ ALSO: Danish app wants to help partiers get home safe
Restaurant industry association Horesta says that a complete ban on under-18s is not the solution to the problems enforcing the law.
“It makes complete sense for the licensing board to decide, if a particular place is not abiding by the rules or has had some sanctions, to make some limitations in that case. But it makes no sense at all to deny certain people – regardless of whether they are over or under 18 years – access to our restaurants or discos,” Kirsten Munch Andersen of the organisation told TV2 Fyn.
READ ALSO: Danish clubs use language rules to keep refugees outThe Republic | azcentral.com Thu Aug 8, 2013 11:09 PM
It’s against the rules to eat, drink from cups without lids and swear on public transportation in Arizona. But passengers can carry their guns on board a bus or light-rail train.
Arizona has some of the most gun-friendly laws in the nation, allowing owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit and limiting where and when local governments can ban firearms. With a few exceptions, such as on school grounds, the state and local governments can ban firearms in public buildings or vehicles only if they provide gun owners with secure temporary storage.
There are no gun lockers on Arizona buses or light-rail trains.
“Our policy is we prefer that no passengers carry weapons or firearms, and we have posted notices that I’ve seen on buses that do say, ‘No guns,’ ” said Susan Tierney, communications manager for Valley Metro. “But we really can’t enforce that.”
A group of moms hopes to change that.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is hosting a “stroller jam” protest on the light rail in Tempe on Saturday to bring attention to state gun laws. At 11 a.m., the mothers will ride the train from the station at Apache Boulevard and Price Road to the stop at Mill Avenue and Third Street.
The protest is in response to a passenger who was recently seen riding a Tucson bus and carrying an AR-15 rifle. It will be a plea to the state Legislature to consider toughening the laws, said Kara Pelletier, leader of the national group’s Arizona chapter.
“We don’t believe a mom on the light rail should have to be deciding whether the guy boarding with an AR-15 is going murder her and her children or is just on his way to his friend’s house,” Pelletier said.
She said public transportation needs to be considered differently than any other location.
“It’s one thing to say that private businesses can decide whether to allow people carrying guns into their place of business if they want to. Customers can vote with their feet,” Pelletier said. “But public transportation is taxpayer-funded. And, for some people, they have no alternative to that.”
She said the group is working with several Democratic state lawmakers on possible legislation for next session.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, said he has spoken with the group generally about some options but had not discussed any legislation that would specifically ban guns on public transportation.
“We have to look at our gun laws in a comprehensive manner with public safety in mind while still preserving gun liberties,” Gallego said.
Pelletier said her group is also pushing for more state oversight of who is carrying guns. Members favor expanding background checks or restricting the rights of domestic-violence offenders.
“We want to see laws passed that make it so if a guy does get on a bus with an AR-15, I can be assured he’s a good guy,” she said.
Tierney said she could not recall any problems that have resulted from individuals carrying guns on Valley Metro buses or light rail.
Charles Heller, co-founder of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, called the concern over guns on public transportation ridiculous. His organization has crafted several of the state laws loosening gun restrictions over the years.
“Why would anybody be concerned about a holstered weapon?” he said. “All these people with an irrational fear of weapons should seek treatment.”
He said most transit riders would be amazed at the number of people who ride the bus armed without the people around them ever realizing it.Lourlo is the top |
And Nine Lives Reviews By Doug Norrie Random Article Blend Summer can be a strange time of year for movie fans, and we happen to be starring down the barrel of a weird weekend ahead of us. This week we've got a team of bad guys and a dude who turns into a cat. Or to put it is more precisely: one looks pretty exciting, while the other looks horrible. Get ready for Suicide Squad and Nine Lives. Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer. Rotten Watch Prediction 75% I'm not sure I've been more excited for a movie in quite some time. Ever since I the first trailer for Suicide Squad a year ago, with "I Started a Joke" playing melodically in the background, Harley Quinn swinging from her cage, and really just about everything in between, I was hooked. For a dude who loves comic book flicks, this appeared just the right brand of action, hijinks, foreboding and DC Universe building. That it could even send someone with Will Smith's cache into an ensemble role is all the more impressive. And now it's finally here. The one concern I have going into Suicide Squad, much like any other "team" comic book flick, is that are just so many characters. Giving them all fair share of work to do is a tough hill to climb. The Avengers have pulled it off, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice stands as a recent example of how to not handle multiple heroes at once. Basically, the DC Universe has struggled some in the short term, but I suspect this film begins the turn around. It looks paced, deep, and, oh, there's that Jared Leto as Joker. I suspect critics to react well and that it jump near the top of recent comic book films. Rotten Watch Prediction 24% Fifty-seven seconds. That's the longest I could last. Fifty-seven seconds of the trailer for Nine Lives and I had to call it quits. And even getting there was pure torture. I got to the part where Christopher Walken says, "All right cats, let's do this!", I Put a Spell on You plays in the background and there's a flash of lightening. At that point I couldn't take any more. In Nine Lives, a millionaire becomes a cat in order to learn more about what's really important in this world. Sure it's stupid, but what really has me confused is how good the cast is. Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner and the aforementioned Christopher Walken? They all agreed to be in a flick about a dude inhabiting a cat's body. It's like someone (or a lot of people) lost a bet or are being blackmailed. I can't figure out any other reason this is happening. Barry Sonnenfeld directs, having most recently earned some critical love for his work on Men in Black III (68%). But there's also RV (23%) and Fun with Dick and Jane (29%) on his resume. This latest will almost definitely be in that latter group. Right? Last week was mot a good week at all for This Rotten Week. Only one of the three movies fell within a ten percent guess. That, my friends, constitutes a poor effort. Jason Bourne (Predicted: 88% Actual: 56%) fell below its predecessors in the eyes of the critics, and we can probably classify it as disappointing even with the score on the right side of 50%. The big complaint here from critics was the flick had all the hallmarks of a Bourne film without really bringing anything new to the table. I mean, I'll still love it, but this goes down as the worst in the franchise by far. Meanwhile, I was wrong in the other direction on Bad Moms (Predicted: 47% Actual: 63%). What I thought would be a forgettable, do nothing comedy turned out okay with the critics. I was right on one aspect in my write up where I thought Kathryn Hahn looked pretty funny in her role. Turns out she steals the show, and helped reviews remain positive. I wasn't off by a huge margin here, but I had the overall tenor of the reviews wrong. Finally, Nerve (Predicted: 53% Actual: 56%) will surely be a movie you see come on cable a year from now and have no recollection of it ever hitting the theater. I was nearly right on the money with my prediction, but even I had to go back and quickly glance what the flick was even about. It's only been a week and I was drawing blanks. Next time around we've got Florence Foster Jenkins, Pete's Dragon andSausage Party. It's gonna be a Rotten Week! Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topOne of these days Brandon’s going to kick me off this blog for posting notes that aren’t “on liberty.” But maybe he’s not looking. I’ll take a chance.
This piece is about energy and on second thought, it is relevant to libertarians. We need to know what we’re talking about when we enter into controversies on current topics like energy. Insights into how markets work are crucial, of course, but not sufficient. We should arm ourselves with a few facts and Lord knows, maybe even a little understanding of basic physics.
I base my remarks on an excellent chart produced by (gasp!) a government agency, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It appears here but if it’s illegible please find a better copy here. Blame Brandon for squeezing our posts into a narrow column!
We see energy sources on the left. A couple of facts stand out. At the top, notice that solar and wind are negligible. The yellow line representing solar may be thinner than a single pixel on your monitor and therefore invisible. Geothermal is on the radar, but barely; same for biomass (wood chips, organic leftovers, corn used for ethanol instead of feeding people) that can either be burned or processed into methane or ethanol. Our three main sources are, and will be for the foreseeable future, petroleum, coal and natural gas.
At the top center we see electricity generation. We don’t consume electricity directly except maybe for executing criminals. We use it to power devices in the four broad categories shown on the right: residential, commercial, industrial, transportation.
Notice the fat grey line coming out of the electricity generation box called “rejected energy.” It tells us that about two thirds of the energy coming into power plants goes up in smoke or steam or other waste heat rather than electricity. That sounds like a terrible loss and indeed, there is always room for efficiency improvements at the margin. But, boys and girls, there’s something called the Second Law of Thermodynamics which puts an iron limit on how much energy in a particular situation is available to do useful work. In other words, a certain amount of the “waste” represented by that fat gray line is inevitable. It would be great if the good people at LLL could supply that calculation, but I suspect that reliable estimates of the necessary data would be difficult to come by.
Look at the residential box on the right. It only represents 11% of energy consumption meaning that relative to the big picture, home energy efficiency measures like insulation, solar panels, etc. can never do much for the big picture. I say this too keep things in perspective, not to deny the possibilities for cost-effective marginal improvements in many homes.
If your monitor resolution allows it, you’ll see a tiny orange line running from electricity generation to transportation. That means electric vehicles are, and for some time will be, utterly insignificant, though again, marginally beneficial in very special situations.
Another fat gray line comes out of transportation. When you burn gasoline, most of the energy goes out the tailpipe or the radiator; only a little ends up as kinetic energy and even that ends up as waste heat when you apply the brakes. (In the long run, it all ends up as waste heat. Look up “heat death” on Wikipedia.)
The overall message of this chart is: if we want to maintain anything like our present industrial civilization with its abundant heat/cooling, light, transportation, etc., we’d better keep the present main sources going – petroleum, coal, natural gas, nuclear because renewable energy sources are advancing only slowly and in many cases (wind and ethanol, especially), uneconomically. The stakes couldn’t be higher – significant losses of energy, more than anything short of nuclear war, will make life nastier, more brutish, and shorter.
How to decide which energy R&D projects deserve scarce resources? Solyndra, anyone? No, central planning of energy is just as much a disaster as any other form of central planning or maybe more so. Energy is a highly specialized field. A biomass expert, for example, may be ignorant of nuclear fusion. A transformer guy may know nothing of transmission line losses. I suspect there are dozens or hundreds of subspecialties within the biomass field. Knowledge, as Hayek taught us, is dispersed and often tacit. We need to let all these specialists use their particular knowledge and facilities to experiment around the edges, comparing present or expected future marginal costs and benefits. Other than an occasional nice chart like you see here, the Energy Department just gets in the way. (To see a boondoggle that dwarfs Solydra, google “national ignition facility.”)
Speaking of costs and benefits, one of these days I’ll comment on the strange notion that energy accounting – a perfectly legitimate engineering practice – should be used to judge the economic value of energy projects. Tallies of income/expenses and assets/liabilities, should, say proponents, be carried out not in dollars but in energy units (joules or BTUs.) Why is this wrong? Because the economic value of a joule depends on time and place and most critically, people’s ability to make good use of it. In fact, natural resources aren’t resources at all until and unless someone figures out how to make good use of them. More generally, value never inheres in physical objects and materials but only in the minds of people who believe those objects and materials can help satisfy wants, theirs or others’.
Postscript: The oceans store unimaginable amounts of thermal energy. You can calculate this yourself: using your favorite system of units, just multiply the volume of water by its mass density by its specific heat at constant pressure. You’ll discover that if we were willing to lower the ocean temperature by a thousandth of a degree per year, we would have abundant energy from now till Kingdom Come. Try this idea on a “progressive” friend sometime, keeping the answer momentarily in your back pocket: the Second Law forbids it. Stated differently, even with perfect technology, you would have to put more energy into the conversion process than the usable energy end product.Share
A federal judge on Friday drastically trimmed a $675,000 verdict against a Boston University graduate student who was found liable for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs online, saying the jury damage award against a person who gained no financial benefit from his copyright infringement is “unconstitutionally excessive.”
Joel Tenenbaum, from Providence, R.I., was sued by some of the largest music companies who said he violated copyright rules. He admitted in court to downloading songs between 1999 and 2007. The jury found him liable and assessed the damage award last July.
His lawyers appealed, calling the award “severe” and “oppressive” and asking the court for a new trial or reduced damages.
Judge Nancy Gertner on Friday cut the damage award to $67,500 — three times the statutory minimum — and said the new the amount “not only adequately compensates the plaintiffs for the relatively minor harm that Tenenbaum caused them; it sends a strong message that those who exploit peer-to-peer networks to unlawfully download and distribute copyrighted works run the risk of incurring substantial damages awards.”
Gertner also denied Tenenbaum’s request for a new trial.
“There is no question that this reduced award is still severe, even harsh,” Gertner said, noting that the law used by the jury to penalize Tenenbaum did not offer any meaningful guidance on the question of what amount of damages was appropriate.
“Significantly, this amount is more than I might have awarded in my independent judgment,” Gertner said. “But the task of determining the appropriate damages award in this case fell to the jury, not the Court.”
Gertner warned that the fact that she reduced the award does not mean that Tenenbaum’s actions are condoned or that wholesale file-sharing in comparable circumstances is lawful.
Still, Tenenbaum said he was happy the court recognized that the jury award was unconstitutional and trimmed it to about $2,250 per song, but he said he also cannot afford paying the reduced damages.
“I still don’t have $70,000 — and $2,000 per song still seems ridiculous in light of the fact that you can buy them for 99 cents on iTunes,” Tenenbaum said. “I mean $675,000 was also absurd.”
But the Recording Industry Association of America was not sympathetic, saying that the group will appeal the court ruling.
“With this decision, the court has substituted its judgment for that of 10 jurors as well as Congress,” RIAA said in a statement.
“For nearly a week, a federal jury carefully considered the issues involved in this case, including the profound harm suffered by the music community precisely because of the activity that the defendant admitted engaging in,” according to the RIAA statement.
Gertner also said that her decision to trim the punitive damage award is in line with previous court decisions to curb excessive jury awards that targeted businesses.
“For many years, businesses complained that punitive damages imposed by juries were out of control, were unpredictable, and imposed crippling financial costs on companies,” Gertner said. “In a number of cases, the federal courts have sided with these businesses, ruling that excessive punitive damages awards violated the companies’ right to due process of law.”
“These decisions have underscored the fact that the constitution protects not only criminal defendants from the imposition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ but also civil defendants facing arbitrarily high punitive awards,” Gertner said.
Gertner’s decision comes more than five months after a federal judge in Minneapolis also drastically reduced a nearly $2 million verdict against a woman found liable last year of sharing 24 songs over the Internet, calling the jury’s penalty “monstrous and shocking.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Davis also reduced the $1.92 million penalty a jury imposed against Jammie Thomas-Rasset to $2,250 per song, or about $54,000.The Dallas Mavericks signed guard Manny Harris and forward Jarrod Uthoff to 10-day contracts, the team announced Thursday.
These moves come after the 10-day deals of guard Quinn Cook and forward Ben Bentil expired. Cook is heading back to the D-League’s Canton Charge.
Harris, a 6-foot-5 undrafted guard from Michigan, averaged 26.3 points and just under eight rebounds in 37 games with the Texas Legends in 39.2 minutes per contest. He’s coming off a 21-point March 7 performance against the Northern Arizona Suns.
Uthoff, another undrafted forward, was a four-year standout at Iowa, averaging just under 19 points and 6.3 rebounds per game his senior season in 2016. Uthoff joins Mavericks point guard Yogi Ferrell and big man A.J. Hammons as the third member of the 2016 All-Big Ten First Team to join the Mavericks this season.
The 6-foot-9 Uthoff averaged 10.7 points in 23 minutes with Raptors 905 in the D-League.
Dallas’ latest acquisitions are almost certainly roster fillers at this point. With the Mavericks’ roster coming into form for a playoff push, neither player should expect to see much playing time. Uthoff, who is capable of putting the ball on the floor and scoring in bunches, could see some time as a backup power forward, but that’s the only capacity in which he is likely get time on the floor.
Harris is a scoring machine and likely being brought on as a precautionary measure with J.J. Barea returning from his left calf injury Friday against the Brooklyn Nets. The only way Harris may see the floor is if Barea still isn’t 100 percent.Cognitive training has received a lot of attention recently, yielding findings that can be conflicting and controversial. In this paper, we present a novel approach to cognitive training based on complex motor activities. In a randomized controlled design, participants were assigned to one of three conditions: aerobic exercise, working memory training or designed sport--an intervention specifically tailored to include both physical and cognitive demands. After training for eight weeks, the designed sport group showed the largest gains in all cognitive measures, illustrating the efficacy of complex motor activities to enhance cognition. Designed sport training also revealed impressive health benefits, namely decreased heart rate and blood pressure. In this period of skepticism over the efficacy of computerized cognitive training, we discuss the potential of ecological interventions targeting both cognition and physical fitness, and propose some possible applications.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Americans of both parties fundamentally reject the regime of untrammeled money in elections made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other court decisions and now favor a sweeping overhaul of how political campaigns are financed, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.
The findings reveal deep support among Republicans and Democrats alike for new measures to restrict the influence of wealthy givers, including limiting the amount of money that can be spent by “super PACs” and forcing more public disclosure on organizations now permitted to intervene in elections without disclosing the names of their donors.
And by a significant margin, they reject the argument that underpins close to four decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence on campaign finance: that political money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Even self-identified Republicans are evenly split on the question.The claim that robots are taking our jobs has become so commonplace of late that it's a bit of a cliché. Nonetheless, it has a strong element of truth to it. Not only are machines taking "blue collar" factory jobs -- a process that's been underway for years, and no longer much of a surprise except when a company like Foxconn announces it's going to bring in a million robots (which are less likely to commit suicide, apparently) -- but now mechanized/digital systems are quickly working their way up the employment value chain. "Grey collar" service workers have been under pressure for awhile, especially those jobs (like travel agent) that involve pattern-matching; now jobs involving the composition of structured reports (such as basic journalism) have digital competition, and Google's self-driving car portends a future of driverless taxicabs. But even "white collar" jobs, managerial and supervisory in particular, are being threatened -- in part due to replacement, and in part due to declining necessity. After all, if the line workers have been replaced by machines, there's little need for direct human oversight of the kind required by human workers, no? Stories of digital lawyers and surgeons simply accelerate the perception that robots really are taking over the workplace, and online education systems like the Khan Academy demonstrate how readily university-level learning can be conducted without direct human contact.
With advanced 3D printers and more adaptive robotic and computer systems on the near horizon, it's easy to see that this trend will only continue.
Except for one arena, that is, and it's a pretty interesting one. Jobs where empathy and "emotional intelligence" can be considered requirements, often personal service and "high touch" interactive positions, have by and large been immune to the creeping mechanization of the workplace. And here's the twist: most of these empathy-driven jobs are performed by women.
Nursing, primary school teaching, personal grooming -- these jobs require varying levels of education and knowledge, but all have a strong caretaker component, and demand the ability to understand the unspoken or non-obvious needs of patients/students/clients/etc. We're years -- perhaps even decades -- away from a machine system that can effectively take on these roles; a computer able to demonstrate sufficient empathy to take care of a crying kindergartener is clearly approaching True AI status. As a result, we appear to be heading into a future where these "pink collar" jobs -- empathy-driven, largely performed by women -- are the most significant set of careers without any real machine substitute, and therefore without the downward wage pressure that mechanization usually produces.
This raises some big questions, of course, and not the least of which is how this will affect the social and economic status of these professions. Nurses may be more valued than surgeons; kindergarten teachers paid better than university professors. Would this lead to a shift in the gender composition of these jobs? In a culture that remains beholden to the concept that men are the "breadwinners," might we see efforts to "masculinize" these roles? Recall that in the United States after World War II, there was a great deal of pressure on women to give up the "Rosie the Riveter"-type jobs they held during the war.
Conversely, if accelerating mechanization of jobs triggers the emergence of large-scale social support systems (like the Basic Income Guarantee) paid for by "robot taxes," does this mean that outside-the-home jobs are largely performed by women, while men stay at home?
What I'm saying is this: there is a terrible habit that many of us in the futures game seem to have of generalizing potential disruptions. That is, if robots are taking our jobs, then they're taking all of our jobs (except, ideally, for the jobs of futurists) and we start thinking through the implications from there. But disruptions aren't so easily flattened; when Gibson said that the future's here, it's just not evenly distributed, he wasn't just talking about geography, or even class. Big sociotechnoeconomic shifts don't just appear and redraw the landscape, they have to adapt to the existing conditions, and will themselves be disrupted by deeply-rooted cultural forces. We also have a habit of expecting that the most well-off financially are the most likely to resist big changes -- but what happens when the underlying notions of value themselves are changing?The three films and one TV show from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost are notable for their entertaining engagement of well-known genre ideas, and for the way that they subvert some of the typical uses of those ideas to examine friendship and personal growth.
But, let’s face it, the films resonate with audiences at first blush in large part because Pegg and Frost and the rest of the casts of each project clearly have a great time working together. Here’s a set of outtakes from The World’s End that puts you in some of the more lighthearted moments on the set of Wright’s conclusion to the “Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy.”
This is a two-part blooper reel from the film’s disc release, via Wired. Love seeing Martin Freeman remain in character through so much of Pegg’s recitation antics in the first clip.Don’t try this at home.
Screenshot / YouTube
On Monday, meteorologist Eric Holthaus demonstrated just how cold it was at his home in Viroqua, Wis., by tossing a pot of boiling water into the air—and watching it drift back down as snow. In retrospect, perhaps he—and I, when I wrote about the stunt—should have added a disclaimer: Don’t try this at home. Or, if you must, at least stand upwind of the direction in which you’re tossing the boiling water.
As my post and others on Holthaus’s video spread around the Internet yesterday, the Los Angeles Times’ Matt Pearce began to notice a disturbing trend on Twitter: People around the country were trying the experiment in their own back yards—and burning the crap out of themselves.
Blayne and I just did the boiling water thing and I accidentally threw all the BOILING water against the wind and burnt myself. Wtf. -- Maci (@MaciKorfhage) January 6, 2014
So I did the thing where you make snow and not all the boiling water froze and now my head is burned 😂😂😂 — shelby vandgrift (@shelbyvandgrift) January 7, 2014
This was the 40th boiling-water-to-snow burn victim I found on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/4pwOYZYrHR — Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) January 7, 2014
BuzzFeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo has a roundup of the victims and three words of sage advice: “Everyone, please stop.”
Previously in Slate:Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former dean of freshmen at Stanford University, is the author of "How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success." She is on Twitter.
During college I subscribed to the conservative student newspaper The Stanford Review because its viewpoints — about affirmative action, apartheid and the merits of a Western-only canon — were diametrically opposed to my own. I learned plenty from those pages and usually strengthened my own rationale. It was a valuable aspect of my intellectual development.
When I was a college dean working with millennials, I worried about the growing number for whom childhood had been a padded cell devoid of emotional upset (feelings were validated, ideas and efforts were praised, problems were handled, fairy tales were made kinder) and for whom the routine challenges of life at college required a parent’s assistance. Today’s college students ask for “trigger warnings” when upsetting ideas might be discussed. I think it’s fine if the purpose is to steel a person for an upsetting conversation, but not when it’s used to insulate a person from having to contend with upsetting material at all.
It’s not the students who need to be kept safe from ideas — it’s the very ideal of ideas that needs to be kept safe from fragile young adults with their fingers in their ears.
Students who won’t hear other perspectives are essentially sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending the issue is not open to discussion. It seems like the inevitable whimper (tantrum?) of kids finally learning that outside their home and desired social media streams people can and do disagree, that even controversial and offensive ideas merit discussion, and that in the real world adults are interested in getting to sound, informed conclusions rather than in everyone being happy and getting along.
What’s to become of the intellectual capacity of American citizens or our democracy itself if our young can no longer go to college and be challenged by the free exchange of ideas? If we weren’t talking about millennials maybe we could simply shake our heads. But millennials — the largest generation in American history — will soon define how America does business, how America thinks and feels, and whether America holds fast to its free speech ideals. And here’s a harbinger of what could come: Generation Z — behind millennials — were offered the original episodes of Sesame Street with this warning: “Intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” If Oscar the Grouch is too mean, is America still America?
It’s not the students who need to be kept safe from ideas — it’s the very ideal of ideas that needs to be kept safe from fragile young adults with their fingers in their ears, for the sake of that young adult and for the sake of us all.
Join Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate.While the market penetration for Foxtel, the platform Fox Sports is shown on, hovers around the 30 per cent market, Fox Sports' "live and local" strategy has reaped ratings rewards.
In 2016, its coverage of live AFL matches attracted 207,000 viewers per game, up 9 per cent. NRL games were even more watched, up 11 per cent to 244,000 per match while the matches Fox had exclusive coverage of were up 15 per cent to 254,000.
Other sports were also strong, with V8 Supercars coverage increasing 25 per cent from 2015, Formula 1 was up 15 per cent and Australian games of Super Rugby increased 2 per cent. The first 13 rounds of current A-League season were up 24 per cent from the same time of the 2015-16 season as well.
Delany says advertising revenue is up 15 per cent year-on-year, with 75 per cent derived from sponsorship deals for certain sports or shows. The Fox League channel has signed naming rights deals with brands such as Schick Hydro Bundaberg Rum and KFC for the 2017 NRL season that begins on Thursday evening with the clash between defending premier Cronulla and the Brisbane Broncos.
The Fox Sports CEO says Fox League undertook about 12 months of research to find out what fans and the sport would want to see on the new channel, including qualitative and quantitative research and focus groups.
What he hopes is ratings for the channel outside the live matches increase as has been the case for Fox Footy, which enjoyed an overall 8 per cent ratings increase last year for live panel shows such as AFL360.
"What we found with Fox Footy in creating a place that is just for fans of AFL and built around a brand that has personality can create an x-factor. The engagement with Fox Footy fans is astronomical. We see it in ratings, time spent viewing, you see it in peak ratings when the games are on but an unbelievably high ratings during the week."
Other opportunities
Advertisement
Another opportunity could be in cricket, the rights for which come up on the market later this year. Fox Sports lost the Big Bash to Network Ten four years ago and are keen to get back in the game with rumours of a dedicated cricket channel as part of the mix.
"We are still going through what we think is good for us," says Delany. "The golden thing is what Cricket Australia is prepared to give us, because we clearly we have the biggest cheque book [Fox Sports' pre-tax earnings were said to be about $50 million in the last six months of 2016]. So that will be interesting."
Delany constantly talks about the tribal nature of sports fans, and is almost evangelical in the way he urges sports and fans themselves to do a better job of promoting themselves.
On rugby union and its troubles with making Super Rugby relevant to Australian fans given its spread across South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina and Japan, Delany says: "In this country the Australian public has appetite for live and local sport. Other local sports are stepping up to the plate in that regard and union needs to re-examine the way they do things."
Of course, Delany himself and Peter Tonagh at Foxtel also have to stay relevant in a time of so-called "cord-cutting" and the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Stan.
Delany says Fox Sports will win if it can keep its current cable and satellite subscribers and win more via the cheaper Foxtel Play online streaming service and via bundled offers with News Corp newspaper subscribers.
That is a big ask, with Foxtel revealing a 15 per cent customer churn rate in the first six months of the 2017 financial year. There are also rumours of a merger with Foxtel itself swirling.
But Delany believes Fox Sports will stay relevant as long as Australian sports fans keep their tribal nature.
"I think Australians have a huge propensity to love sport and want to be part of a tribe."British paedophile ring 'protected by Parliament and Downing Street' BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A powerful paedophile network may have operated in Britain protected by its connections to Parliament and Downing Street, a senior Labour politician suggested yesterday. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/british-paedophile-ring-protected-by-parliament-and-downing-street-28877796.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/migration_catalog/article25677261.ece/42d01/AUTOCROP/h342/UK%20News%203-1.jpg
Email
A powerful paedophile network may have operated in Britain protected by its connections to Parliament and Downing Street, a senior Labour politician suggested yesterday.
Speaking from the back benches of the House of Commons, Tom Watson, the deputy chairman of the Labour Party, called on the Metropolitan Police to reopen a closed criminal inquiry into paedophilia.
Indicating his anxiety that there had been an establishment cover-up, Mr Watson referred to the case of Peter Righton, who was convicted in 1992 of importing and possessing illegal homosexual pornographic material.
Righton, a former consultant to the National Children’s Bureau and lecturer at the National Institute for Social Work in London, admitted two illegal importation charges and one charge of possessing obscene material. He was fined £900.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Watson said the evidence file used to convict Righton “if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring”.
He told a hushed Commons: “One of its members boasts of a link to a senior aide of a former Prime Minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad.
“The leads were not followed up, but if the files still exist, I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the evidence, re-examine it, and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10.”
In the aftermath of Mr Watson’s remarks, media outlets speculated that he was referring to the late former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath – who was the subject of unsubstantiated rumours about sex with under-age boys – or to Sir Peter Morrison, a former Downing Street aide who died in 1995.
However, The Independent understands that Mr Watson’s comments were not aimed at either Sir Edward or Sir Peter, but at a living person associated with Margaret Thatcher’s administration.
They are thought to involve the activities of the Paedophile Information Exchange, a pro-paedophile group in existence between 1974 and 1984, which believed there should be no age of consent.
Responding to the remarks, David Cameron said the MP had raised “a very difficult and complex case”, adding he was unclear which former Prime Minister Mr Watson was referring to.
Criticising the BBC’s record on Savile – who was never caught and died last year aged 84, the Prime Minister said: "These allegations do leave many institutions - perhaps particularly the BBC - with serious questions to answer - I think above all the question, 'How did he get away with this for so long?'.”
He told MPs: "The most important thing is that the police investigation is properly resourced and is allowed to continue.”
Belfast TelegraphInnovate Finance, the independent membership association serving the global FinTech sector, has recently announced that it will set up a blockchain lab in partnership with the Hartree Centre, a research facility founded by the UK Government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.
The Innovate Finance blockchain members have been seeking to work together on developing use cases for blockchain in financial services and to help expedite its adoption as a viable infrastructure to build new applications.
“We are excited about the prospect of our members openly collaborating to deliver use cases to the wider community,” said Innovate Finance’s CEO Lawrence Wintermeyer. “If we can use the lab to develop open standards for the blockchain in financial services, we will be moving one step closer to accelerating the mass adoption of this breakthrough technology.
Participants of the Innovate Finance lab will leverage the power of Hartree’s high-performance computing (HPC) solutions for their blockchain exploration. By combining the two forces, the lab will set out to develop practical use cases for blockchain, ranging from payment settlement applications catering to a single company, to new use cases for AML, KYC, and digital currencies.
“The Hartree Centre is very excited about this new initiative and look forward to working closely with Innovate Finance members to learn from the knowledge they bring and to harness the power of our world class computing systems” said David Moss, Advanced Technology Solutions Manager at the Hartree Centre. “Together we will examine how blockchain technology can shape a new and better future for financial services and possibly other sectors too.”
The lab is scheduled to be up and running in October with the first set of prototype use cases developed by the end of this year.O.J. Simpson.
It was easy to love Ryan Murphy’s The People v. O.J. Simpson — the whole thing was a blast, from the Marcia Clark revival to David Schwimmer skewering the Kardashians. And though it played history as camp, most of the time, ultimately, that didn’t matter: The history was so rich we couldn’t help but take it seriously, even when it was fed to us as a popcorn reenactment.
Which is why O.J.: Made in America, I guarantee you right now, is going to blow your mind. The documentary, which screened at Sundance this winter and last month at Tribeca, runs seven hours and 43 minutes. It was made under ESPN’s 30 for 30 banner and, after a brief theatrical run (probably to qualify it for an Oscar), will air in prime time, on ABC and ESPN, starting June 11. It will be the only thing this country’s going to be talking about that whole week.
Directed by Ezra Edelman, O.J. is massive but never sprawling, passionate but never unfair, informative but never anything but compulsively entertaining. By devoting nearly eight hours to the trial and all that surrounded it, Edelman is able to give a true, and truly operatic, 360-degree treatment of a story that basically nobody has ever before been able to process except in pieces. There was the way the trial was viewed so differently by black and white audiences, of course, but also all the aspects that could be appreciated only by smaller groups — those savvy about race in American sports, those crusading to make domestic violence an unoverlookable national horror story, those who knew the celebrity cult of Los Angeles and its tabloid-economy underbelly, those who appreciated the coming of reality television, and those who saw the terrible naïveté of a country trying to reckon with centuries of racial injustice by turning the trial of a single man into a national morality play. Simpson’s trial was always bigger than him, bigger than sports, bigger than celebrity, bigger than anyone realized at the time. It has taken 21 years for someone to capture what the trial was really about— everything it was about.
In Edelman’s hands, nothing gets short shrift — that’s partly the beauty of having an eight-hour cabinet to fill with stuff and partly the beauty of the stuff itself. Edelman has unearthed some truly breathtaking footage — including Al Cowlings breaking down while giving the eulogy at Nicole Brown Simpson’s funeral; O.J. screaming about the television coverage of his trial at a post-acquittal party; and even a shocking scene featuring present-day, bloated, defeated O.J. talking about prison to a parole board. But the movie is most powerful for its scope, its ability to show how the Simpson trial reflected (and even shifted) national attitudes toward fame, and sports, and television, and media, and L.A., and science, and, of course, race. We’ve been talking about this case for more than two decades, but it’s not until you watch Edelman’s film that |
could wind up backfiring in November.
Loser: New Democrats
Roughly from Walter Mondale's landslide defeat in 1984 through to the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, a vocal faction of the Democratic Party led a successful effort to lead it rightward.
The "New Democrats" of the Democratic Leadership Council and New Democrat Network argued that the liberalism of Mondale and congressional Democrats was incapable of producing a governing coalition. It was too pacifist, interested in things like nuclear freezes rather than responding to Americans' hawkish sentiments; it was too weak on crime, insufficiently vigorous in pursuing tough incarceration and policing policies that played well with scared suburban voters; it was too left-wing, invested in old-school New Deal–type programs rather than engaging with the private sector.
Bill Clinton was this critique made flesh. The Democrats were too pacifist? Well, he conducted bombing raids in Sudan and Iraq and intervened twice in the Balkans. His post–Cold War peace dividend was modest. The Democrats were too soft on crime? Well, he executed a black man with an IQ of 70 who was so intellectually disabled he saved the pecan pie from his last meal "for later." He posed in front of black prisoners on Stone Mountain, Georgia, the site of a massive pro-slavery sculpture and the founding site of the 20th-century Ku Klux Klan. He railed against black teen "superpredators" and signed a harsh crime bill.
By 2000, the New Dems looked ascendant.
And then it all came crashing down.
In some ways, this was inevitable. The growing share of black and Latino voters in the electorate naturally shifted Democrats' coalition left by reducing the need to rely on Southern whites, whom Clinton and other New Dems were so adept at courting. Both parties' views on crime grew more lenient in light of the massive decline in crime rates in the 1990s. The Iraq War restored a deep skepticism about the use of force in both rank-and-file and elected Democrats.
But just going through the issues at tonight's debate, it's striking to imagine a DLCer from the '90s watching and wondering what his party had come to. Sanders was asked not if he was sufficiently tough on crime, but if his plans to let millions of convicted criminals out of prison would actually free as many felons as promised. Clinton was criticized not for being insufficiently pro-Israel, but for being insufficiently willing to assail the killing of Palestinian civilians. Twenty years after Clinton named former Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin as his Treasury secretary, so much as consorting with Goldman Sachs had become toxic.
The DLC itself dissolved in 2011. Its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, is still around but mostly ignored. The New Democrat movement was largely dead before this debate. But the event was nonetheless a potent reminder of just how far the centrists have fallen.
Loser: Liberal technocrats
One of the most striking things about the rise of the $15-an-hour minimum wage is how little opposition it's provoked from establishment liberals. While few Democratic economists in good standing would oppose the wage in general, or even mild increases to it, most are standard enough economists to think that there's some point at which the unemployment and price increases it produces are big enough to outweigh any gains.
More generally, Democratic wonks tend to pride themselves on an ability to rein in fantastical thinking in a way their Republican counterparts don't. When Republican presidential candidate promise outlandishly high economic growth rates as a result of their massive tax cuts, they usually get economist backup. But when Bernie Sanders touted a paper suggesting he'd achieve 5.3 percent growth, the Democratic economist establishment put him in his place.
That hasn't happened at a large scale on $15 an hour. Alan Krueger, Obama's former chief economist and one of the first to argue that small increases in the wage might not cost jobs, has come out against the idea. He writes, "$15 an hour is beyond international experience, and could well be counterproductive. Although some high-wage cities and states could probably absorb a $15-an-hour minimum wage with little or no job loss, it is far from clear that the same could be said for every state, city and town in the United States."
My sense from off-the-record conversations with left-leaning Democratic economists is that this is what most of them actually believe. Again and again and again, I've heard people — including ones significantly to the left of the Obama administration — express grave concern about the $15-an-hour figure, about the danger that this time we might be going too far.
Obviously, it's hard for me to prove this is a widespread sentiment relying entirely on anonymous comments, but you can read between the lines.
UMass Amherst's Arindrajit Dube, the leading economist arguing that minimum wage hikes don't necessarily cost jobs, told my colleague Tim Lee of $15 an hour, "If you're risk-averse, this would not be the scale at which to try things." At most he said the idea would "get us more evidence."
Dube's own preferred policy would set the minimum wage at half of each local area's median wage. That would suggest minimums as high as $13.51 an hour in the DC metro area, or as low as $8 in Arkansas and Mississippi, but nowhere does it spit out a $15-an-hour minimum.
Similarly, the Economic Policy Institute, the leading pro-labor think tank in DC, repeatedly advocates for a $12 minimum, not $15. It'll issue statements sympathetic to actually passed $15-an-hour laws, but it's not the focus of their prior research. Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden's former chief economist and perhaps the leftmost adviser in the Obama administration, has written sympathetically about $15 an hour, but emphasized, "As far as we can see, no one is proposing $15 tomorrow. All the proposals we know of phase in gradually over the course of numerous years."
The dynamic you see here is one where there's such overwhelming grassroots support for an idea that even policy elites who traditionally take it upon themselves to moderate and channel on-the-ground sentiment into more viable policy avenues aren't doing that. They're jumping on board and then talking to journalists like me off the record about their concerns, and about their concerns as to what happens if their misgivings were to become public.
That's the context in which to understand Clinton's decision to get on board with the $15-an-hour minimum wage. It's a clear sign that the traditional gatekeeper role center-left economists have played on issues like this is being eroded, and quickly.NEW YORK — The cause and manner of death of Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first African-American woman to serve on the New York Court of Appeals, was released Wednesday, months after her body washed up on the shore of the Hudson River.
The city’s medical examiner concluded that Abdus-Salaam died by drowning. The manner of death is suicide.
The late judge was found dead in April. The following month, the NYPD closed its investigation into her death.
Unable to locate any witnesses, police relied on security video to try to retrace the last hours of Abdus-Salaam’s life. She spent her workweeks in the city at an apartment on West 131st Street in Harlem.
After staying home from work on April 11, she was seen on video leaving the home at around 8:30 p.m. and walking several blocks north, then eventually west on West 145th Street to an elevated park on the Hudson River, where a final video shows her alone there at about 12:30 a.m. on April 12, according to two law enforcement officials.
Her body was found in the water about 13 hours later without obvious signs of trauma. She was in the same clothes — sweatshirt, sweatpants and white sneakers — as seen in the videos.
The 65-year-old Abdus-Salaam was raised with six siblings in a working-class family in Washington. She graduated from Barnard College before attending Columbia Law School, where she was on a committee organizing a 40th class reunion in June.
After she rose from a lawyer for low-income Brooklyn residents to state court justice, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed her to the state Court of Appeals in 2013. She once said that she wanted people to “consider me to be a judge who listens and gives them a fair shot.”
Her death brought an outpouring of accolades. Cuomo called her a “trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all.”CINCINNATI (WCPO) -- Police officers who investigated an apartment building in Cincinnati, Ohio Sunday left "deeply disturbed" by what they saw there: Duct tape, shoelaces and socks that had been used to bind and gag a pair of 4-year-old twin boys in an abusive form of discipline, according to Det. Janette Vaughn.
"(The officers) just felt so emotionally disturbed by what they saw," Fraternal Order of Police president Sgt. Dan Hils said Monday. "It's so unique and remarkable that it took very veteran, very seasoned, inner-city police officers to say, 'Wow, this is unbelievable.'"
The boys' father, 26-year-old James Howell and his 30-year-old girlfriend, Jamie Carver, both stand charged with multiple counts of child endangering and kidnapping. A third adult, 30-year-old Rowdy Warren, was charged with obstructing official business after police discovered he had also been present in the apartment where the abuse took place.
The boys were moved to a foster family while their guardians stand trial, Vaughn said.
"It just makes you wonder what frame of mind they were in," Phil Harris, who works near the scene, said. "Are they on drugs? I just don't understand people that could harm children."
According to Hils, officers began collecting donations within the department for the boys.
Kidnapping and child endangering are both felony offenses. If convicted of all counts, Carver and Howell could each face a minimum of seven years’ imprisonment.This is a list of the first music videos broadcast on MTV's first day, August 1, 1981. MTV's first day on the air was rebroadcast on VH1 Classic in 2006 and again in 2011 (the latter celebrating the channel's 30th anniversary).[1][2] The first hour on the air was broadcast again on August 1, 2016 and was called MTV Hour One, as part of VH1 Classic's planned re-launch as MTV Classic, MTV itself, and additionally streamed on the channel's Facebook page.[3]
The Buggles had the honor of the inaugural video, with the appropriate "Video Killed the Radio Star." Although the fledgling network broadcast 208 video segments in its first 24 hours, only 116 videos were actually played as many were repeated. For instance, "You Better You Bet" by The Who, which was also the first video to be repeated, "Just Between You and Me" by April Wine, and "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins were each played five times. Rod Stewart made the most total appearances that day with 16, with 11 of his videos being played.
References [ edit ]
General references [ edit ]
Inline citations [ edit ]WASHINGTON -- Thursday, March 8 is International Women's Day, and Republicans in Congress are celebrating by debating a new bill that would restrict abortion rights.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on Thursday to discuss the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), which is sponsored by two Florida Republicans, Marco Rubio in the Senate and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the House. The bill would make it illegal for anyone but a parent to accompany a young woman across state lines to seek an abortion -- even if her parents are absent or abusive.
Perhaps more significantly, the bill is the latest in a long series of attempts by Republican lawmakers to criminalize physicians who perform abortions, to chip away at women's constitutionally protected right to decide when and if they will have a child and to otherwise politicize women's health.
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), a member of both the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus and the subcommittee that heard the bill Thursday morning, said he would like to send a message to his male Republican colleagues that continue to legislate issues like abortion and birth control: Stay out of issues you don't fully understand.
"As a father, I'll be honest -- my daughter's not going to come to me with questions about why you would use the pill for medical reasons. She'd talk to my wife," he told HuffPost. "My question is, how the hell will [men in Congress] know of all the intricacies of such a personal decision, an aspect of health care that's so complicated? The absurdity of men in D.C. involving themselves with such a complicated, critical, emotional, basic right is what's mind boggling to me."
By all accounts, 2011 was a watershed year for challenges to women's reproductive rights. State legislators introduced more than 1,100 anti-abortion provisions and had enacted 135 of them by year's end. Seven states either fully defunded or made moves toward defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides basic health care, contraception, breast cancer and STD screenings to millions of low-income women each year.
On a federal level, Republicans in Congress used abortion and Planned Parenthood funding as a bargaining chip during budget negotiations and almost shut down the government in the process. They introduced mandatory ultrasound bills, tried to narrow the definition of rape to include only "forcible rape" and barred the District of Columbia from being able to use its own locally raised funds to help low-income women pay for abortions.
(Click for a larger version)
In the first part of 2012, the GOP has only accelerated its attacks on abortion and family planning. Virginia Republicans introduced a bill whose original language would have required women to undergo an invasive transvaginal ultrasound procedure 24 hours prior to having an abortion; a modified version of the bill, which requires women to receive transabdominal ultrasounds instead, was signed into law on Wednesday. Congress shocked women's rights groups by pivoting from abortion access to birth control, attempting to overturn President Barack Obama's contraception coverage rule with Sen. Roy Blunt's (R-Mo.) amendment, which would have allowed employers to deny women any kind of health coverage for vague "moral reasons."
And the fight has leaked into the private sector. Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation's largest breast cancer charity, tried to pull cancer-screening grants from Planned Parenthood because some of its clinics provide abortions. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, convened a hearing on religious liberty and the contraception rule and refused to allow the Democrats' one female witness, Sandra Fluke, to speak at it. And most recently, prominent conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Foster Friess publicly equated birth control use to sexual promiscuity.
Now, despite the fact that Komen faced a public backlash for its decision to defund Planned Parenthood, the Senate rejected the controversial Blunt amendment and dozens of advertisers have peeled off of Limbaugh's show to protest his comments, the GOP remains focused on legislating women's reproductive choices.
Quigley said he believes his GOP colleagues will pursue women's health issues all year and introduce "five more bills like this" before elections in November. He says that since Obama has successfully begun to turn around the economy, Republicans are being forced to go after him on other issues -- despite the fact that that may not be a politically smart move.
"Right now, the top issue should be one of the following: jobs, the economy, Iran, and however you feel about those issues or how to solve them," Quigley told HuffPost. "Thirty percent of the mortgages in my state are underwater. Those issues should be first on the lips of everyone, and there's probably not enough hours in the day to spend on them effectively. The question shouldn't be, 'How can I keep a woman from using birth control?'"
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said the repeated assaults on abortion rights and contraception have begun to rile up women who were not as politically involved previously.
"The whole thing has touched a nerve like I've never seen," she said. "There's too much of it coming at us in too many ways. Right to choose; Title X; the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the number one primary health provider for women across this country of low means; the attacks on contraception -- they're trying to turn us back to a primitive age when contraception and access to it are not available."
Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who presided over the CIANA hearing Thursday morning, and the bill's main sponsors, Rubio and Ros-Lehtinen, all declined to comment for this story. But Republicans deny that a "war on women" is occurring, and hope to focus attention on what they call Obama's "war on religious liberty" instead.
Issa took to the website Reddit yesterday to answer users' questions about his all-male panel on the contraception rule and his decision to deny Sandra Fluke as a witness. In his responses, he carefully avoided using the words "birth control" or "contraception," saying the issue at hand was one of religious freedom.
"First off, the hearing was on the implications of the President’s new HHS mandate on the first amendment religious liberties we all share," he said. "The Oversight Committee Dems made two last-minute witness requests who could testify on the matter of religious liberty, and we accepted the witness who fit on a panel with American religious leaders of many faiths. Your first amendment rights, your second amendment right to bear arms, your fifth amendment rights come first — before any law or mandate.
But women in Congress are not going to let the public forget what's at stake for women's health.
“The threats to women’s health care are very real, and they are only growing," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said on the Senate floor Thursday. "We saw it on a panel on birth control in the House -- that didn’t include any women. We saw it in a young woman being called horrible names for telling the story of a friend in need. We see it in Republican efforts to allow a woman’s employer to dictate her access to birth control, and we are seeing it in state laws all across the country aimed at stripping women of their rights and so much more."More precisely, the notion that there are simple answers to complex problems. The universe is complicated. Whether you are interested in the functioning of a cell, the ecosystem in Amazonia, the climate of the Earth or the solar dynamo, almost all of the systems and their impacts on our lives are complex and multi-faceted. It is natural for us to ask simple questions about these systems, and many of our greatest insights have come from the profound examination of such simple questions. However, the answers that have come back are never as simple. The answer in the real world is never "42".
Yet collectively we keep acting as though there are simple answers. We continually read about the search for the one method that will allow us to cut through the confusion, the one piece of data that tell us the 'truth', or the final experiment that will 'prove' the hypothesis. But almost all scientists will agree that these are fool's errands—that science is method for producing incrementally more useful approximations to reality, not a path to absolute truth.
In contrast, our public discourse is dominated by voices who equate clarity with seeing things as either good or bad, day or night, black or white. They are not simply ignoring the shades of gray, but are missing out on the whole wonderful multi-hued spectrum. By demanding simple answers to complex questions we rob the questions of the qualities that make them interesting, reducing them to cliched props for other agendas.
Scientists sometimes play into this limiting frame when we craft our press releases or pitch our popular science books, and in truth it is hard to avoid. But we should be more vigilant. The world is complex, and we need to embrace that complexity to have any hope of finding any kind of robust answers to the simple questions that we, inevitably, will continue to ask.Chapter 15: Once more unto the breach.
The massive station door closed behind us as we were plunged into a cold engulfing darkness that seemed to creep in on all sides. A breeze of cold air blew down the tunnel, making the mane on my neck stand on end. I shuddered in the cold before pulling my hood up over my head and peering out.
I heard some faint clicking, followed by some grumbling from a familiar griffin before the dull orange light of Tallie’s makeshift heater turned on. One by one the group’s flashlights flicked on, illuminating the passage ahead. I quickly took up position next to Tinder Two-Tails.
“S-So… what was up with that filly?” I asked through chattering teeth. “The b-big one at the door I m-muh-mean.” I could almost see Tinder’s determined face under his foggy, scratched mask.
The bearded stallion looked down at me and chuckled. “Who? Tiny? Yeah, unique kid that. Biggest pony I’ve ever known.”
I couldn’t help but think of the photos Stitches had shown us in her lab, one in particular standing out. “She’s one of those Behemoths, isn’t she?” I asked, remembering the name of the giant mutants.
Tinder stopped in his tracks, giving me a blank stare as to say ‘seriously’. He quickly burst into a hearty laugh. “You seriously believed her?!” he asked, giving me a firm slap on the shoulder. “Clover, dude, she says that to everyone. There’s no such thing as a Behemoth! Tiny’s the only example of anything close!”
My face flushed with a beet red, silently cursing myself that I believed it. Thank goodness I was still wearing my mask. I knew it was too impossible. “Whatever…” I grunted. “How long until we surface?”
Hammerhead, the mutated minotaur, piped up from up ahead as the others snickered at my expense. I’m sure most of them thought it was true too! “We’re gonna be down here for about a mile. That’ll get us closer to the tower!”
“Mkay…” I mumbled. An hour trapped in the tunnels under Mustang. Just where I wanted to be!
The ponies around me seemed to be doing well, especially Short Fuse. For someone who probably had some severe PTSD, she was still marching along, weapons ready for anything. She was clinging close to Featherweight though, which was understandable. Of course, Mayflowers was up front with Spook and Hammerhead, pretending to be our leader.
Tallie was perched on Lollipop’s back, clinging to her jury-rigged heater like it was a warm teddy-bear. The little griffin looked like a pillow with her jacket fluffed up around her, illuminated by the orange glow. Lollipop didn’t seem to mind it either, unless her mind was just set on other things.
Ace, however, remained beside me as Tinder trotted forward to take point with Hammerhead. The rest talked amongst themselves, about Mustang, gear, and anything else to break the cold silence.
“So, uh…” I began reaching back to scratch the back of my head. Bad idea to do it mid step as I stumbled and face planted.
Ace giggled as she helped me up and dusted me off. “Clumsy stallion,” she said before trotting off again. “Left hoof, right hoof. Haven’t forgotten that, have you?”
Left hoof, right hoof. No, left… or was it right.... As soon as my hooves got the message I was ready again. “So! Ace!” I started again, this time keeping my hoofing. “That kiss, uh… does that mean…”
The beige mare shook her head and patted my shoulder. I could see her expression through her gas mask and it didn’t fill me with much confidence. “Clover, we're in a below freezing hallway, underneath a dead pre-war city, with mutants prowling about waiting to kill us. Not the time."
Yeah, I knew. I was a coward and she didn’t want to be seen dating me. I got it. Yep. Great. Then again, she did have quite the attitude when we first met so there could be some of that creeping back into it. “Alright,” I finally said with a nod. Either way, I’d find out eventually. I really did like her.
Seconds turned to minutes like a sleepy snail’s crawl. Occasionally there’d be a drip or a faint howl of wind that made my skin wriggle. Other than that, silence... and my teeth chattering behind my gas mask.
The tunnel’s walls had thick wires running along it in all sorts of patterns. Large pipes and metal beams flanked them, separated by missing chunks that revealed the frozen dirt beyond. The tunnel was remarkably clear save for the occasional rubble. The monotonous walls were broken up by long passageways leading into the abyss beyond. I shone my light down one seeing no end to the hall. I shuddered as I stared into the nothingness, a faint laughter echoing in the back of my head.
“Alright, folks!” Tinder boomed from up ahead, making me jump in my coat, and Tallie chirp in surprise. “We’re about halfway! We’re right under Stormclaw Square!” He turned towards the tunnel again and kept walking, his guns pointed forward. “Fun fact about the square, it was built two hundred and fifty-three years ago in honour of Andrea Stormclaw, the griffin who united the-”
The ground shook suddenly, causing rubble to sprinkle down on us from above and for me to jump so high I almost impaled myself on an icicle. The group froze and looked around somewhat frantically. Fuse was huddled against Featherweight aiming her gun at anything and everything frantically.
“That’s new…” Hammerhead said as she scanned the tunnel ahead with her assault rifle. Nothing was coming… “Sounded like a detonation.”
Fuse frantically nodded. “Close, thirty to fifty meter radius, sounded like a… forty-five to fifty-five kilo bomb.” I knew Fuse was a competent demolitions expert, but there was just no way she was that good. “Considering where we are… a frozen bomb got loose and fell from its perch.”
“Logical…” Geoff the mutant griffin whispered as the tentacles unravelled from around his arms. They grabbed two SMGs holstered on his back and started scanning the area with them. “I can’t think of anything else.”
Tinder nodded and began moving again. “Then let’s hope it took some freaks with it.” Freaks? He did know the company he was keeping, right? “Let’s keep mo-”
THUMP!
Another ground shaking explosion, this time closer. Tinder froze in his path and looked over his shoulder. “That can’t be a coinci-”
WHUMP!
The ground shook even harder as rubble started to come down in bricks. Copper Wire’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates before he spoke up in his super high pitched voice. “Guys… guys! Get moving!”
Looking up I saw why. Massive fissures began to crack along the decayed mortar of the ceiling as thick bricks began to fall to the ground with a sickening crunch that threatened to make my brain come out my eyes. It looked as if the entire ceiling could come down!
“Too late!” Tinder called. “Duck and cover!”
The tunnel’s air filled with dust as large chunks fell around us. One of the pipes cracked, bursting from the ceiling with a massive clang, spewing out slush, ice, and a frozen rat.
I shook my head and tried to get focused. As the panic set in my heart begab beating furiously as I frantically searched for cover. A faint voice, one that I’d become familiar with, shouted at me to duck to my left. My legs moved on their own as I found myself suddenly thrust into a side passage.
Another chunk landed as I looked up from my fallen heap, then Lollipop landed on top of me. She quickly picked me up and threw me further into the tunnel like I was made from feathers, and stood by the entrance, guiding people in.
Tinder was next, then Copper Wire, and lastly Mayflowers. Just as she scrambled through, the doorway collapsed, closing it off from the tunnel. I could still hear the shouts behind it and the falling rubble crashing down before, then that terrible silence.
I scrambled to my hooves and gasped. The rest didn’t make it through! They must have been crushed and buried under all that concrete and dirt! I sprinted forward and started to hopelessly dig at the rubble. “Ace!” I shouted. “Tallie!” My heart thumped in my chest. Tallie must have scrambled off Lollipop’s back in the panic!
Tinder dug at his ear and started yelling into his microphone. “Geoff? Spook? Hammerhead! Someone! Anyone! Respond!” Mayflowers was doing the same with her team, both looked more angry than scared. My heart was racing. My friends, almost all the people I had left in the world, the ones I could trust, gone. Lollipop started digging beside me, seeing my panic. It was the only way to help.
Suddenly, there was a cough in my earpiece. Hope started to swell inside me as Ace’s voice cut through the dirt, but it was staticy. “Clove-! Clover, tha- Goddesses!” she said, her voice cutting out from interference. “We- -kay -alright. -some- -soldiers and- -ghost. Spook? Tallie- Lollipop okay?”
My heart sank again. “I-I don’t have Tallie,” I whispered, then started digging again. “Please please please be okay!” I shouted, digging.
Another voice cracked through. “This is Hammerhead!” the thick voice of the mutant minotaur called into my ear. “We’re alright! Got civvies with me! -explosives chick and- Geoff and... Tallie? Yeah, Tallie!”
My heart couldn’t handle this. Dropping then soaring then dropping again. I stopped digging and sat down, panting. Thank Floyd, or whoever Tallie decided to pray to. “Tallie! Ace, Tallie’s okay!” I heard a garbled sigh of relief on the radio.
“Everyone’s accounted for,” Mayflowers confirmed with a nod. “Now what the fuck happened?! How far off course are we?”
Tinder hummed and checked the rubble. “Looks like we’re separated for now. Cave in. I’m keen to find out, because either ice sheets are melting or the psycho-animals out there have ordinance,” The stallion grumbled to himself and looked down the narrow, dark passage way. “Alright, all units, looks like we’re moving in teams. This is team one, Spook team two, and Hammerhead three. With all the radio shit going on we may lose contact. Everyone find a way out and head for the tower, over.”
Hammerhead’s voice chimed through with a confirm, Spook’s clicked once for an affirmative. Why even give him a mic?
“Clover?” Ace’s voice called through the static creeping into my headset. “Clover. -safe, stay focu-, and alive. -see you at the-” was all I heard before her voice cut out.
“I’ll t-try,” I replied, hoping the message got through.
Lollipop tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a stern nod. “We’re gonna be okay, Clover,” she said. “I’ll make sure of it.” Mayflowers rolled her eyes behind Lollipop as she walked down the hallway. Somehow, something about having Lollipop’s friendship made me feel safe. She was a strange one; I’m sure I’ve said this before. Grinning like a maniac one moment, motherly the second, strange, but as long as she was my friend I’d be safe.
I looked back at the rubble, then down the hall. Tallie must be going nuts alone. Poor kid…. I couldn’t wait to see them again. Ace, Tallie, even Fuse and Featherweight. They were nice. I’d trade Mayflowers for either any day of the week.
We began our march down the long hallway, into the black beyond.
--- --- ---
The tunnel twisted and turned ahead of us as we walked in silence. Every few minutes we’d try to check in with other groups, but the interference increased until the point where we only garbled static. They were on their own, and so were we.
If anyone was in trouble it was me. I almost fell apart again just after the tunnel collapsed. Succumbing to fear and panic, two things I vowed I wouldn’t fall to again. One day I’d get it; after all, Neighgas wasn’t built in a day!
Tinder shone his light up at the ceiling, revealing a ladder heading into even more darkness. “Better than waitin’ down here,” he said, looking to us. “Pretty sure this one gets us about… not far from the rendezvous point.” He nodded at Copper-Wire and Lollipop. “You two cover our asses, Clover and me’ll secure up top.”
Me part of the point-team? I wanted to say no. “I’ve got your back,” I said, as confidently as I could. Not sure how that came across though, but apparently it was enough to warrant a nod before Tinder took the lead.
Wrapping my hooves around the rungs, I followed after, keeping my mind on surviving rather than whatever scary stuff might be up top. Thankfully, I didn’t need to climb for long. With one great heave, Tinder removed the manhole and climbed up, assault rifle at the ready. Scanning the room, he barked for me to follow.
We’d surfaced in a small workshop it seemed, which made sense; the tunnel we’d scampered into was a maintenance passage. The room itself was cold and plain; just a workbench, some lockers, and some loose wires.
“Door,” Tinder said, nodding to it. I nodded back and leaned against it while the stallion ordered the others to come up.
I opened the door a crack to peek outside. It was a little difficult at first because of the snow and ice around it, but it budged with a little bit of brute-strength. Outside was bright, but not sunny. The cold overcast still hung overhead and the wind caused the falling snow to whirl and spin around the building tops. Thankfully, it was calmer down on the ground.
The calm could be attributed to the complete lack of life around us. Not even a track in the fresh snow, much to my relief. My body shook as the cold washed over me, making me pull the camouflage canvas sheet on my back around me. There wasn’t much in the snow; a few large pieces of metal debris, some with a yellow-brown rag material fluttering in the wind.
Lollipop put a hoof on my shoulder, peeking out the door with me. She gave a pat and a nod, which I returned, before pushing the door open. Tinder took point again, the crunch of his hooves through the snow clear as day even below the howling winds. I took the second position with my SMG, while Copper and Lollipop took the rear. We moved in silence, listening for any movement or howl. Anything that would spell bad news for us.
The snow was beautiful, I must admit. Given another context, I’d easily immerse myself in it. The snow glistened and twinkled in the little light we had, and made satisfying noises as we made our way through it. Even when it covered the frozen bodies of scavengers and ancient soldiers alike. Lollipop and I made sure to stop and procure anything we could of use from the bodies, knowing they wouldn’t need it anymore. We made sure to say thank-you though, hopefully that’d stop us being haunted.
I’d long given up on wondering how the city got frozen like it did. It was probably some magical bullshit that only scientists would understand, not small town farmers like me. Give me a tree and some good metal shoes and I’ll tell you the best way to buck a tree. Talk about snow magic though, and you’ll lose me at ‘snow’.
I was beginning to get worried about our tracks carving a path straight to us, making me constantly watch over my shoulder, but thankfully my worries were put to rest when I spotted Copper dusting snow into our tracks. It wasn’t the best camouflage, but it was good enough to be missed at first glance.
Nothing stirred around us. The city remained as dead as the fateful day it fell two hundred years ago. Not even the howl of a mutant pierced through the air. To be honest, the serenity was killing me. My nerves were already on edge, frayed and running thin. Anything could pop out at us. Anything.
The only thing that put me at ease was Two-Tail’s decision to cut through a ruined building. It stood several levels tall with a long vertical sign hanging from the side of it. The bulbs along the sides had frosted over and shattered long ago, and the lettering was covered in snow.
Even as we ventured inside I couldn’t tell what we were entering. I’d never seen anything like it. Counters and displays stood everywhere around us, with silhouettes of all shapes and sizes. The first one made me jump, but upon closer inspection I realised it was just a mannequin. It was like a museum for shopping! One giant store with counters for everything. There were multiple floors above us, but our bearded leader walked straight past the metal mechanical escalator and straight for a small doorway. Nobody even considered to stop and look for loot. We were on a tight schedule. Every second we waited meant another second our friends could be in trouble.
The thought of Tallie or Ace in trouble… no, they could get out of it. I had to focus on helping the others and myself survive the near future.
I followed the mutant through the halls, watching as his dual tails bobbed in front of me. It took me longer than I want to admit to realise that I was staring at another stallion’s ass. Something Shamrock would have playfully teased me with back at home in our favourite pub.
Now was one of those times he’d tell me to stay strong. When the going gets tough, slog through it and have a pint when you win. My hoof to whoever looked down on us from above, I would have that pint.
The building’s halls were small and dark, only illuminated by our flashlights. It wasn’t long before we reached an emergency exit door sitting pretty under a green sign. The push bar was mangled and twisted, obviously by panicked hooves. I hoped they got out.
One quick shove and it jolted, moving only a few centimeters. The stallion in front of me |
li (Maharashtra), around 41km from Mumbai.
Under various rules and regulations, the country has taken some steps to control major chemical accidents. According to NDMA, there are about 1,861 Major Accident Hazard units, spread across 301 districts and 25 states and three union territories.When it launches in India on April 8, the iPhone SE will still command a 36 percent price premium there versus the U.S. —likely keeping the device out of reach of most Indians, a report noted on Wednesday.
After taxes, a 16-gigabyte SE will cost 39,000 rupees ($586) in India, compared with about $430 in most places in the U.S., said the Wall Street Journal. Apple imposed a nearly identical margin on the iPhone 5s when it launched in India in 2013.The margin on a 16-gigabyte iPhone 6s is closer to 30 percent, but at 62,000 rupees ($930), the device is even less affordable. The same model is priced a little over $700 in the U.S. post-taxes.Apple holds under 2 percent of the Indian smartphone market, in no small part because four-fifths of phones sold in the country are priced under $150. Until February of this year, the iPhone 5c and even the iPhone 4S were still on sale in the region in an attempt to offer something reasonably price-competitive.The company is seeking approval to import used iPhones for sale, but the motion is being opposed by leading forces in the Indian smartphone industry, including Intex, Micromax, and Samsung. The main concern is that Apple and other firms could simply flood the local market with cheap used imports.Main Point:
Researchers have found that blood of youngsters can rejuvenate the heart of the old ones – at least in mice.
Published in:
Cell
Study Further:
Previously, researchers found that the blood from the young mice could rejuvenate the brain of the older mice. (Nature, doi:10.1038/nature10357).
In the new study, researchers worked on two mice; one was 2-month-old and the other was 23-month-old having cardiac hypertrophy – a condition in which the heart muscle thickens leading to heart failure. Researchers surgically joined the circulatory system of the two mice that caused the blood to flow around each other’s bodies.
Researchers found that the heart of the older mouse reverted back to almost the same size as that of the younger animal and the heart of the younger animal remained unaffected even after circulating the blood from the older mice.
“After 4 weeks of exposure to the circulation of young mice, cardiac hypertrophy in old mice dramatically regressed, accompanied by reduced cardiomyocyte size and molecular remodeling,” Researchers wrote.
Researchers found that a protein, GDF11, was present in huge amount in the young mice. This protein is important in cell development and healing, and now researchers have found its role in the betterment of hearts. They are think that this protein in low levels could help the people with cardiac hypertrophy. However, further researches are needed on this.
Source:
NewScientist
Reference:
Loffredo, F., Steinhauser, M., Jay, S., Gannon, J., Pancoast, J., Yalamanchi, P., Sinha, M., Dall’Osso, C., Khong, D., Shadrach, J., Miller, C., Singer, B., Stewart, A., Psychogios, N., Gerszten, R., Hartigan, A., Kim, M., Serwold, T., Wagers, A., & Lee, R. (2013). Growth Differentiation Factor 11 Is a Circulating Factor that Reverses Age-Related Cardiac Hypertrophy Cell, 153 (4), 828-839 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.04.015Snow-covered mountains stand beyond residential houses and apartment blocks in Ecublens, Switzerland, on Monday, May 13, 2013. (Valentin Flauraud/Bloomberg)
It's widespread practice for schoolchildren in Switzerland to shake the hands of their teacher at the beginning and end of each day. Now, one school's decision to exempt two children from this tradition – because the children are Muslim and their teacher is a woman – has caused a storm of controversy across the European state.
The two pupils at the school in the town of Therwil, near Basel, had requested an exemption from shaking a female teacher's hand, citing their belief that it would go against Islamic teachings. The local school district later came up with what they felt was an acceptable compromise that could avoid discrimination: The pupils, who are age 14 and 15, would not be required to shake any teachers' hands, whether they were male or female.
However, the plan hit a hitch when the Schweiz am Sonntag newspaper reported on it, sparking a public debate about the compromise. "We cannot accept this in the name of religious freedom," Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said in an interview with Swiss-German broadcaster SRF. "The handshake is part of our culture.”
Others agreed. "Today's it's the handshake, and what will it be tomorrow?" Felix Mueri, a member of the anti-immigration Swiss People's Party and head of the Swiss parliament's education commission, said in an interview with the 20 Minuten news site.
Both the Swiss Teacher's Union and the local Therwil council have also come out against the plan. However, the school itself has defended the decision, despite the controversy. “They are no longer allowed to shake the hand of any teacher, male or female," headmaster Jurg Lauener told SRF. "For us, that addresses the question of discrimination.”
Authorities in the local Basel-Country canton could overturn the decision, but have not done so. Canton education chief Monica Gschwind suggested to reporters that it was a temporary and "pragmatic" measure.
The situation is the latest controversy over the integration of Islam into Swiss society, where Muslims are thought to make up around 5 percent of the population. In 2009, Swiss voters banned the construction of minarets, and last year the canton of Ticino passed a law that made the wearing of a burqa in public punishable by a $10,000 fine.
The Swiss Muslim community has largely suggested that the boys are misinterpreting Islamic teachings with their refusal to shake their teachers' hands. "[To] the students and parents I would suggest the following reflection: Can the denial of shaking hands be more important than the Islamic commandment of mutual respect?" Montassar Ben Mrad, president of Federation of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland, said in the statement.
However, another group said the backlash against the boys was overblown. "One would think that the continued existence of Switzerland's core values was at stake, when this particular case in fact involves just two high school students who have said they wish to greet their teacher in a different way than with a handshake," a statement from the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland said.
More on WorldViews:According to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, the feeling of invisibility changes physical stress response in challenging social situations.
“What is it like to be invisible?” This question has long fascinated man and has been the central theme of many classic literary works, such as the myth of Gyges’ ring in Plato’s dialogue The Republic and the science fiction novel The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells.
Recent studies have suggested that invisibility cloaking of the human body may be possible in the near future. However, it remains unknown how invisibility affects body perception and embodied cognition.
To address these questions, a team of neuroscientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden developed a perceptual illusion of having an entire invisible body.
The experiments involved the participant standing up and wearing a set of head-mounted displays. The participant was asked to look down at his/her body, but instead of a real body he/she saw empty space.
To evoke the feeling of having an invisible body, the researchers touched the participant’s body in various locations with a large paintbrush while, with another paintbrush held in the other hand, exactly imitating the movements in mid-air in full view of the participant.
“Within less than a minute, the majority of the participants started to transfer the sensation of touch to the portion of empty space where they saw the paintbrush move and experienced an invisible body in that position,” explained Dr Arvid Guterstam of the Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Neuroscience, the first author on the study.
“We showed in a previous study that the same illusion can be created for a single hand. The present study demonstrates that the ‘invisible hand illusion’ can, surprisingly, be extended to an entire invisible body.”
Dr Guterstam and co-authors examined the illusion experience in 125 participants.
To demonstrate that the illusion actually worked, they would make a stabbing motion with a knife toward the empty space that represented the belly of the invisible body. The participants’ sweat response to seeing the knife was elevated while experiencing the illusion but absent when the illusion was broken, which suggests that the brain interprets the threat in empty space as a threat directed toward one’s own body.
In another part of the study, the scientists examined whether the feeling of invisibility affects social anxiety by placing the participants in front of an audience of strangers.
“We found that their heart rate and self-reported stress level during the ‘performance’ was lower when they immediately prior had experienced the invisible body illusion compared to when they experienced having a physical body,” Dr Guterstam explained.
The results of the study could help in the development of new therapies for social anxiety disorder.
_____
Arvid Guterstam et al. 2015. Illusory ownership of an invisible body reduces autonomic and subjective social anxiety responses. Scientific Reports 5, article number: 9831; doi: 10.1038/srep09831California Gov. Jerry Brown attends the Clean Energy Ministerial International Forum on Electric Vehicle Pilot Cities and Industrial Development, at a hotel in Beijing, Tuesday, June 6, 2017. Brown predicts that President Donald Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord will prove temporary because of the urgency of the issue. He told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a clean energy conference in Beijing on Tuesday that China, Europe and U.S. state governors will for now fill the gap left by the federal government's move to abdicate leadership on the issue. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
BEIJING (AP) — With President Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, China and California signed an agreement Tuesday to work together on reducing emissions, as the state’s governor warned that “disaster still looms” without urgent action.
Gov. Jerry Brown told The Associated Press at an international clean energy conference in Beijing that Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement will ultimately prove only a temporary setback.
For now, he said, China, European countries and individual U.S. states will fill the gap left by the federal government’s move to abdicate leadership on the issue.
“Nobody can stay on the sidelines. We can’t afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future,” Brown said. “Disaster still looms and we’ve got to make the turn.”
Brown later held a closed-door meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which the two pledged to expand trade between California and China with an emphasis on so-called green technologies that could help address climate change, Brown said. Trump’s announcement last week that he wants to pull out of the Paris accord did not come up, according to the governor.
“Xi spoke in very positive terms,” Brown told reporters after the meeting. “I don’t think there’s any desire to get into verbal battles with President Trump.”
Trump’s decision drew heavy criticism within the U.S. and internationally, including in China, which swiftly recommitted itself to the agreement forged with the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump argued that the Paris agreement favors emerging economies such as China’s and India’s at the expense of U.S. workers.
Tuesday’s agreement between California and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology effectively sidestepped Trump’s move, bringing about alignment on an issue of rising global importance between the world’s second-largest economy — China — and California, whose economy is the largest of any U.S. state and the sixth largest in the world.
Brown signed similar collaboration agreements over the past several days with leaders in two Chinese provinces, Jiangsu and Sichuan.
Like the Paris accord, the deals are all nonbinding. They call for investments in low-carbon energy sources, cooperation on climate research and the commercialization of cleaner technologies. The agreements do not establish new emission reduction goals.
The U.S. has long been a major player in the clean energy arena, driving innovations in electric cars, renewable power and other sectors of the industry. California, with some of the strictest climate controls in the nation, has been at the forefront of the sector.
China in recent years overtook the U.S. as the world leader in renewable power development. But it has also struggled to integrate its sprawling wind and solar facilities into an electricity grid still dominated by coal-fueled power plants.
At the same time, Chinese leaders face growing public pressure at home to reduce the health-damaging smog that blankets many urban areas.
China is by far the world’s largest user of coal, which accounts for almost two-thirds of its energy use and has made it the No. 1 emitter of climate-changing greenhouse gases.
Communist Party leaders pledged that greenhouse gas emissions will peak no later than 2030 under the Paris pact, and start to fall after then. They have canceled the planned construction of more than 100 new coal-fired power plants and plan to invest at least $360 billion in green-energy projects by the end of the decade. The nation’s consumption of coal fell in 2016 for a third consecutive year, but rebounded slightly in 2017.
It could meet its 2030 target a decade early.
Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry also is attending this week’s energy meeting in Beijing. Observers say delegates from other countries will be listening closely to the former Texas governor to gauge how Trump administration policies will shape global energy trends.
During a Tuesday forum devoted to capturing carbon dioxide emitted from coal plants and other large industrial sources, Perry said his agency was pursuing an “all of the above” strategy that includes research intended to spur innovation for coal, nuclear, renewables and other fuels. He left the event without taking questions.
Perry is from a state that is known for its oil production but that has also had significant renewables development. Texas has some of the largest wind farms in the country and a fast-expanding solar sector.
Such U.S. advances in renewables won’t simply disappear under Trump, said David Sandalow, a former undersecretary of energy in the Obama administration now at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Too many companies and states are heavily invested in the sector for that to happen, he said.
But a lack of government support for clean energy will cost the U.S. jobs, Sandalow added, with cuts to research programs that Trump has proposed being a sign of what’s to come.
“It’s backward looking and it’s going to hurt the U.S.,” he said. “The contrast with what’s happening in China could not be more stark.”
Interviewed Tuesday morning on American cable channel MSNBC, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt touted U.S. emissions reductions over past years and said that despite withdrawing from the Paris accord, the Trump administration would continue to engage others, particularly developing nations, on the effort.
“We have a strong, strong approach to reducing emissions. We have nothing to be apologetic about,” Pruitt said. “America is not going to be disengaged, we are going to maintain engagement.”
Trump is a strong advocate of boosting U.S. fossil fuel industries, in particular coal mining. Cheap natural gas and tighter pollution restrictions toppled coal from its dominant position in the U.S. power sector during Obama’s tenure. Experts say it’s unlikely to regain that position anytime soon, regardless of what Trump does.
Without mentioning Trump by name, Brown told attendees at a forum on electric vehicles that “there are still people in powerful places who are resisting reality.”
Later, when asked by the AP what could prompt the U.S. to return to the forefront of climate change efforts, Brown replied, “Science, facts, the world, the marketplace.”
___
AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
___
Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at twitter.com/matthewbrownapDescribing Canada as a "work in progress," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the UN Thursday about the country's failures and mistakes in its historical relationship with Indigenous people and his hope to right the wrongs of the past.
"There are, today, children living on reserves in Canada who cannot safely drink, or bathe in, or even play in the water that comes out of their taps," Trudeau said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
He said Indigenous families putting their kids to bed at night are beset by worry that their children will run away before morning or commit suicide in the night.
"And for far too many Indigenous women, life in Canada includes threats of violence so frequent and severe that Amnesty International has called it 'a human rights crisis,'" Trudeau said.
The prime minister said his government was working with Indigenous leaders to improve the situation and address gender-based violence as well the lack of safe drinking water and affordable housing on reserves.
"We need women and girls to succeed, because that's how we grow stronger economies and build stronger communities," Trudeau said. "That is why our government will be moving forward shortly with legislation to ensure equal pay for work of equal value."
Trudeau said improving the daily life of Canada's Indigenous people will require a recrafting of the relationship the federal government has with Indigenous people to make it work like a respectful partnership.
Laying out his recent move to split Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada into two separate ministries, Trudeau said he expected Canada's Indigenous people to similarly rethink how they govern themselves.
"For Indigenous peoples, it means taking a hard look at how they define and govern themselves as nations and governments, and how they seek to relate to other orders of government," he said. "Indigenous people will decide how they wish to represent and organize themselves."
Climate change
Linking Indigenous challenges with climate change, Trudeau earned widespread applause from the assembly for saying no country could walk away from the responsibility to address climate change for future generations.
The prime minister said that in communities across the North, Indigenous people were finding sea-ice conditions more dangerous and unpredictable for travelling and hunting in the winter noting that Inuit elders were finding it increasingly difficult to predict the weather.
Describing the country's commitment to climate change internationally as "unwavering," Trudeau said: "Canada will continue to fight for the global plan that has a realistic chance of countering [climate change]"
"We have a chance to build in Canada — and in fact, all around the world — economies that are clean, that are growing, that are forward-looking. We will not let that opportunity pass us by."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is shown on big screens inside the UN General Assembly delivering a speech that garnered applause for his pledge to continue to work toward a global climate change deal. (Richard Drew/Associated Press)
It is an unusual move for a head of government to focus their speech to the UN General Assembly on a domestic issue, rather than speaking to a global issue, especially one that highlights a country's own failure to meet the standards it sets for itself.
Trudeau told reporters after the speech that he made the choice because while the venue is normally used by heads of state to talk about what should be done in the world, it is also important to discuss what needs to be done at home.
"A number of times, in conversations over the years, when I have suggested that certain countries need to do better on their own human rights, on their own internal challenges, the response has been; 'tell me about the plight of Indigenous people in Canada.'" Trudeau said.
"I think its actually time we stood up and took responsibility for the terrible mistakes of the past," Trudeau added, saying that the whole purpose of the UN was for countries to "share challenges, perspectives and soloutions."
Fair and progressive trade
Trudeau also used the opportunity to tout his proposed changes to the way small businesses and professionals incorporate and use the tax system to secure advantages.
"Right now, we have a system that encourages wealthy Canadians to use private corporations to pay a lower tax rate than middle class Canadians," Trudeau said. "That's not fair, and we're going to fix it."
Without mentioning the ongoing NAFTA negotiations, Trudeau said his government was working hard to deliver progressive deals such as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union, which came into effect today.
Trudeau said CETA was a deal that could ensure well paying jobs for workers, and economic growth that benefits all Canadians, not just the rich.
"We have the opportunity — and I would argue we have the responsibility — to ensure that trade agreements include strong provisions to safeguard workers' rights, to protect the environment, and to ensure that the benefits of trade are felt more broadly," he said.Lemon Automatic Guerrilla
Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 483
Clean, Easy Cool Tube Tutorial detailed or clean instructions on how to make a cool tube using a Pyrex bake-a-round. They all ommited small details or used a ton of duct tape, random scraps, etc. This is intended for those who want a durable, clean, easy to assemble piece of equipment for thier setup. )
Lemon's Clean and Easy Cool Tube
This is a detailed tutorial on how to put together your very own cool tube. You can assemble one of these in about 20 minutes. This is based on a 150 watt HPS, but may be adapted as needed.
What You Need:
1 x Pyrex Bake-A-Round tube (long discontinued, but available readily on EBay and in classifieds, Flea markets etc surprisingly common) - $10-15
1 x pair of Café Rod brackets (hardware store, where window fittings are located) - $1.50
1 x Ceramic medium or mogul lamp base with standard mounting hole - $0.99
1 x 1-1.5 (approx) hose clamp - $0.80
1 x 3.5-4 (approx) hose clamp - $1.00
2 x 4.5-5 (approx) hose clamps - $2.50
1 x roll of self adhesive insulting foam for hot water pipes. - $2.50
1 x #6 32 x 3/8 (machine screws with nuts) - $0.99
1 x multipurpose (including glass) glue or epoxy (optional) - $3.00
1 x 400°F small tube of silicone sealant - $2.50
Your HPS/4 duct system N/A
Step 1:
Collect your café rod brackets, lamp base, and screws.
Remove one of the café rods and bend into roughly the shape illustrated in the next photo (you may need a something to help such as a pair of pliers).
Attach the café rod to the lamp sockets mounting hole using a screw and nut.
Connect the wires from your power source line to the lamp socket. The white wire should connect to the silver screw, and the black wire to the brass / darker screw (this is standard color coding). I used a little bit of solder for good measure. Leave the ground wire (green) unconnected for now, ideally left a little longer than the others.
Cut and bend the remaining café rod into three pieces with tabs on the end as shown. The longest/middle section should measure 1&1/8 on each (medium) or 7/8" (mogul). The other sections are of negligible length, but around ½ is good. These are your spacers.
Fasten the spacers to the lamp socket as shown. Use your epoxy or glue if desired in addition to the clamp to make sure everything is firmly in place.
Step 2:
Hang your bulb assembly over the end of the Bake-a-Round. You will notice that there is a slight bit of play between the spacers attached to the socket, and the inner walls of the tube (if you measured correctly and dont have an oddly sized socket). This is deliberate and is to account for possible thermal expansion in the metal. Fitting the spacers firmly could result in a cracked or broken tube!
Place the bulb in the socket and clamp the hook hanging over the side of the glass tube with the ~4 Clamp. Tack the hook and clamp with epoxy/glue for added strength (The glued clamp can still be popped off, so dont worry too much about how you will change the bulb).
Step 3:
Wrap self adhesive insulating foam around each end on the tube as shown (or only one if you are using exhaust only). This will allow 4 duct to fit very snugly to the tube (which its self is 3 ¾ O.D.), and will also act as a gasket/seal when clamped.
Thread wiring through the ducting, attach the ducting to the tube, and clamp in place. Finish with silicone sealant if desired. Connect the ground to the duct or the café rod hook.
Add an optional reflector made from unclosed rigid duct (you can find this in your hardware store its a piece of sheet metal with a snap together seam that hasnt been connected). Simply cut to length, cut flanges a half inch from the ends, and clamp those to the duct/tube. Hang your lamp with light chain available from your hardware store by the foot. The chain attaches under the clamps on the duct. Youre done!
The End
- (*Note - This is of course, by no means a new idea. This is simply meant to be an informative tutorial based on my experience while searching for a cool tube solution. I was unable to find anyorinstructions on how to make a cool tube using a Pyrex bake-a-round. They all ommited small details or used a ton of duct tape, random scraps, etc. This is intended for those who want a durable, clean, easy to assemble piece of equipment for thier setup. )This is a detailed tutorial on how to put together your very own cool tube. You can assemble one of these in about 20 minutes. This is based on a 150 watt HPS, but may be adapted as needed.What You Need:1 x Pyrex Bake-A-Round tube (long discontinued, but available readily on EBay and in classifieds, Flea markets etc surprisingly common) - $10-151 x pair of Café Rod brackets (hardware store, where window fittings are located) - $1.501 x Ceramic medium or mogul lamp base with standard mounting hole - $0.991 x 1-1.5 (approx) hose clamp - $0.801 x 3.5-4 (approx) hose clamp - $1.002 x 4.5-5 (approx) hose clamps - $2.501 x roll of self adhesive insulting foam for hot water pipes. - $2.501 x #6 32 x 3/8 (machine screws with nuts) - $0.991 x multipurpose (including glass) glue or epoxy (optional) - $3.001 x 400°F small tube of silicone sealant - $2.50Your HPS/4 duct system N/ACollect your café rod brackets, lamp base, and screws.Remove one of the café rods and bend into roughly the shape illustrated in the next photo (you may need a something to help such as a pair of pliers).Attach the café rod to the lamp sockets mounting hole using a screw and nut.Connect the wires from your power source line to the lamp socket. The white wire should connect to the silver screw, and the black wire to the brass / darker screw (this is standard color coding). I used a little bit of solder for good measure. Leave the ground wire (green) unconnected for now, ideally left a little longer than the others.Cut and bend the remaining café rod into three pieces with tabs on the end as shown. The longest/middle section should measure 1&1/8 on each (medium) or 7/8" (mogul). The other sections are of negligible length, but around ½ is good. These are your spacers.Fasten the spacers to the lamp socket as shown. Use your epoxy or glue if desired in addition to the clamp to make sure everything is firmly in place.Hang your bulb assembly over the end of the Bake-a-Round. You will notice that there is a slight bit of play between the spacers attached to the socket, and the inner walls of the tube (if you measured correctly and dont have an oddly sized socket). This is deliberate and is to account for possible thermal expansion in the metal. Fitting the spacers firmly could result in a cracked or broken tube!Place the bulb in the socket and clamp the hook hanging over the side of the glass tube with the ~4 Clamp. Tack the hook and clamp with epoxy/glue for added strength (The glued clamp can still be popped off, so dont worry too much about how you will change the bulb).Wrap self adhesive insulating foam around each end on the tube as shown (or only one if you are using exhaust only). This will allow 4 duct to fit very snugly to the tube (which its self is 3 ¾ O.D.), and will also act as a gasket/seal when clamped.Thread wiring through the ducting, attach the ducting to the tube, and clamp in place. Finish with silicone sealant if desired. Connect the ground to the duct or the café rod hook.Add an optional reflector made from unclosed rigid duct (you can find this in your hardware store its a piece of sheet metal with a snap together seam that hasnt been connected). Simply cut to length, cut flanges a half inch from the ends, and clamp those to the duct/tube. Hang your lamp with light chain available from your hardware store by the foot. The chain attaches under the clamps on the duct. Youre done!
L E M O N
Grow
Info
Lemon's Clean, Easy Cool Tube Tutorial
How to use a computer power supply to run your cooling fans __________________ Computer Case Micro Grow - 105w CFL; Soil; Low Budget! [Completed!] G13 x Sourbubble Outdoor - Single plant, late season, just for the fun of it! [Completed with brief smoke report] Last edited by Lemon; 07-09-2007 at 04:50 AM..Mérida, March 10, 2010 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- Four thousand tons of sugar hoarded in the warehouse of the Santa Elena sugar mill in the central state of Portugesa has caused the Chavez government to seize the plant.
Richard Canán, Venezuela’s Commerce Minister, announced the occupation of the plant after an inspection carried out on Tuesday.
“We’re going to guarantee that these plants are operating in a way to ensure the supply of sugar for the Venezuelan people.” Canán said “We have the power to initiate expropriation processes of sugar mills or any type of plant where there are irregularities.”
Venezuela has been facing severe sugar shortages for many months, attributed by government officials to a series of irregular activities being carried out by sugar producers seeking to increase profit margins.
The government regulates the price of sugar for the domestic market at 3.73 BsF per kilogram. Producers seeking to avoid the regulated price engage in a series of practices, which include illegal export to Colombia, selling unrefined sugar to producers of chocolate products and other sweets, and keeping large amounts of the product from the domestic market.
Hoarding, by creating an artificial shortage, propagates an informal market in the country, which some producers and middlemen exploit in order to maximize profits. Sugar on the informal market can sell at more than double the regulated price.
According to Canán, this month’s sugar cane harvest will produce some 200,000 tons of sugar. As such, there is no reason for shortages of the product in Venezuela.
Authorities became aware of Santa Elena’s involvement in illegal distribution practices when sacks of sugar originating from the plant were found being sold on the informal market.
The mill was also cited for various labor and environmental violations including unsafe working conditions and the illegal disposal of untreated wastewater in a local creek.
Another sugar plant, Santa Clara in the state of Yaracuy, has also been implicated in distribution irregularities and has also been temporarily occupied by the government.
The seizures of the sugar mills will last for 90 days during which time the Ministry of Commerce will work to ensure that the product reaches its appropriate and legitimate local markets.
Community Involvement
The inspection leading to the occupation of Santa Elena was carried out in collaboration with the workers of the mill, local community councils, members of the Institute for the People’s Defense and Access to Goods and Services (Indepabis), the Social Comptroller, and the Superintendent of Silos.
Inspections were carried out throughout the country on Tuesday, with a special emphasis being placed on 15 sugar mills and more than 107 sugar packaging plants.
Throughout the inspections, the government emphasized participation of community members. Neighborhood residents, organized in community councils, have exercised their rights to perform duties of social comptrollers as granted under the country’s Community Council Law.
In the Caracas neighborhood of San José, community participation led to the identification of a tractor-trailer filled with 30 tons of sugar alleged to be hoarded on land with a history of irregularities.
According to the Civil Registrar of the neighborhood, Carlos Urbina, 34,600 tons of sugar were seized on the same plot of land last January 12th.
“We have to guarantee that basic food commodities reach the people” said Urbina.A young woman driving on the highway was killed when a 12-year-old boy jumped off of a Virginia overpass and landed on her car in an alleged suicide attempt.
The unidentified jumper fell from above I-66 in Fairfax County around 4:15 p.m. Saturday, striking the driver?s side of Marisa Harris's Ford Escape, according to Virginia State Police.
Harris, a 22-year-old from Maryland, was pronounced dead at the scene after her boyfriend, in the passenger's seat and not injured, took control of the car and steered it to safety.
The boy is being treated for life-threatening injuries, and police said they are investigating the jump as a suicide attempt.
Harris's mother told WUSA that her daughter was studying to help children who are battling depression, and that it was "ironic" that she died when a pre-teen who she could have helped allegedly tried to take his own life.
The mother told the station that Harris had graduated summa cum laude from Towson University and was studying at a graduate mental health counseling program at Marymount University.
15 PHOTOS Health Rankings: Bottom 15 states See Gallery Health Rankings: Bottom 15 states 36. Florida Overall score: -0.307 (Photo via Getty Images) 37. Missouri Overall score: -0.338 (Photo via Shutterstock) 38. New Mexico Overall score: -0.363 (Photo via Getty Images) 39. Indiana Overall score: -0.372 (Photo via Shutterstock) 40. Ohio Overall score: -0.391 (Photo via Getty Images) 41. Georgia Overall score: -0.464 (Photo by Sean Pavone via Getty Images) 42. South Carolina Overall score: -0.531 (Photo via Getty Images) 43. West Virginia Overall score: -0.595 (Photo via Getty Images) 44. Tennessee Overall score: -0.626 (Photo via Alamy) 45. Kentucky Overall score: -0.651 (Photo by Henryk Sadura via Getty Images) 46. Oklahoma Overall score: -0.691 (Photo via Getty Images) 47. Alabama Overall score: -0.793 (Photo via Getty Images) 48. Arkansas Overall score: -0.834 (Photo by Wesley Hitt via Getty Images) 49. Louisiana Overall score: -1.043 (Photo via Alamy) 50. Mississippi Overall score: -1.123 (Photo via Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
More from :
All the times Trump dishonored U.S. veterans and military service
Teens arrested in overpass death may have thrown other items
Long Island driver overdoses in front of 7-year-old girl[Update 7/13/15] The text below is from WSDOT, not from me. They are offering this tour. It’s probably full by now anyway. They may offer more, so it’s worth watching the space if you are interested.
Registration opens today for next public tour of the new SR 520 floating bridge
Are you curious about complex feats of technical engineering? Have you driven on the world’s longest floating bridge and wondered about the slightly longer floating bridge taking shape right alongside? Do you enjoy wearing a hard hat and reflective vest?
If so, you’re going to love this news. Registration opens today (July 2) at 10 a.m. for the next of our summer public tours of the new SR 520 floating bridge. Leaving from Medina, these guided tours will give you a hardhat-required look at the new bridge, from vantage points not typically accessible to the general public.
Visit our website for full information and links to put your name in for a spot. The tours take place on the last Saturday of each month, beginning in May and lasting through September.
Demand has been very high for these tours, and spots are limited. So signing up is not a guarantee of securing a spot. Tour participants will be randomly selected from those signed up, with separate sign-ups held prior to each month’s tour.
Additionally, we are offering tours of the West Approach Bridge North project in Montlake. The next tour of this project is Wednesday, Aug. 5. Information about these tours also is available on our website.
Share this: Email
Facebook
TwitterIn the wake of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith’s six-minute fallacy-filled Uranium One “fact check” rant on Tuesday, social media is brimming with enraged Fox viewers calling for the network to dump the longtime host and “send him to CNN.”
Several left-wing and establishment media outlets reported some of the more searing social media screeds from fans of Fox, many of whom wished the cabler would part ways with its liberal broadcaster.
Breitbart News has debunked the myths peddled in Smith’s monologue. Below is a roundup of some of the best headlines and social media posts from angry and disappointed Fox fans.
From left-wing Salon, which |
as I saw in real, with my own eyes. And exactly like the makeup artist wants it to be: a contiguous area under the chin and in other shadow areas of the same skin saturation. How I developed this image? Also with the ColorChecker Passport. Not with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport software but… with the Adobe DNG Profile Editor.
The Adobe DNG Profile Editor has been a real time saver to me. No more Photoshop painting with colored brushes onto color layers. No more extra masking. No more struggling with exposure-introduced hue changes in RAW. No, everything is right from the first time.
In this article I will explain how to create such a profile with the ColorChecker and the Adobe DNG Profile Editor. But first another example, this time in studio light. More subtle, yet significant differences.
You can click the image above for the large version. Again I’ve placed blue circles around some of the problem areas. I used a simple large beauty dish as main light and I adjusted the white balance exactly like it has to be. Also this time the image was imported directly into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom without making exposure adjustments.
Also in this case there are some difficult areas with a wrong color saturation, when using one of the standard Adobe profiles. You can clearly see some rough edges around her cheekbones with the darker makeup, which is transitioning to the lighter part. In reality, with the naked eye, those transition areas were subtle. But not in the first and second image: you see sharp lines and high color contrasts. That would require very much time in postprocessing to even out all those red tones:
Again, this first image is developed with a standard Adobe DNG camera profile. The skin is too red. There’s too much color and brightness variation in the area around her cheekbones. This second image is better. It’s developed with a ColorChecker Passport profile, created with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport software. The red skin is gone and it almost has the right hue. Most of the colors are more saturated. There are still problems with the areas around her cheekbones though. This image is the best. The skin seems softer, more even and more flattering. Also this color profile is made with the ColorChecker Passport… not with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport software but with the Adobe DNG Profile Editor.
I really didn’t change anything in the 3rd image. No extra skin softening, no extra coloring, no brightness changes. The only thing I changed was the color profile. And that made a huge difference, which can save many minutes of retouching.
The second image has more saturation in some of the colors. But in my opinion image 3 is also better because it has more details in the color areas. It’s always possible to give it more vibrance in postprocessing because vibrance doesn’t touch the delicate skin colors.
The cause of our problem
Every camera is different: every lens, every sensor, every filter. Some brands like Canon or Nikon are applying tricks to the JPG image processing in camera, to render the colors slightly different than in reality. They’ve done much research and discovered what people like more: pleasing colors, with more saturation in the shadow areas. Orange tones in those areas more to pink, blue areas a little bit more to the red. Sometimes that works great for nature photography and for Asian skin (which has less of the red color component in it, while compared with average European Caucasian skin). Those color conversions only apply to the in-camera JPG processing, after the RAW capture.
Companies like Canon and Nikon are keeping those color conversions as a proprietary secret. So, software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW can only guess and mimic the color conversions, and do the best they can. But there are too many variables in the game of color conversions and other proprietary algorithms, so Adobe can only try to get as close as possible: it will never be exactly the same as the proprietary in-camera JPG rendering.
Those color conversion algorithms are also called “hue twists”. You can see a graphical representation of those hue twists in the image on the right. Thanks to the amazing work of Sandy and with a little help of Apple’s Grapher program, it’s possible to see what’s happening in an Adobe color profile, mimicking a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera profile.
The straight vertical lines are the linear interpretations of the sensor data. This is the most ideal case for rendering skin tones: no extra saturation in the shadow areas, no color changing while brightness changes. But the curved lines are lines from the Adobe DNG camera profiles with hue twists: they are quite heavy twisted here. As you can see, on a certain dark level, the skin tones are curving to the red, red is going to pink and yellow is going to the less saturated center.
That makes it difficult to work with: changing the exposure sliders in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW will also change those colors on the fly. You keep correcting continuosly.
Fortunately, the color profiles generated with the ColorChecker are much more forgiving. I couldn’t visualize them yet, but as far as I could see there aren’t any hue twists.
See this comment of Mike Blume for a more technical explanation.
The colors seem to be interpreted in a 2D color space, just as like the ColorChecker chart has been photographed with one level of lighting. To me, that makes it easier to work with. Thanks to the dcpTool website, which made me understand more and more of these rather complex color conversions.
What we will create
We will create a DNG camera profile with the help of a ColorChecker chart. This profile is a small file, the extension will be dcp. The profile will only work with your camera model (type), so every camera model has another DNG camera profile.
After creating the DNG camera profile we will place that file in a special folder so Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Camera RAW and the X-Rite DNG ProfileManager will recognize them immediately.
We will change the default settings of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, so it applies the new DNG camera profile automatically on every import.
The DNG camera profile we will generate will be Dual Illuminant: a more universal, flexible kind of profile which can be applied with every white balance setting. More about Dual Illuminant profiles below.
What you need
A computer with a hardware-calibrated screen, preferably a Mac (as Windows has a different color management)
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and/or Adobe Photoshop with the newest Adobe Camera RAW plugin
Optional: The Adobe DNG Converter (when Lightroom doesn’t recognize your camera yet)
The Adobe DNG Profile Editor
The X-Rite DNG ProfileManager (free download if you buy the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport)
The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport or another ColorChecker chart
Optional: an external calibrated light meter so you can make sure you expose the ColorChecker evenly and perfect
A camera which shoots RAW
A location outside at noon, under a cloudy grey sky, for making the first calibration shot
A location inside with only a single yellowish (tungsten) light bulb, without daylight coming in, to make the second calibration shot
Photographing the ColorChecker
First of all we need 2 different photos of the ColorChecker, taken with your camera. We will take one of the photos in cold daylight and we will take the other photo in warm tungsten light, coming from a single light bulb. That light bulb has to be a normal light bulb, so no TL-bulb, energy-saving FL bulb or other semi-normal-bulb. We want the old, cheap, normal ones which will emit a consistent color spectrum.
1. The outside “cold” ColorChecker calibration photo
We need cold, bluish sunlight for our first image of the ColorChecker. So, wait until high, midday noon. I always use golden-hour.com to check for the best time. Mostly around lunch time, when the sun is as high as possible.
Overcast is the best. Else, look for a place with shadow. Make sure to have no heavy color casts. No green grass, no red leaves, no blue reflections in the water, etc. If you found it, take your external light meter and measure the right exposure. Make sure to evenly lit the ColorChecker chart. The white balance on your camera doesn’t matter, but please set the file format to the largest RAW format. Take the photo, with the ColorChecker chart as big and as sharp as possible.
2. The inside “warm” ColorChecker calibration photo
For this second image of the ColorChecker we need warm, yellowish lamp light: tungsten, an ordinary old-fashioned light bulb. You know, those inefficient but beautiful old standard bulbs. Wait until it’s dark, or look for a room which you can make completely dark so no daylight is coming in (with some slow lenses you will have to raise the ISO). Light the room with the light bulb. Again, make sure to have no color casts. Use your external light meter when possible and expose the ColorChecker evenly. White balance on the camera doesn’t matter, but use the largest RAW size. Take your photo and make sure to capture the ColorChecker big and sharp.
Creating the DCP profile
Converting the RAW files to DNG
Before we can work with the RAW files you just captured of the ColorChecker chart, we first have to convert them to DNG: Digital Negative.
As you can see on the right, it’s possible with the Adobe DNG Converter. This small free program accepts almost all of the available RAW formats, more than Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW.
You can use Lightroom to convert the 2 shots to DNG, but in this example I use the Adobe DNG Converter because it’s easier to explain. Just select your source folder with your 2 RAW files and press Convert. The program will convert your 2 ColorChecker photos to the DNG format.
After converting you can delete your two original RAW files which came from your camera. You don’t need them anymore, since we losslessly converted them to the (much more future-proof) DNG format.
Creating the first color table
Open the Adobe DNG Profile Editor. Select as Base Profile “Adobe Standard” or “Camera Neutral”. Go to “File” -> “Open DNG Image…” and open the first shot of the ColorChecker chart: the one outside, in daylight. The image opens in a new window.
Right click in a grey patch of the ColorChecker chart to set the perfect white balance.
Go to the “Chart” tab in the main window, it’s on the right. There will appear four colored circles in the image window. Move them to the corners of the ColorChecker image, as shown in my example. You can also zoom the image to make them fit better. And yes, you only need that lower part of the ColorChecker Passport.
Go back to the main window of the DNG Profile Editor. You’re still in the “Chart” tab. There, on step 3, make sure to select the “6500 K only” option in the pulldown menu. This way you tell the program this image has been taken in cold daylight conditions.
Click the button below, at step 4: “Create Color Table…”. You will receive a popup message with “Color table(s) built successfully” and you will be directed to the main “Color Tables” tab. The Base Profile setting (drop-down menu) will change to ColorChecker. Yay! 🙂
Creating the second color table
Go to “File” -> “Open DNG Image…” and open the second shot of the ColorChecker chart: the one made inside, in tungsten lamp light. The image opens in a new window.
Right click in a grey patch of the ColorChecker chart to set the perfect white balance.
Go to the “Chart” tab again. There will appear the four colored circles in the image window again. Move them to the corners of the ColorChecker image, as shown in the previous example above. You can also zoom the image to make them fit better.
Go back to the main window of the DNG Profile Editor. You’re still in the “Chart” tab. There, on step 3, make sure to select the “2850 K only” option in the pulldown menu. This way you tell the program this image has been taken in warm tungsten lamp light conditions.
Click the button below, at step 4: “Create Color Table…”. You will receive the popup message with “Color table(s) built successfully” and you will be directed to the main “Color Tables” tab. Look at those differences on the right!
Saving the color profile
In the DNG Profile Editor, go to the “Options” tab. There you can fill in the profile name and your copyright. You don’t need to type your camera name, because that’s automatically attached to the profile which we will generate.
I will type “Dual Illuminant V2” here, because this is my second dual illuminant profile version. You can choose what you want, whichever will work for you.
Now go to “File” -> “Export <camera name> profile…” and save the profile. Use the profile location the program suggests (so don’t change the folder). You will receive a popup message which will say “…exported successfully”. You can now close the Adobe DNG Profile Editor.
Applying the DCP profile
Applying the profile is very easy. I will explain it for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, but it’s the same for Adobe Camera RAW (as both use the same engine and have the same develop controls).
Open Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I use version 5.2 which is the most recent one at the moment of writing. Open a RAW photo taken with your camera (not JPG, not PSD, not TIFF) in “Develop” mode (D).
In the right panel you see “Camera Calibration” near the bottom. With… a “Profile” drop-down menu. Select it. Look what’s there? Our newly created profile. 😉
Select the new profile and see the differences in your image. Do you like it? Is it better? Start playing with the develop tools like exposure, contrast, shadow, highlights… and notice how predictable they became. No more spontaneous hue changes in dark areas. A smooth silky skin with beautiful flesh tones, just like they were in real light.
The only thing we have to do, is making the new profile the default profile. That’s easy too, but little known.
In the right bottom corner (you’re still in the Develop mode of Lightroom) you see 2 large buttons: “Previous” and “Reset”. Press “Reset” and your image is back to its starting point (with also the quite ugly Adobe standard profile selected).
Now, select in the “Profile” drop-down menu your brand new generated profile again. Then, press the Alt or Option key on your keyboard. The “Reset” button will change to “Set Default…”. Confirm!
From now on, your new profile will be automatically applied to all newly imported photos from your camera.
When you buy the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport you’ll receive a download link by mail to the DNG ProfileManager software. Open the DNG ProfileManager and see your new profile, together with all the other profiles of all the other cameras too. Here you can enable or disable profiles.
Summary
Obtaining great skin tones without heavy editing is one of the most difficult challenges to overcome. There’s no perfect solution because every model is different, every light has another character and style and every makeup artist has his/her own signature.
But creating your own custom color profiles with the ColorChecker and the Adobe DNG Profile Editor can be a real time saver with more precise results.
We created a Dual Illuminant profile. That profile is quite accurate and has a great linearity. But of course you can create a custom, Single Illuminant profile for tough situations like fluorescent lighting, high altitudes or other types of exotic light. But the differences with Dual Illuminant profiles won’t be that huge though.
I hope this article can help you, doing a lot of more work in less time with better, more consistent results.
If you have any comments, experiences to share or questions, feel free to react below. In English please, so we can all learn from it and contribute to it. And above all: have fun!Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Musab Ar’aeer, a newborn boy who was suffering from heart and abdominal wall defects, died in Gaza City on Monday after the Palestinian Authority failed to act on an urgent request to be referred to an outside hospital, a doctor at Shifa Hospital said.
Ar’aeer, born last Monday, needed life-saving heart surgery in a hospital outside Gaza, Shifa neo-natal care director Alam Abu Hamda said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources in Gaza to perform the surgery he needed,” Abu Hamda said in a phone interview with The Jerusalem Post. “So we submitted an urgent request to the [PA] Health Ministry to transfer him on the same day he was born, but we never received an approval.”The PA Health Ministry is responsible for coordinating medical referrals to hospitals in Israel, the West Bank and abroad. Urgent referral requests usually take no more than 48 hours to approve. In some cases, they are approved within hours.Abu Hamda said Ar’aeer died because his heart failed.“We gave him medication and intravenous fluids, but his heart stopped working,” the doctor stated.Hamas spokesman Hazim Qassim posted on Twitter that the newborn died “because of the siege imposed on Gaza.” Bassam al-Badri, the Gaza-based PA Health Ministry official responsible for referrals, did not respond to multiple phone calls.Meanwhile, a PA Civil Affairs Ministry official who is in charge of arranging entry permits to Israel for sick Gazans said he had received no paperwork about Ar’aeer’s case from the PA Health Ministry.According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), the PA Health Ministry has been reducing the number of referrals it approves. PHRI international advocacy coordinator Dana Moss said that in May and June, the ministry approved approximately 10 referrals daily. She added that it approved an average of over 2,040 referrals monthly in 2016.Over the past two months, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been implementing a series of measures to compel Hamas to give up control of the Gaza Strip. He has slashed Gaza-based PA employees’ salaries, reduced the amount of electricity supplied to the area and cut medical budgets. He has defended the policy, saying it is targeted at ending the split between the West Bank and Gaza.“We seek to unify our land and our people, and any measures we take are in fact aimed at ending this division, which has harmed our national cause,” Abbas told a Japanese newspaper in early June.In official statements, Hamas has described Abbas’s moves as “arbitrary” and “dangerous.”Following the death of Ar’aeer, PHRI called on all parties involved to take responsibility for the deteriorating health situation in Gaza.“Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas must come to their senses and take swift action to avoid the next tragedy,” the statement said.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>Remember when those hideous screenshots of Agent first surfaced, reducing the collective hype meter of the gaming population to zero?
Well, it looks like some people still care about that game. Take-Two have said numerous times that the game is in development at Rockstar during their earnings call, but considering the game was first announced in 2009 at Sony E3 press conference. One has to wonder what’s really going on with the project?
So what is Agent? According to the description: “Agent takes players on a paranoid journey into the world of counter-intelligence, espionage and political assassinations during the height of the Cold War at the end of the 1970s.”
Is the game multiplatform now, or is it still exclusive to Sony? Is it current gen or has it been shifted to next-gen consoles? There are so many questions lingering that only one word applies to its current predicament: Vaporware.
Yes, that dreaded word. Rockstar usually take their time with their games, and they are known for delivering when those games are finally out. That’s the dilemma here; we don’t know whether the game is a linear one or an open world game. All we know are those dreaded screenshots.
There’s not a single official screenshot or a video showing what the game is actually like, which leads me to believe that the status of the game is in a limbo.
Recently Take-Two renewed the trademarks for Agent, which kind of signifies that they are still committed to the IP for now. Could it be that they have made the move to shift it to next-gen consoles? You know, PS4 and Xbox One?
Former Take-Two CEO described the game to Eurogamer as featuring, “very, very different storylines, very different character development”.
He also added that, “It’s a game about espionage, set in the 1970s. GTA is obviously more about an urban experience, a typically rags to riches experience. It’s going to be very fresh for gamers.”
That sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? Probably that’s the reason why still two or three people still care about it.
Going by the description, it seems to be a completely different experience from GTA, and something that is really ambitious. Releasing it on the current gen consoles will not do justice to it, since most gamers are already fixated on the PS4 and Xbox One.
The install base of the current gen consoles may be really tempting, but launching a new IP with a lot of mystery behind it would nullify that effect on next-gen consoles.
One major factor is the Rockstar Games brand. People love them and will be willing to check out something new if their name is on the box.
There’s a big chance of Take-Two spinning it into a franchise if Agent does manages to capture the imagination of people.
Considering they have been relying on two or three major franchises, including the massive GTA, a solid IP like Agent could stand as an additional pillar generating great revenue for the publisher.
So what do you think Rockstar Games should do with Agent? Stick to the current gen consoles or move it to next-gen? Or do nothing at all?The Counts' family's children's playhouse. Photo: CBSDFW.com
Neighbours in Plano, Texas are in the middle of a court battle after the noise of four children playing caused a "significant loss of quality of life."
In September 2014, Kelly and Andrew Counts moved to the Stoney Hollow neighbourhood with their kids, who are home schooled.
Speaking to Dallasnews.com, Kelly said she introduced herself to the new neighbours, Anita and Irving Ward.
"I said, 'Please tell me if the kids are ever too loud,' and she said, 'Don't worry about it — I love kids,' " Kelly said.
Soon after the city of Plano contacted Kelly and her husband about their playhouse, which was assembled too close to the Ward's property line.
When Kelly saw the minutes from the local homeowners meeting she was surprised to see the Wards complaint about noise, visibility issues and "a significant loss of quality of life," the news outlet reports.
Making adjustments to the playhouse roof satisfied the homeowners association.
"After we received that, I went next door - I'd had no conversations with them - and wanted to extend the olive branch," Kelly said.
Instead, the Wards gave them numerous reasons why the playhouse shouldn't be in the yard.
Advertisement
"One of the big reasons we chose the house was because we would be able to move this playhouse," Kelly told CBS DFW.
In retaliation to the children playing, the Wards began blasting loud, obscene music towards the yard.
"For a while, I'd bring the kids inside and it would stop, and when we went out it would start again," Kelly said. "I knocked on the door and said, 'Mrs. Ward, my kids are trying to play in the side yard and there's some music playing with very vulgar language.'"
"Finally, we decided to sue because of the nuisance, and they did stop once they were served."
The neighbours are due in court this month over the music noise complaints and again next month regarding the Ward's claims that the Count family is disturbing their 'tranquil quality of life' and 'creating noise issues as well as visibility issues for them and their pets'.
"It's unfathomable to me," said Kelly. "I can't imagine the sound of kids playing at any age or stage of my life and thinking that I needed to sue someone over it."President Trump on Thursday amplified the comments he made threatening North Korea with "fire and fury," and attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
During a brief interaction with reporters while on his 17-day working vacation in Bedminster, New Jersey, Mr. Trump said his controversial statement Tuesday threatening North Korea perhaps "wasn't tough enough." On Tuesday during a meeting on the opioid crisis, Mr. Trump said that North Korea "will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."
"Frankly, the people who are questioning that statement, was it too tough? Maybe it wasn't tough enough." Mr. Trump said. "They've been doing this to our country for a long time - for many years, and it's about time someone stuck up for this country and for the people of other countries. So if anything, maybe that statement wasn't tough enough."
The story behind Trump's "fire & fury" comment
Mr. Trump dismissed claims that his administration's messages on North Korea are mixed, after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said people shouldn't be unsettled by recent rhetoric about North Korea.
"There are no mixed messages" on North Korea, the president said.
The president added that North Korea will be in trouble like perhaps no other country has been before, should it pursue nuclear aggression.
"I think China can do a lot more, yes, China can," Mr. Trump said. "And I think China will do a lot more. Look, we have trade with China. We lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trade with China. They know how I feel. It's not going to continue like that. But if China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade, a lot differently toward trade."
"So we will do – the people of our country are safe," the president continued. "Our allies are safe. And I will tell you this North Korea better get their act together or they're going to be in trouble like few nations ever have been in trouble in this world."
But the president also had words of warning for McConnell, whom he has attacked on Twitter two days in a row for failing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Asked if McConnell should resign from his leadership position, the president said that if McConnell doesn't repeal and replace Obamacare, pass tax reform and fund infrastructure, "then you can ask me that question."
McConnell has indicated the Senate is done with attempting to tackle health care, at least in the foreseeable future.
Some senators responded immediately to the attack.RuneTracker News Dec 5th '18: Improvements have been made to Old School tracking, which we think is pretty cool! User pages now have the same daily, weekly and monthly graphs as RS3 user pages and our service should now correctly lookup Old School users once per day like the sidebar says it will. Oct 17th '18: We think we've patched all the bugs resulting from the server migration. Thank you for your patience! If you run into any issues, hit us up on our bug tracker or by email at [email protected]. Sept 23rd '18: We're back! Our deepest apologies for the extended downtime. We've moved to a new server and we're updating a lot of old code to support a newer version of PHP and a new server. There is still a lot of work to be done to get things fully running again, but we are working on it! Watch this space for updates. May 21st '17: The Double XP Weekend has been added to the events page! Also pages have been added. Don't know why the heck we didn't have them all this time. Good luck and have fun! September 24th '16: The Bonus Exp Weekend has been added to the events page. We're a day late adding it but the gains you've already had will be automatically counted in the event when you update your stats! January 25th '16: The Invention skill has been added to RuneTracker's interfaces. As always, we automatically start tracking new skills so your existing gains are already recorded. We have not yet implemented the new experience curve for Invention, but we will do so soon!
About RuneTracker RuneTracker allows RuneScape players to track their progress over time, giving players an innovative way to track their progress in the game. Users can also compare themselves with others in our Top 42 and Record tables! Data for this website comes from the RScript project. If you use RuneScript Stats Bot regularly, this website should have your data already. Otherwise, simply enter your name in the lookup box on the top of the page, and we'll get you started! Update your stats in our database by clicking any of the "Update Now!" buttons found on this site for your RuneScape name. The use of this website is completely free, and we encourage any suggestions or ideas for new features and updates; simply post on our bug tracker! First time here? Tracking is simple! Simply look yourself up on the search bar above to get your user page. If you (or others) visit your page regularly, we'll update it once a day. Or, if you're impatient, simply press the "Update Now" button on your page! Current Statistics:
Week's Users: 72,598
Total Users Logged: 3,370,987
Total Data Points Logged: 79,181,601
Name Change Queue: 2Feature
Apple started 2014 with a diverse lineup of iPods and iPads in multiple sizes, but the company still only makes one form factor of iPhone. Here's how the company's iPhone 5c experiment has helped it to develop the operational sophistication needed to produce multiple sizes of iPhone.
iPhone 5c: "For the colorful"
The phone industry's exceptional underdog
Apple becoming the new Nokia
From one $400 iPod model in 2001 and one $500 iPad model in 2010, Apple has incrementally expanded its offerings to create a range of iPods from the $50 iPod shuffle to the $400 64GB iPod touch, and a range of iPads from $300 entry level iPad mini to the most expensive $929 128GB 4G iPad Air.In iPhones, however, Apple continues to sell one basic model that starts and ends at essentially the same prices that the iPhone debuted at. For the last several years, Apple has sold one new iPhone and two previous years' models each year. This stands in marked contrast to other handset manufacturers that have long offered everything from very cheap to very expensive phones, very large to very small phones, all in a very diverse array of wildly different form factors and colors.Last fall, Apple introduced a slight tweak to its product lineup by differentiating its "last year's" model as "for the colorful," with a new design and minor enhancements. This appeared to be an experiment in handling multiple product lines, and a progression of the 2012 strategy that launched multiple colors of the company's iPod touch. As the world's largest volume manufacturer of premium smartphones, the introduction of multiple iPhone 5c colors was a significant new challenge for Apple.While Apple sold around 26 million iPods in 2013, only about half were iPod touch models. That means Fiscal 2013's iPod touch color experiment involved operational management of around 13 million devices.In contrast, Apple sold over 150 million iPhones that year, which helps explain why the company took a slow and cautious step toward releasing just three color finishes of its high end iPhone 5s while focusing its broader color experiment on the refreshed, cheaper iPhone 5c, which it knew (or at least certainly had to have hoped) would make up a minority of its total iPhone sales for Fiscal 2014 (which at the end of March is now half over).Rather than being a flop and grave mistake as Apple's critics have sought to insist, iPhone 5c was an iterative learning experiment that helped Apple perfect its operational management and large scale production of multiple iPhone models on a global scale. While iPhone 5c's multiple models were differentiated by color, the lessons Apple learned apply to any sort of product variation, including the parallel production of multiple sizes of new iPhones.While Apple quickly took over the high end of phones, it's useful to keep in mind that the company has only been in the phone business for 7 years. It has never sold a large percentage of all the world's phones or even all the world's smartphones, particularly when the definition of smartphone is expanded to include hundreds of millions of extremely low end devices with outdated specs, poor performance and reflect the simple user behaviors of basic phones the industry used to call "feature phones."After releasing iPhone 4 in June 2010, the company struggled to perfect the production of its planned white version until April 2011. That highlights the complexity of the product development and operational challenges involved in managing the production of devices on the scale of iPhone.Within 2010, while it worked to develop a white iPhone 4, Apple's iPhone sales hit 47 million, or less than a third the number Apple currently produces. The jump from April 2011's white iPhone 4 to multiple colors of iPod touch in late 2012, and then multiple colors of iPhone 5c a year later show a rapid ramp, not just in technical competency but in managing complexity while volume production quickly escalated in parallel, from a few million white devices to tens of millions of iPhones in a range of colors.That operational sophistication relates to more than just mass producing precision devices in multiple colors; it also applies to other variations, including the iPhone's first major departure from a "one size fits all" product lineup. In order to build multiple sizes of iPhones, Apple needed to rapidly develop the same sort of expertise that much larger, more experienced phone makers like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola had gained from building broad ranges of products for many years.In 2006, Nokia had over 65,000 employees and Motorola employed over 66,000 people. Not all of those were working on phones, but compared to Apple's 20,000 employees (including temp workers and contractors), Apple was clearly a far smaller company. On top of that, a significant number of Apple's employees worked in hundreds of retail stores, something neither Nokia nor Motorola had.Today, Apple has over 80,000 employees, of which more than 26,000 work in U.S. retail alone. So despite incredible growth, Apple currently continues to be about the same size as Nokia and Motorola were before the iPhone appeared.The big difference is that Apple is earning far greater profits than Nokia or Motorola ever did, because it isn't using its similar number of employees to design, test, market and sell a vast portfolio of products at increasingly razor thin margins, the way that Samsung currently is Samsung's status quo is a strategy that quickly drove Nokia and Motorola from leading, profitable mobile firms to today's "discontinued operations" that are now being sold off as scrap after posting quarter after quarter of massive, million dollar losses.Apple is selling affordable luxury. In phones, Apple is exclusively selling premium models at prices above $400, far higher than the average selling price of Nokia, Motorola, Samsung or anyone else in the industry.Going forward, Apple is not only tasked with adopting more of the product diversity of other phone handset makers, but must also maintain its current profitability to avoid suffering the business implosion, financial losses and employee layoffs that Nokia and Motorola have both suffered. It's not surprising why Apple refuses to follow the hindsight-driven guidance of today's financial analysts to dictate its business decisions.How easy will it be for Apple to muscle its way into the larger screen phone market pioneered by Motorola and Samsung? While we have to wait for Apple's new products to launch and then wait a bit longer for the sales numbers, there is already convincing evidence that should leave Android makers very concerned. The next segment will look at what's involved in the trend toward new sizes of phones, and how the groundwork laid by iPhone 5c in moving Apple into more direct competition with its phone industry competitors has historical precedence.The Viking sagas were once considered too vulgar and violent to be published in Danish. But they have now been given a new lease of life and are published in modern Danish for the first time.
The Danish Viking Sagas are the inspiration for the popular TV show, Vikings, which captures the history and adventures of famous characters like Ragnor Lodbrog.
But until now, Danes were not able to read the adventures of their ancestors in their own language.
In the 19th century, the Sagas were considered too vulgar, violent, and full of sex to be translated into Danish. Now the first two volumes have been released by Gyldendal publishers, with six more planned for release at a later date.
"The ancient sagas are fast-paced and humorous and unlike the later sagas of Iceland they don’t refrain from elaborate erotic scenes,” says Annette Lassen, lecturer and translator at the University of Copenhagen, in a press release.
“And the characters are mildly colourful: In addition to the Vikings and Norse gods, the stories are teeming with maiden kings, shield maidens, berserkers, giants, and trolls who perform magic," she says.
The so-called Ancient Sagas were some of the earliest. They describe the adventures of Danish Vikings and date back to 1100 to 1200 CE.
"There is a great satisfaction that we can now present the sagas of Ragnar Lodbrog and the other Viking heroes in contemporary language so that new generations can benefit from reading these fantastic stories," says Lassen in the press release.
-------------
Read the Danish version of this story on Videnskab.dknational
Mumbai’s second lifeline — taxis and autos — were once the gold standard of honesty. But a new mid-day drive, finds that six out of seven drivers made no effort to return 'forgotten' goods
Ever forgotten your bag or valuables in an auto or a taxi but got it back due to the efforts of an honest driver? Well, then you must be among the lucky few. Most Mumbaikars tend to think of autorickshaw and taxi drivers as crooks who, given a chance, will gladly take an unwitting passenger for a ride. And they are not entirely wrong. mid-day carried out a small experiment to investigate how upright the city’s auto drivers and cabbies are, and shockingly, nearly all failed to pass our honesty test.
This piece of imitation jewellery was used to test the honesty levels of cabbies. Pic/Shadab |
he was hospitalized. They were hauled away Friday night.
She said that next, everything else in the house will be disposed of.
The family who lived there was moved to a private home in a gated community, where they are being carefully monitored. The city had been having trouble finding a place that would take in Louise Troh, originally from Liberia, her 13-year-old son and two nephews.
Elsewhere, NBC News reported that an American freelance cameraman working for the network in Liberia has tested positive for the virus and will be flown back to the United States, along with the rest of the news crew.
In Massachusetts, Dr. Richard Sacra, a U.S. doctor and missionary who was successfully treated for Ebola in an Oklahoma hospital and released on Sept. 25, has been readmitted to hospital with what appears to be a respiratory infection.
"We are isolating Dr. Sacra to be cautious pending final confirmation of his illness," said Dr. Robert Finberg, who is heading Sacra's medical team at UMass Memorial Medical Centre. "We think it is highly unlikely that he has Ebola. We suspect he has an upper respiratory tract infection."
Finberg said the hospital expects conclusive results on Sacra's condition by Monday.
U.S. officials: We can keep it in check
The first Ebola diagnosis in the U.S. has raised concerns about whether the disease that has killed 3,400 people in West Africa could spread in the U.S. Federal health officials say they are confident they can keep it in check.
Thomas Eric Duncan, photographed in 2001 at a wedding in Ghana, became the first patient diagnosed in the U.S with Ebola. He has been kept in isolation at a Dallas hospital since Sept. 28. (Wilmot Chayee/Associated Press) The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids — blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen — of an infected person who is showing symptoms.
Health officials reported fielding scores of possible cases around the country that have proved to be false alarms. Authorities have responded to inquiries regarding more than 100 potential cases of Ebola since Duncan tested positive, but no new infections have been identified.
Howard University Hospital said on Saturday that a medical team has determined that a patient feared afflicted with Ebola does not have the disease.
Duncan's diagnosis "has really increased attention to what health workers need to do to be alert and make sure a travel history is taken," Frieden told a news conference.
Frieden added that many of the inquiries fielded by the CDC involved people who had travelled outside West Africa.
Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 and fell ill a few days later. After an initial visit to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, he was sent home, even though he told a nurse he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa. He returned to the hospital two days later, last Sunday, and has been kept in isolation ever since.
The hospital issued a news release late Friday saying that the doctor who initially treated Duncan did have access to his travel history, after all. It had said Thursday that a flaw in the electronic health records systems led to separate physician and nursing workflows, and that the doctor hadn't had access to Duncan's travel history.Say Noah to climate change
By Tom Toles
***
The Fee-bag Party
One more thing among the myriad that I don't get. Air passengers in open revolt over fees on baggage. Somewhere along the way it came to be understood as another of our constitutional rights that you can pack the entire contents of your garage into your luggage and the airline will carry it for no charge. Fierce disciples of the free market suddenly start vibrating with anger when a carrier decides how it wants to price its service. It's a little like getting mad at a restaurant for not having one all-you-can-eat price. No, it's EXACTLY like that.
The really strange thing is that baggage is hardly an arbitrary place for pricing. Weight is a significant cost to flying a plane. Nor is it a place in which the consumer is helpless. Pack less, pay less! Did you REALLY need to bring that fire hydrant? What about fees for carry-on items? Does ANYONE enjoy the 20 minutes of slow-motion overhead bin Tetris before the plane takes off? It's NOT gouging. Airlines are not making off with giant profits. It's not nickel and diming. It's straightforward and logical fee for service. Right? --Tom Toles
***Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Much of the mainstream press hailed Tuesday’s Democratic wins in Virginia, New Jersey, and beyond as an explicit biteback at Donald Trump. In a cycle flush with stories about the anniversary of Trump’s election win, parts of the press seemed intent on casting Republican setbacks as a narrative shift.
Ralph Northam’s comfortable win in the Virginia governor’s race was the crest of a progressive wave, they said—The New York Times heralded a “first, forceful rebuke of Trump and his party,” The Washington Post called it “nothing less than a stinging repudiation of Trump,” and The New Yorker described it as “a turn in national politics.”
ICYMI: The most-read stories since Trump’s election win might surprise you
But sweeping conclusions about the frailty of Trump and the resurgence of the Democratic Party are premature. These were local elections settled by local dynamics—and while Trump was a factor, it’s impossible to divine a uniform “Trump effect” across states. Editors and observers interviewed by CJR paint a more complex picture than a Trump slump: The president was one consideration in elections that hinged on state-specific issues and personalities, filtered through particular demographics that don’t perfectly reflect the country as a whole.
“If you watched some of the national punditry on the eve of the election, there were some folks who thought it likely that Republican Ed Gillespie was going to win” the Virginia governor’s race, says Andrew Cain, politics editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Those of us who watch the numbers year after year in statewide elections knew that while it was possible for Gillespie to prevail, it was going to be a challenge given the pace of demographic change in the state and the fact Democrats seem to have something of a hold on the state’s population centers.”
While the mainstream media touted Virginia as the strongest evidence of voter backlash against Trump, some headlines mentioned Phil Murphy’s win in the New Jersey governor’s race. Jeff Edelstein, a columnist with The Trentonian, says that’s also a mistake. “We were going to get a Democrat governor no matter who was president this time around—we had eight years of a Republican, and Chris Christie’s popularity just sunk,” he says. Incumbent Christie’s approval rating has hovered just above single digits for months, dragged down by scandals like “Bridgegate” and a decision to sun himself on a beach the state government had closed to the public over the July 4 holiday.
Sign up for CJR's daily email
That’s not to say Trump’s unpopularity didn’t have an impact in these states; it almost certainly did. The clear margin of Northam’s victory and rampant, unexpected gains for the Democrats in the Virginia state legislature—where a transgender woman, Danica Roem, unseated a sponsor of an anti-transgender bathroom bill—likely had something to do with Trump’s low approval rating. Edelstein reckons Democrats similarly profited in down-ballot races in New Jersey—even though they escaped the national attention afforded their Virginia counterparts. Further afield, the party picked up the mayoralty of Manchester, New Hampshire, for the first time in 14 years, and took control of the Washington state legislature.
ICYMI: Former NYTimes journalists are ticked off by new Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks movie
The problem is more that mainstream news outlets have extrapolated national significance from states that don’t reflect the full complexity of an increasingly divided country. New Jersey has a long record of electing gubernatorial candidates from the opposite party to the president. Virginia, meanwhile, has been leaning blue for some time and was the only Southern state not to vote for Trump last year. It’s highly questionable it can still be classed as a “swing state,” and it’s certainly not a “bellwether” of the national political picture, as The Guardian suggested.
Ever since Trump was elected, sections of the media have drawn tenuous, big-picture stories from small-picture races and states, drawing contradictory conclusions as a result. Karen Handel’s win over Jon Ossoff in a Georgia Congressional special election in June was hailed in some parts as a body-blow for Democrats—even though she only won narrowly in a solidly Republican district. And Roy Moore’s victory over Luther Strange in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary last month was called a victory for exactly the sort of flame-throwing Trumpism that yesterday’s elections supposedly repudiated.
“To try to extrapolate too much from Virginia and Alabama, in particular, sort of misses the point. Those couldn’t be two more different states. Virginia went blue in the last election, Alabama has been a red stronghold for well over two decades now. And crazy events have happened in both states, [like] Charlottesville,” says Elaina Plott, an Alabama native who writes for Washingtonian magazine. “I’m gonna be much more interested in understanding what happens in a state like Pennsylvania when it comes to predicting what we might see in 2018 and beyond.”
Outlets like CNN and FiveThirtyEight have already cast yesterday’s victories for Democrats as a huge boost to their 2018 midterm prospects, albeit with some caveats. The analysis might end up being right. But if the media’s failure to predict Trump’s win last year was attributable, in part, to treating states in isolation and not as movable parts in a dynamic country, then it should be extra careful to avoid the same mistakes going forward.
ICYMI: A recent op-ed made a very important point about the word “collusion”
A widely echoed New York Times analysis about this week’s elections declared “Trumpism without Trump” to be “a losing formula.” Even leaving aside the fact Moore won on a Trumpian platform in Alabama without the president’s personal endorsement, this sort of take is flawed. The media can’t conclude, in the same breath, that the results in Virginia and New Jersey were both a direct rebuke to Trump and a reflection of his absence from those races. As CNBC senior columnist Jake Novak says in an interview with CJR, “It’s time for everyone to understand that Trump and the Republican Party are two different things.”
Parts of the media, especially left-leaning outlets like Vice, framed the run-up to Tuesday’s elections as a first test for the anti-Trump “resistance,” gambling that this had the makings of what Cain at the Richmond Times-Dispatch calls a “Beach Boys election—catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.” The results seemed to confirm that preordained narrative, giving it extra potency.
It’s okay for journalists to synthesize linked local events into a broader national pattern, and it’s okay for them to invoke Trump when doing so. But the instinct to confirm a presupposed trend is dangerous—and this week’s elections did not make for conclusive evidence. “Going into it, if I was king of all media, I’d wanna see Trump get trounced, because that’s a better story,” says Edelstein at The Trentonian. “In that regard the media kinda got what it was looking for.”
TRENDING: New York Times makes important statement about mass shootings with a series of clocks
Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today
Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist. He writes CJR's newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.Each week, a large group of men meet Wednesdays and Saturdays at Berkeley’s Veterans Building and Oakland’s Laney College to discuss gender roles, anger management and domestic violence prevention.
Men Creating Peace (MCP) is one of the few domestic violence organizations in Alameda County specifically geared towards men. Founded in 2009, the organization aims to help men who’ve been involved in violent acts adopt coping mechanisms so that they can develop healthier relationships with partners, family and their community.
“We’re not a parenting class, we’re not an AA class. We’re a violence prevention class, and the men that we’re working with have agreed that they’re violent, and they want to stop,” said founder Devon Gaster.
Prior to launching MCP, Gaster worked in jails teaching the same methods in Sacramento, San Francisco and Marin County. Through years of experience practicing the 30-year-old Manalive Violence Prevention Program, founded by interventionist Hamish Sinclair, Gaster established the curriculum for Men Creating Peace.
“Every class starts with accountability,” said Gaster. “In the beginning of the first class, we ask the men to tell us why they’re here, and we ask them to be as specific as they can about what happened. How did they start their violence? How did their violence escalate? And how did they end their violence? ”
The program is made up of three stages that altogether last 52 weeks. Men who are 16 years or older and have issues with anger are referred to Men Creating Peace by the courts, agencies, clergies, therapists and even school counselors.
Gaster says he based the organization in Alameda County due to the economic downturn. Men who lived in the East Bay, couldn’t afford to travel to domestic violence classes in San Francisco or Marin County. “People were moving to Alameda County where it was less expensive to live, but they didn’t want to lose credits for the classes they had already gone to in San Francisco, so they just transferred into our program,” he said.
The organization differs from other programs due its focus on teaching men how not to fall victim to their egos or what they call the “male-role belief system,” which is the idea that men are superior to women and other men.
“There is always this competitiveness around men, and when that belief system gets challenged, when you get disrespected, when someone outdoes you, makes fun of you, or cuts you off on the freeway, it’s a challenge to the belief system. What are you going to do as a man? Are you going to stand up for yourself or are you going to let someone disrespect you? That’s a big challenge,” says Gaster.
When asked what is the most significant challenge men face upon entering the program, Gaster said “accountability.” It’s difficult for his students to accept responsibility for their actions without blaming their victim, he said. Once men accept accountability and graduate to later stages in the program, victims of domestic violence are brought to speak to the class. “We have stories of rape, we have stories of kidnapping … stories that victims tell when they come talk to the class,” said Gaster.
“Once students graduate to that second and third stage of the program, the resistance level has gone down. Their buy-in to the work has gone up. The awareness of their violence has gone up. The awareness of the impact of their violence has gone up and they’re more receptive to that kind of a story,” added Gaster.
Though Gaster said the program’s success rate is lower than he’d like, the men who do graduate often end up returning to teach or sit in on classes. Gaster hopes to expand his business even further, one day establishing a headquarters and even creating classes for couples and women.If the spending is allowed to continue, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal government will pay $135 billion in cost-sharing subsidies to insurers from 2018 to 2027.
The cloud of uncertainty swirling around the subsidies stems from a court ruling in a lawsuit that House Republicans filed against the Obama administration in 2014. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled last year that spending on the subsidies “violates the Constitution” because Congress never appropriated money for them. She ordered a halt to the payments, but suspended her order to allow the government to appeal.
The Trump administration has not made clear whether it will press the appeal filed by the Obama administration. In a letter to Mr. Trump this week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and insurers in seeking “quick action” to guarantee continuation of the subsidies. Without the subsidies, they said, more people will be uninsured and unable to pay medical bills.
Democrats say they will not negotiate with Mr. Trump until he stops his drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “President Trump is threatening to hold hostage health care for millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him, to achieve a political goal of repeal that would take health care away from millions more,” said the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.
Having no immediate prospect of a deal with Democrats, the White House is still focusing on Republicans. It is seeking consensus on a repeal bill that can overcome rifts among House Republicans, whose disagreements sank an earlier version of the legislation on March 24.
Even though lawmakers are out of town for a two-week spring break, Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are continuing efforts to revive the bill in talks with Representative Mark Meadows, the North Carolina Republican who is the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
Many conservatives opposed the earlier version of the bill, saying it did not do enough to repeal federal rules that drive up the cost of insurance. Democrats say those rules, including a definition of minimum benefits, provide essential protections for consumers.A technology once thought to be decades away is now being tested on public roads and clashing with state and local governments. Ford Motors has announced plans to release a full fleet of driverless cars by 2021. Google has been testing fully autonomous vehicles since 2014. In Pittsburgh, one can summon an autonomous Volvo using the Uber app. Other companies including Apple, General Motors, and Chrysler are also involved.
The rapid development of a technology that has great potential to save lives, increase mobility, and reduce pollution also creates a challenge for regulators. Current vehicle regulations assume that a human driver is in control of the vehicle. Driverless cars operate within the realm of soft law.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has attempted to fill this regulatory void with its Federal Automated Vehicles Policy. These nonbinding guidelines recommend that state regulations only deal with licensing, registration, insurance, and other roles that traditionally belong to states. A 15-point safety assessment would be conducted voluntarily by companies and submitted to NHTSA.
Similar to current vehicle regulations that allow manufacturers to self-certify compliance, these guidelines provide basic standards without capping innovation. Self-certification has proved remarkably successful in protecting consumers and improving technology for 50 years.
NHTSA needed to act because, instead of embracing the benefits of innovation, many state and local governments are stifling innovation through overly-burdensome regulations. Unfortunatly, suggestions from NHTSA fail to correct this censorship of innovation.
For example, California state law uses legislation to dictate which companies are allowed to test self-driving cars. While there are currently 33 corporations developing autonomous vehicle technology, the state has granted permission to only 15 companies for testing. The state’s regulatory code requires that a driver is present to monitor the vehicle and that the car still has brake pedals and a steering wheel. Since technology is now being developed that will have no need for a human driver, this regulation is already outdated. In attempt to keep up with innovation, California has granted only one company, Easymile, the right to test shuttles without drivers, brake pedals, steering wheels, or accelerators on a single strip of public road.
Allowing regulators to grant de facto monopolies will significantly hinder the introduction of this technology to market. The unprecedented rate at which this technology has been developed can partially be credited to fierce competition – an autonomous vehicles arms race. Affordable self-driving vehicles will become a pipe dream if half of the competition is excluded from Silicon Valley.
Even worse, Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emanuel recently proposed a ban on autonomous vehicles. In a press release, city alderman Ed Burke defended the proposed policy by writing:
“We do not want the streets of Chicago to be used as an experiment that will no doubt come with its share of risks, especially for pedestrians. No technology is one-hundred percent safe.”
Burke’s fear of technology does not reflect reality. Of the 35,000 U.S. vehicle fatalities in 2015, 94 percent resulted from human error. In contrast, a May 2016 Tesla crash is the only death in an autonomous vehicle. Furthermore, in a study conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, every recorded accident involving an autonomous vehicle – 11 per million miles – was the fault of a human driver. Burke is right—nothing is one hundred percent safe. However, only one recorded fatality when moving at highway speeds is close.
Given these current regulatory trends, NHTSA needs to take a more assertive approach to regulating, which it will likely do after a public comment period on its non-binding guidance. And NHTSA has reason to act—since vehicle automation is essentially a safety feature, it falls under federal jurisdiction.
When moving forward with finalized regulations, NHTSA needs to keep in mind that fully autonomous vehicle technology is still developing. Any comprehensive regulatory code that mandates certain design features will restrict innovation. As for the best way to move forward, the non-profit organization Securing America’s Future Energy, recommends developing performance-based standards. An example of this system already in use is the Federal Aviation Administration’s requirement that software components in small planes be “highly reliable” without specifying what type of software must be used. This allows companies to constantly develop better software to meet this standard.
NHTSA should work to clarify its 15 point safety assessment so it can be written as a national regulation. Once defined, outcome-based rules for priorities such as “crashworthiness”, “digital security”, and “data recording and sharing” give auto manufacturers and innovators the freedom to determine how to best achieve these goals.
While allowing states to set their own regulatory policies is usually desirable, federal preemption is necessary to establish regulations for product standards when there are coordination problems between states. This is necessary, as discussed in an American Enterprise Institute book edited by Richard Epstein and Michael Greve, in the rules for drug labeling, cell phone regulations, and financial market regulations. Similarly, in the market for self-driving cars, NHTSA admits that 50 different sets of regulations and rules would constrain the development of the product.
Car manufacturers would not create multiple variations of a technology in order to meet different state standards; instead, they would just adapt to the biggest market. The market power of California makes it likely that their regulations would become de facto law for the rest of the United States – similar to how the state’s zero-emission requirement prompted every major auto-maker to bring an electric car to market.
Any smaller states that impose radically different regulations on self-driving cars would prevent residents from accessing a potentially life-saving technology. When Vermont passed a mandatory GMO labeling law, food manufacturers pulled 3,000 products out of the state rather than comply with the costly law.
One can always hope that voters will choose not to reelect officials who passed detrimental bans, but this is not always the case. Many incumbent industries benefit from government stifling of competition and are willing to spend to remain protected. The proposed ban on self-driving cars in Chicago was heavily financed by the city’s taxi industry in order to block autonomous Ubers similar to those in Pittsburg.
Innovation from private companies has brought about almost every great invention of the past decade. With proposed regulations in California that would require companies to report the data collected on every vehicle to the state and force companies to get permission for testing from each locality, national performance-based guidelines are necessary to prevent the stifling of beneficial innovation.
Allie Howell is a contributor to Economics21.
Interested in real economic insights? Want to stay ahead of the competition? Each weekday morning, E21 delivers a short email that includes E21 exclusive commentaries and the latest market news and updates from Washington. Sign up for the E21 Morning Ebrief.Two of the world’s top Superbike riders, Sylvain Guintoli and Davide Giugliano, are in active talks to join MCE British Superbike teams for next year’s championship. Tomorrow, the starting gun will be fired with an announcement by PBM’s Paul Bird on his line-up for 2017 and it is likely to be followed in short order by Stuart Hicken’s Buildbase-backed Hawk Racing.
No details have yet been revealed but it is highly likely that Shane Byrne will be staying with the Be Wiser Ducati team in a two-year deal, as will Glenn Irwin. But in true Bird fashion mystery surrounds a strong rumour that PBM will be fielding a three-bike team and that third man will be Giugliano.
When asked by BSN’s Italian correspondent Maria Guidotti about joining the PBM team, the 28-year-old former Ducati works rider said he was unable to say anything about anything until the weekend. The PBM camp was equally, and untypically, tight-lipped.
But the relationship between the Bird team and Ducati is strong and there is little doubt that Superbike director Ernesto Marinelli was delighted with the championship win this season. Giugliano is leaving the Aruba team in WSBK after a disappointing season and his options in that series are limited. But there’s no doubt the Italian would be a great coup for Bird and the series.
How he will react to Cadwell Park, Knockhill and Oulton Park is another matter however. It might go something like: “Che cazzo…”
Guintoli, on the other hand, has had a number of offers, is very familiar with BSB and his performance at the last WSBK round in Qatar showed his recovery from the Imola crash is complete. It is likely that the Hawk team, with backing from a major manufacturer, will be one of his options but don’t count out Tyco BMW or even a third chair at Honda.
Manufacturer support for next year’s series looks strong with Leon Haslam staying in the series, new Fireblades from Honda, Suzuki likely to be with a big team and Yamaha showing renewed interest with TTC stepping up from Supersport with James Ellison rumoured to be in one seat.
Former champion Josh Brookes is also set for a return and is in contact with various teams and manufacturers.NATO trucks remain stuck in Pakistan today amid continued anti-drone protests along the highways of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwah (KP) Province, and despite police threats to arrest protesters who attempt to stop the trucks they say they are still not willing to try new shipments through the area.
Pakistani transport officials say some 1,500 trucks are loaded and waiting to head through the Khyber Pass, through which some 80 percent of NATO’s supplies from Pakistan enter.
The protests are organized by the Pakistani Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI), the ruling party in the KP Province. They have been condemned by the national ruling party, which says they are encouraging “bullying” of the NATO drivers.
Law Minister Punjab Rana Sansullah insists that the PTI should end the protests, noting the national government is perfectly capable of blocking NATO supplies without them. That said, there is no indication the national government is planning to actually do so, and the PTI has criticized them for insisting they are opposed to US drone strikes but not doing anything about them.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzMatt Peacock reported this story on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 08:03:00
PETER CAVE: The Indonesian Human Rights Commission has launched an inquiry into the fatal police shooting of at least two demonstrators protesting against an Australian mining operation near the port of Sape in Eastern Indonesia.
Anti-mining activists say police fired live ammunition into a crowd blockading the port on Christmas Eve. The blockade had been organised in opposition to a proposed gold mine in the area, which the protestors claim will cause environmental damage to farming land and water supplies.
But the Australian company, Arc Exploration, denies any mining has yet taken place, with its limited operations still at the exploration stage.
Matt Peacock reports.
MATT PEACOCK: Graphic pictures on local Indonesian broadcaster Metro TV showed police firing what appeared to be live ammunition into a crowd of protesters on Christmas Eve, with police confirming later that two people had been killed and 47 people wounded. Reports from anti-mining activists put the death toll is as high as 12.
Today the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights plans to send a team to the port of Sape, in the West Nusa Tenggara province, to establish why the police fired directly into the crowd.
Police say the protesters had blockaded the port for days, and were armed with machetes and Molotov cocktails. They are conducting their own investigation into the shootings.
The Australian company at the centre of the protest, Arc Exploration, is a small Sydney-based operation which denies that any gold mine is yet underway. The company plans to issue a statement to the Sydney Stock Exchange when it reopens after the Christmas break, but it's understood that it's already withdrawn its handful of mainly Indonesian-based geologists from the area until tensions ease.
They have been conducting what's known as trenching, taking samples of soil as part of a prospecting operation, to establish whether or not there is minable gold in the area. But any actual mine would still be many years away.
The Indonesian-based Mining Advocacy Network website claims that the protests were organised because local farmers and fishermen are concerned that a gold mine would disrupt agricultural lands and water resources and it has called for the sacking of the local chief of police.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs says it's aware of the reported deaths and police inquiry.
The area has been the site of a series of demonstrations dating back several months, with Arc Explorations stating in its June quarterly report that no exploration work had been possible due to protests.
This latest escalation of violence will do little to instil confidence in any future mining operations in the region.
PETER CAVE: Matt Peacock reporting."The course of true love never did run smooth," Lysander tells us in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. And while that may be a frustrating truth in real life, it serves literature well. The most romantic love stories involve a convincing plot, which means conflict. After all, would Romeo and Juliet be half as beloved if the two swooning teens lived happily ever after?
The best love stories are ones when the characters are achingly flawed humans. They stumble over their words or advances; they break hearts and don't always mend them; and they leave us frustrated, but also relieved that we're not the only ones to make mistakes. But ultimately, the greatest stories reveal the transformative power of love and its ability to triumph over missteps and mistakes, whether it's in a world like our own or one of the author's imagining. While this triumph doesn't always equal the erasure of past griefs or pains, these love stories show that love is always worth the effort, if at least as a partnership against the tragedies of life.
Happy or sad, the greatest love stories of all time provide the kind of noble love we aspire to in our own lives. Here are just a few of the best and most romantic ones.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
It doesn't get more classic than our favorite verbal sparring partners Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. At first mismatched and even appalled by one another, Lizzy and Darcy find themselves circling one another in fits and starts, flirting with their very best Regency-era manners in tact. What makes Pride and Prejudice so satisfying is the tension created by familial misunderstanding, class separation, and of course, their own feelings, swimming just below the surface.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Don't let the page count scare you off; within Tolstoy's dizzying 1,400-page epic is one of the greatest love stories of all time. Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostov fall in love, only to be drawn apart by Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia and Natasha's ill-fated affair with Anatole. Betrayed and angry, Andrei throws himself back into battle, only to be wounded. While floating in and out of consciousness, he realizes that love is greater than any human emotion or feeling. And in a plot twist worthy of your very favorite soap, Natasha becomes his nurse. While a happy ending eludes them, their reunion may have you going through a box of tissues.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Trapped in an abusive marriage, Celie's chances at finding true love seem impossible — until she meets Shug Avery, one of her husband's former lovers. Shug radiates confidence as an individual and singer, and she knows how to take charge of her own fate. Celie find herself drawn to her, and they embark on an affair. The love between them enables Celie to stand strong in who she is and claim her own happiness. Celie and Shug's relationship illustrates the possibilities of a love that defies expectations and leads to self-discovery and coming into one's own strength.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
I know, seeing The Fault in Our Stars on the same list as classics tomes like War and Peace may seem a little wrong, but here's my case for it: The love between Hazel and Gus has swept up readers across the world in a story filled with hope, affection, and ultimately loss. Despite their young age and illness, both Hazel and Gus remind us of the power of love to provide us with support for the time we're here on Earth.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The lone non-fiction selection in the list, The Year of Magical Thinking requires an exception. Joan Didion meditates on the loss of her husband John Dunne, just as her daughter Quintana Roo became gravely sick. A heartbreaking reflection on grief and loss, Didion's prose details the difficulties of suddenly losing a partner, lover, and ultimately friend, and the large and small shifts that occur in your own life. Keep the tissues nearby for when Didion writes about her last birthday spent with John.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
While at first seeming like a tale of unrequited love and boarding school crushes, Kathy and Tommy's eventual coupling and happiness together is undone by forces larger than them. Their commitment to one another, while strong and transformative, is more a testament to clinging to one another in a turbulent world, where changing society is all but impossible.
A Little Life by Hanya Yangihara
Largely considered the "it" book of 2015, the horrific abuse of Jude often overshadows the rest of the plot of A Little Life. But it is the aching and hopeful love that forms between Jude and his roommate Willem that drives the emotional core of the novel. Their deep love develops from platonic friendship, illustrating the depth of their bond. But with the tragic nature of A Little Life, Willem's love for Jude cannot take away a past filled with neglect and abuse. While redemption of any kind is difficult to find, the love between Willem and Jude shows that the effort and work put into a relationship is its own kind of victory.
Image: MyBookBath/flickrThere’s something unnatural about wildly successful people who decide that, actually, they prefer to be anonymous after all. What kind of person chooses to forfeit the rewards of fame: the praise, the power, the prestige? We might say we admire them for eschewing the worldly, but there’s an edge of resentment to our fascination too. It goes against human nature.
In poetry, the most famous example of such a retreat is Arthur Rimbaud, who quit writing at 21 after five years of blazing innovation and productivity. Rimbaud spent the rest of his short life traveling, and he became one of the first Europeans to visit Ethiopia. His letters show him apparently consumed with his work as a trader. Critics call his abrupt abandonment of his gift “le silence de Rimbaud.”
Related: Artificial Art
By Peter Orr
A conversation with Rosemary Tonks. By Peter Orr
Decades later, a London poet named Rosemary Tonks would name Rimbaud as one of her main influences. If she was not quite the scandalous sensation of her forebear, she was nonetheless respected, and she ran with a bohemian crowd. Tonks published two collections of poetry in the 1960s, along with six novels and frequent reviews. Philip Larkin corresponded with her and anthologized her. Critics took her seriously; Cyril Connolly praised the “unexpected power” of her “hard-faceted yet musical poems.” And then, quite suddenly, she disappeared.
Tonks died in April 2014, at the age of 85. Now the British publisher Bloodaxe Books has issued Bedouin of the London Evening, a slim collection that features all of Tonks’s published poetry, selections of her prose, and an introduction by Bloodaxe publisher Neil Astley, who has become her champion. Though Tonks has been frequently anthologized, much of her poetry has not been available since the 1970s; all her books fell out of print. The poet that emerges in the pages of the new collection is somehow aloof and fragile, tough and sensual. And her long self-exile casts her writing in an almost eerie light. What was Rosemary Tonks running from, and how far away did she really get?
•
Rosemary Tonks was born in 1928 in Gillingham, in southeast England. Her father was an engineer who died of complications from malaria in Nigeria before she was born; her mother was “unable to cope,” to use Astley’s term. Tonks, an only child with eyesight problems, grew up in children’s homes and then boarding school. Later she spent time in Lagos with her mother, who had remarried. Her stepfather, too, would die in Nigeria.
Tonks was back in London at age 18, “very poor, and beginning to read Joyce and Baudelaire.” She also began hanging around clubs such as the Mandrake, a dark jazz joint in Soho. Her first book, On Wooden Wings: The Adventures of Webster, a children’s book that she also illustrated, was published in 1948. The next year, at 20, she married Michael “Micky” Lightband, an engineer like her father. His job took the young couple to India and Pakistan. In Karachi Rosemary contracted polio, which left her with a withered right hand. She returned to England and then traveled alone to Paris, covering her hand with a smart black glove. “In illness you want to be alone,” she told an interviewer later, foreshadowing the final decades of her life.
Back together in London, the couple settled in the stylish neighborhood of Downshire Hill, Hampstead, just around the corner from the aristocratic poet and critic Dame Edith Sitwell. Tonks was a vivacious hostess; her cousin told Astley, “She effervesced and often held a dinner table spellbound.”
Meanwhile, she was writing. Between 1963 and 1972, she wrote six satirical novels, which seem to have been generally |
date is unclear.
According to the cousin, Ahmed, Zakia was pregnant at the time and planned to have the baby there, but she miscarried and they returned to the United States after a couple of months. Her brother Rasel told Chu that his sister and brother-in-law reported losing their passports while abroad and "caused a big fuss at the embassy asking to come back to America and were on the watch list for terrorism."
In the Skype chat, Rasel said he learned about it the summer of 2013 when the FBI showed up at the family home in Ohio. Agents grilled him and confiscated his computer, becoming alarmed by emails about "urban terror" that were actually just a reference to a computer game the old crew played, he wrote.
The Ohio family hired a lawyer to deal with the FBI, Rasel wrote. He said he had little to tell law enforcement anyway, because he and his sister had been "estranged" since she got married.
The Disappearance
The depression and academic problems that Rasel confronted in the fall of 2013, during his senior year of high school, brought about a rapprochement with his sister, he said.
"I broke down in front of her and asked her a simple question," he wrote in the Skype chat with Chu in the fall of 2014.
"For what reason was I born?"
Her answer: "You were created to worship your creator."
Rasel told Chu it was like "the dark clouds had parted and I could see the light." He said he began practicing Islam, found his depression "cured," and stopped taking his medicine.
Now that he was 18, Rasel left home and moved in with Jaffrey and Zakia — who were getting ready to make a big move themselves.
In May 2014, the three of them packed up the Riverview Ave. apartment and headed for California. Their Ohio landlord, Jim Ryan, said he mailed them a deposit check, minus $90 because they had changed the locks without permission, but it was never cashed.
The ISIS documents obtained by NBC News indicate that two months after moving out of Ohio, Jaffrey and Rasel entered Syria at Tel Abyad, a city near the Turkish border that had just been captured by the so-called caliphate.
A member loyal to ISIS waves an flag in Raqqa June 29, 2014. Stringer / Reuters / REUTERS
Jaffrey took the fighter name Abu Ibrahim al-Amriki (the American); Rasel would be called Abu Abduallah al-Amriki.
Salem Khan said he heard from his son only twice after he left the U.S., once when he was in Turkey and once after he crossed into Syria. "I yelled at him," the father said of their last conversation in September 2014.
Rasel resurfaced in November 2014 in the Skype chat with Chu, who thought he had carried through on a plan to return to Bangladesh. He said he was overseas, but was vague about where.
"It's a long and messy story," Rasel wrote.
Jaffrey and Rasel arrived in Syria as the U.S. was ramping up its air campaign against ISIS. According to members of the Khan family and to a senior U.S. intelligence source, Rasel was killed in Syria, though the timing and circumstances are murky.
Zakia — the girl who dreamed of being a doctor — ended up working with her husband in a hospital in Raqqa, ISIS' main hub in Syria, according to Salem Khan.
The couple is in sporadic contact with Jaffrey's mom, Shaista Khan, who said she hears from them every couple of months through Telegram, an encrypted text messaging application.
Sometimes the news is disturbing. Ahmed Khan said Shaista called his house once to report that Jaffrey had observed the mass beheading of Christians in Syria.
In recent months, the pair sent a photo of their daughter, Miriam. Posted to Shaista's Facebook page, it shows a sleeping baby swaddled in a fuzzy yellow onesie, oblivious to the atrocities being carried out by the organization her parents joined. Experts say ISIS encourages its fighters to marry and raise families, to give their so-called state a sense of stability.
Jaffrey Khan and Zakia Nasrin had a baby girl, Miriam, after leaving the U.S., according to relatives. Khan's mother posted this photo on her Facebook page. via Facebook
Jaffrey, Rasel and Zakia are among just a few dozen Americans who have managed to get to Syria and sign up with ISIS. FBI Director James Comey said last week that the number of Americans seeking to join its ranks overseas — already low on a per capita basis — had fallen even further to just one a month since August.
In an interview with NBC News, Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, the Justice Department's point person on national security, said he could not discuss specific cases or say whether federal investigators had missed opportunities to stop the trio from physically joining ISIS.
"We have a responsibility to stop those who would travel overseas to join the Islamic State and the Levant, both because of what they do over there — murder, rape, slavery," Carlin told NBC News.
"But also because we don't want them going over there, getting additional skills, training, and coming back as hardened operatives to do complex attacks here in the United States."
Law enforcement has "gotten a lot better at disrupting those who would go join as foreign terrorist fighters" Carlin said, but stressed that civilians who see radicalization in their midst have a responsibility, too.
Carlin cited an analysis he said shows that in four out of five terrorist cases, someone in the community is aware of what's happening — but only half of them alert the authorities.
"It's so important that if a family knows that someone has traveled, that they communicate and go into law enforcement," Carlin said. "You don't want your loved one being killed overseas. You don't want your loved one killing other people overseas."
U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin Alex Wong / Getty Images, file
There is no indication anyone from the Ohio or California families raised the alarm, and Ahmed Khan said they were too scared or never thought it would go as far as it did.
All of the parents said they have spoken to the FBI since their children left the country. They expressed fear of retribution and a desire to put a dark chapter behind them and move on with their lives in America.
Salem Khan said that while he knew his son had problems, he felt that once he was an adult, there was only so much he could do to influence him. On the other side of the country, Mannan suggested that it was American permissiveness that had allowed Zakia and Rasel to embrace anti-U.S. radicalism, saying if the family had stayed in Bangladesh, they would still be together.
"There I have the right to control my children and I can control my children. Here I don't have any rights when my children have 18 years," he said.
Mannan said he had no idea what happened to his children after they left the U.S.
"I don't have any communication with them and I don't want to have anything to do with them," he said. "I don't even want to see their faces."20 photos
The third installment of Hidden Maryland heads to Baltimore Carmelite Monastery, where 18 sisters from all walks of life garden, share meals, and cheer Baltimore sports teams in between devoting their lives to prayer.
By Jonathan Pitts, The Baltimore Sun
On a typical day, as you head north on Dulaney Valley Road just above I-695, you might be speeding to outrun the tailgater behind you, glorying in that steal you just scored at the nearby Towson Town Center or just trying to make Jarrettsville in time for dinner.
If so, you might miss an invitation to history.
Turn left at a little white sign south of Seminary Ave., cruise up a wooded lane and park by a fieldstone mansion, and you’ll find yourself on the 27 quiet acres that serve as home to Baltimore Carmel, which descends from the first community of religious women formed in the 13 colonies.
“Oh, there’s a whole other world back here — that’s one way to put it,” says Sister Monika Bies, a German native who joined the community in 2001. “It’s more interesting than you might guess.”
Selah, as the Old Testament might say. Indeed it is.
One of 65 Carmelite monasteries in the nation, Baltimore Carmel houses 18 nuns and two postulants (aspiring members), women ranging in age from 33 to 93. Their ex-professions include dentistry, nursing, education and the law.
Their spiritual focus is prayer, and their roots go a long way back.
The Carmelites, an order of the Roman Catholic Church, were born around the year 1200, when a group of religious hermits set up a community on Mt. Carmel in what was then Palestine. Their brief formula of life, the Rule of St. Albert, laid out 21 articles. These called for members to live in individual cells, make vows of poverty and obedience and observe silence from evening through morning.
The goal: to develop lives of constant prayer.
“The external details of our lives might differ, but every Carmelite believes prayer is a fundamental part of life and has a real effect on the world,” says Sister Constance (Connie) FitzGerald, 79, who has lived at the monastery since 1951.
By the 1700s, the order was well established in Western Europe, including Spain and southern France, and later that century, a contingent of women from southern Maryland travelled to the Low Countries (later Belgium) to enter English-speaking monasteries.
In 1790, they boarded a boat home and set up a convent at Port Tobacco, the first Carmelite monastery in America. It was moved to a site on Aisquith Street in Baltimore in 1831, to another on Biddle in 1843, and to the Towson location in 1961. Along the way, the place opened like a budding flower.
For 185 years, the nuns practiced strict seclusion. They wore habits and veils, stayed behind grates when interacting with the public and rarely left the grounds.
Then came the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, which sought to modernize Roman Catholicism.
Baltimore Carmel, like many others, adapted. To some, it was a relief.
“I was fine with the old ways at the time, but the habits were heavy and hot, we looked like penguins, and I still have bald spots from the veils,” says a chuckling Sister Barbara Jean LaRochester, 80, who joined in the 1950s. “I’m glad we left those days behind.”
Today’s nuns wear white robes for services, regular clothes the rest of the time. The grates and veils are long gone. And since 1990, they worship in a light-filled chapel alongside members of the public, more than 150 of whom regularly come for Sunday Eucharist.
“In a world where the culture is much less Christian than it was, it’s necessary for contemplatives to be more visible,” says Sister Colette Ackerman, the monastery’s prioress. “Our mission is to share contemplation with the people.”
At the monastery today, life alternates between silence and sound, aloneness and community, spirit and matters of the world.
At 7:30 on a recent morning, the women file into a chapel for lauds, an “office” in praise of God. Sister Monika, a musician, breaks the silence with some bright notes on the piano, and the sisters take up a quiet chant. “Praise the eternal God in all your words and deeds,” they sing.
At 8, a dozen lay friends join the nuns for Mass. They pray for the Syrian people, for the 19 firefighters recently killed in Arizona, for a friend who has passed away. Then it’s time for work, another form of intimacy with God.
Sister Connie, a Carmelite scholar, heads upstairs to tend the archives, which include such treasures as the land grant for the old Port Tobacco site and a relic — a bone fragment — from St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic and poet who helped reform the order in the 15th Century. “We draw strength from our history,” she says.
Sister Mary Fleig, tall and strong at 49, heads outside. She tends both the website and the rolling, well-manicured grounds, and she and Celia Ashton, 36, a postulant and former dentist, are clearing brush from a grove of trees.
“You don’t always get to see the results of prayer. Here, you work for a while, and the weeds are gone,” Fleig says. “That’s a blessing, too.”
Up the hill at the community garden, Sister Judy Murray, 66, tends peppers, beets, eggplant and more, striving always to keep the divine in mind. “God started things in a garden — at least that’s our foundational myth,” she says. And at the midday meal, the nuns sing “Happy Birthday” to the Rev. John Donahue, a community friend who’s turning 80.
They tear into salad and roast pork. The dining hall buzzes with noise as they talk family and theology, brain science and a bit of baseball. Before long, they’re back at their jobs.
In a quiet room overlooking a courtyard, Sister Robin Stratton, 73, sits down to answer the phones. People call in all the time, she says, with prayer requests or simply to share their burdens. She tries to listen well.
Her favorite caller, she says, was a lady who simply said, “I’m out of hope. Can you hope for me?” The two prayed together. The woman kept calling. Fifteen years later, they’re close friends though they’ve never met.
“I sometimes think we’re God’s heart,” Sister Robin says.
As the hours go by, the sisters dine together, read Scripture, watch the news and retire to their rooms for more of their two-plus hours of daily private contemplation. At Baltimore Carmel, circa 2013, it all feels like part of the same process.
It’s hidden, but also in plain view.
“There’s a connection between prayer and people’s lives,” Sister Connie says. “We believe that. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”
jonathan.pitts@baltsun.com
Have a suggestion for a Hidden Maryland location? Tell us about it at baltimoresun.com/hiddenthoughts.
Baltimore Carmelite Monastery, also called Baltimore Carmel
Where: 1318 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson
You never would’ve guessed that: In Scripture, God sent a raven to bring food to the hermit-prophet Elijah – one reason the nuns at Baltimore Carmel are rabid Ravens fans.
ALSO SEE
Baltimore Carmel website: baltimorecarmel.org
Sister Frances Celine: Moved by the spirit [Sun archives]
Carmelite Sisters Of Baltimore: Prayer for a world in pain [Sun archives]Over the last 15 years, China’s international diplomacy has marked it as something of a geopolitical adolescent, like a teenager who suddenly has the physical strength and desires of an adult, but not the experience and savvy to manage them.
But recent behavior suggests that China’s foreign policy is maturing, and that Chinese Communist Party leaders may finally be coming to terms with the fact that a global power must behave differently than a peripheral developing country. Whether Beijing continues on this path will go a long way to determining whether China’s rise remains peaceful, or turns threatening.
Since the start of the 21st century, China has undergone a massive transformation. From a mostly poor, inward-looking, developing country, it has become a major global economic power with interests and activities all over the world. Countries, organizations and individuals everywhere have had to scramble to adapt. But no one has been more confused about and unprepared to handle the implications of this change than the Chinese themselves, and the sophistication of their international relations has lagged behind their overall power as a result.
Although the Communist leadership has for years aspired to Great Power status, it was less clear on how a Great Power should behave. China often came across as “insecure, confused, selfish and truculent.” With its major global rival, the United States, China was an important commercial partner, but also a cyber thief and trade nuisance; with its immediate neighbors, it was often thuggish, bullying and unresponsive to even minor requests; and nowhere was its lack of nuance in its international relations more obvious than on the African continent.
Though China’s investment in Africa has indeed been massive, totaling tens of billions of dollars, much of the value of this investment has been captured by Chinese firms and African elites, not the local African population. For large infrastructure construction projects, China would often import hundreds or thousands of Chinese laborers to Africa, rather than hire allegedly less-skilled local workers. Further, what local labor was employed at construction, mining, logging and oil projects often complained of substandard working conditions and pay. And of course, the projects themselves largely involved the transfer of raw materials back to China and the sale of Chinese goods in Africa, in an uncomfortable mirror-image of European colonialism of a century earlier. This monomaniacal focus on commercial gain may have served Beijing’s short-term interest in economic growth, but it brought ever-greater scrutiny and criticism from African and international sources.
In its repeated efforts to brush aside, shut down and undermine this kind of criticism, the Communist leadership in Beijing usually returned to the line that China supports “non-interference” in the internal affairs of other countries: If African political leaders were willing to go along with China’s requests, it was not for the rest of the world to question. A relic of the Mao years, this idea had grown out of the original anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist impulse that was at the heart of the early People’s Republic: let the developing world manage its own affairs and focus on what it decides is important, not what outsiders think should be important.
But in recent years, this philosophy’s frequent use has begun to ring somewhat hollow internationally, as China’s global presence has become so broad and deep that its own interests have become tied up in questions of the internal affairs of other countries. For instance, the 2011 election in Zambia turned in large measure on a huge Chinese copper project in the country that opposition candidates said exploited the population; China sought to influence the results through lobbying and political work, an effort completely at odds with its traditional policies.
Further, as various African political and economic leaders across the continent begin to organize against the more pernicious effects of Chinese influence, Beijing and its agents are finding that its reputation for unfairness with the population is not a mere afterthought and that ignoring local wishes can come with a steep cost.
Finally, more Chinese firms and workers are finding themselves operating in countries with significant local danger. Just last month, Chinese citizens were killed in the terrorist attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali. Beijing is now being forced to admit that it has a stake in the security dimension of its relationship with African countries and may actually have a role as a security provider on the continent. All of this easily ranks as “interference” in other countries’ domestic affairs.
For most of the last 10 years, Communist leaders in Beijing have seemed unfazed by these criticisms. But as the recent, second “Forum on China-Africa Cooperation” (FoCAC) concluded in Johannesburg last month, it appeared from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s statements there that China is beginning to recognize that its interests are not only commercial, but reputational and security-related as well. In addition to promising billions more in development aid, China is committing itself to industrializing Africa, rather than simply selling it goods it produces at home. And in pledging to commit its own troops to peacekeeping missions — as well as establishing a permanent naval base in Djibouti, its first-ever overseas base — Beijing is showing a commitment to provide security rather than just use it.
It remains absolutely possible that these promises will never be fully realized, and that Chinese Communist Party leadership will reverse course and return to its strident and uncompromising tone. The entrenched interests inside the Communist party that favor such an approach are strong, and the more flexible approach is more expensive, slower, and one with which China has less experience.
It is even a more open question whether Chinese diplomacy could effectively export this more “mature” foreign policy to other regions, like Central Asia or Latin America, where there is less of an obvious power differential between China and its counterparties, let alone to Europe, Japan or the United States. But in even making these small, halting steps towards a less petulant, more inclusive foreign policy, China is showing that it just might be willing to make the compromises that will be necessary if it is ever to become a true Great Power.The Greek government has deployed a lot of populist and nationalist rhetoric, and eurocrats seem shocked. But the miracle is that this hasn’t happened until now.
A few years ago, debtor-country governments might have gone along with austerity in the real belief that it would pay off in the form of a strong recovery. But the alleged technocrats of Brussels have lost all credibility on that front. Furthermore, while center-right governments are in some cases managing to hold on politically by posing as the only people who can do the painful but necessary stuff, center-left parties that take on the role of agents of austerity have imploded, in some cases essentially disappearing from the scene.
That said, as I’ve noted before, individual politicians — center-right especially, but center-left in some cases — may do OK personally even if their policies are wildly unpopular; they can become fixtures at Davos, look forward to appointments at the Commission or other European institutions. This has, I’d argue, acted as a deterrent to feeding the populist backlash voters are ever more ready to endorse.
But the current Greek government isn’t center-left, and its leading figures are never going to reemerge as Davos Man. For them, success must come in the form of support from their own voters rather than an international elite.
I’m not sure whether creditor governments understand this. Sometimes it seems as if they are expecting Tsipras to cave any day now. Other times it seems as if their plan is to turn Greece into an object lesson of what happens if you don’t go along. Most likely, there’s a lot of fuzzy-mindedness all around. But this is getting dangerous.San Jose has been all a buzz over the news from last week that the city's population hit the one million mark. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this means that the South Bay city is one of ten in this nation to have a population that size or more.
Like any city with a large population, San Jose has a wide variety of goings-on to keep the majority of our residents busy this summer. We have familiar events that you can count on that most metropolitan clusters have such as: Music in the Park, Fourth of July Fireworks, free outdoor Symphony concerts and a fantastic Summer Jazz Fest. And in addition to these well produced, well-marketed blockbusters, we also have things to do that are smaller, niche-ier, and a little harder to find but uniquely our own. Whether you’re a legacy resident that has lived in the area since it was dense with orchards or you're (fairly) new to the area and want to experience a diverse range of events, a memorable summer awaits you in San Jose.
San Jose Skate Night Monthly event – ongoing
More Information San Jose’s hot summer days almost always slip into cool comfortable nights which makes for perfect roller skating weather. The South Bay is now devoid of indoor skating rinks so in the typical Silicon Valley problem-solving style, three residents -- Justin Triano, Amy Hewett and Liz Ruiz (both former SV Roller Derby Girls) -- got together to make one big roving roller rink that travels through our downtown. Accompanied by a mobile disco sound unit and laser light show, the event moves throughout the evening to open plazas that are begging for people to use them. The organizers plan for the event to continue monthly. Skate rentals are available prior to the event and the start point location varies (announced 24 hours beforehand).
44th Annual Glass Arts Conference June 5–7
Schedule and Details Seattle-based Glass Art Society is hosting this year’s glass arts conference in downtown San Jose with the theme: Interface: Glass, Art, and Technology. The host city was chosen because Silicon Valley is “where technology is king and new technological ideas are generated daily,” Roger MacPherson, GAS President said. The three day conference will engage glass artists and collectors in panel discussions, hands-on workshops, demos, a mobile hot shop, plus many free & open to the public events like the glass marketplace. In addition to the official GAS programming, 14 local galleries are hosting concurrent glass exhibitions throughout the city center featuring themed shows as well as broad group displays of this fascinating material. A "Gallery Hop" is scheduled for Friday night June 5 with shuttle service departing every 30 minutes at key locations.
SubZERO Festival June 5 & 6
Schedule and Details The SubZERO Festival, held annually on the First Friday & Saturday of June, is the art scene’s kick-off party to the summer season in the South Bay. Now in its 8th year, this subculture gathering of those that dwell in the underground will once again take over the arts & culture district of San Jose known as the SoFA District. This seemingly small area (just 3 blocks) will be packed with over a hundred visual artists, performers and independent creative businesses. The 3 stages of live music feature 24 bands in the indie, alternative and experimental genres. “All Hail the Progenitors of Culture” is their battle cry with the intention to show San Jose artists do live and thrive here all year round.
Alchemy Museum and Lab Exhibit at Rosicrucian Park June 21
More Information San Jose will soon be home to the world’s largest, and the nation’s only, Alchemy Museum and Lab. Curated and designed by practicing alchemist and author Dennis William Hauck, the museum will be located at Rosicrucian Park, the same grounds that houses the world famous Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.
In anticipation of the Alchemy Museum’s opening -- slated for June 2016 -- the Egyptian Museum will be presenting an exhibition that features highlights from the Alchemy Museum's collection. While you’re there, be sure to check out the grounds, which feature numerous sculptures of ancient Egyptian gods, a Pythagoras statue, a Senet game, and the new Alchemy Garden, which is beautifully arranged to symbolize the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
50 and Looking Forward... at The Triton Museum of Art Through July 12
More Information For 50 years The Triton has dedicated its beautiful exhibition spaces to contemporary artists from the greater Bay Area. This summer they celebrate their 50th anniversary with 50 and Looking Forward..., which opened May 16th. The exhibition focuses on the future rather than the past, with 19 local artists that the curators have deemed “the ones to watch.” The group exhibit is as diverse as the area The Triton aims to serve. A great day to visit the museum and check out the show would be on June 20th during their Summer Solstice Art Festival that's held on their back lawn, among their outdoor sculpture collection.
Think and Die Thinking July 9–12
Schedule and Details Since 2011 the Think and Die Thinking collective has held an annual DIY punk & indie music festival that's by and for LGBT, women, and people of color. Each year the list of bands gets longer and the event spills over into another day. This year the event is 4 days and will be hosted by 3 venues to accommodate all the participants. The main venue, and beneficiary of the proceeds, is the Billy De Frank LGBT Community Center; a well respected and important resource for the LGBT community since 1981.Recently I’ve experienced a great deal of disappointment when it comes to cinema. At the start of the summer I was disappointed by The Great Gatsby, then I was disappointed by Scary Movie V (given that my expectations were super low, it was an achievement), then I was disappointed by Iron Man 3, followed by The Wolverine and most recently Kick-Ass 2. Originally I just thought that cinema was getting worse, but I realised it’s not cinema but the media as a whole. As long as something makes money, the business just don’t give a shit if it’s good. Why would they? You make schlock and people pay for it. You make a fantastic film and nobody even notices. Because your general cinema goer just wants to sit there and drool into their popcorn, as the leggy brunette playing the lead, bends over a car and turns to the camera – one for the wank bank. You think I’m being too general here? Well I’m not. I go to the cinema at least once a week and time after time I see the same slack jawed yokels giggling away at every poop and fart joke. If I take a trip away from the multiplex and to the nearest artsy cinema I’m greeted with about six people watching a fantastically well made film with their attention firmly centred on the medium at hand – no rustling of wrappers, no tweeting during the film and no talking. You want to know which film makes the most money? It’s the one the yokels went to watch, the one where the robots punched each other in poorly directed scenes. At the end of the day, can you blame the studio?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not writing this as an attack on the cinema proles. No, I envy them. Let’s look at this as a 1984 metaphor (you know because I started with the whole prole thing). Your average cinema goer is the prole living in the London slum. Sure they don’t have the greatest quality of life, but they are free. Then there are people like myself. We work for The Outer Party. We believe ourselves better than the proles, even though we are more trapped. Basically we just know too much. Some of us become institutionalised. We see only the brilliance of our situation. Others envy the freedom of the proles. Let me put all this into context. I’ve studied the art of filmmaking both academically and as a hobbyist. The knowledge I have gathered makes me point out errors and faults with every film I see. On top of that it often gives me this false sense of superiority over your average movie goer because I “get” art house and indie cinema. But really all I want to be is a prole. All’s I want to do is walk into Grown Ups 2 and laugh uncontrollably at the poorly written and childish humour. But I can’t. I’ve taken the red pill and I can now see the Matrix. Basically I’m not in Kansas any more.
Once you see how the magic is done, there really is no going back. It’s like finding out that Father Christmas isn’t real, or that card tricks are just that – tricks – or when you discover that there is no Tooth Fairy. Once you know it’s all over. Once you find out that Santa isn’t real you feel better than the misguided fools who still believe. Then down the line you really wish that you were just like them. Your jaded adult view of the world has left you broken and scared. You don’t see the good anymore, all you can see is wasted opportunity and forgotten youth. Am I getting outside the realms of cinema here? Maybe, but it’s all relative. My first major disappointment was related to cinema. When I was 8 I went to see Star Wars Episode 1 in the pictures. Bam! Thats where it all started. I wanted to know how a film could be so boring. From there on I started to question stuff. Of course it was only later on when I truly realised to what extent, and the reasons why, the film sucked. By that point I’d payed to see two more woeful films and I was more disillusioned than ever. (As a side note I also payed to see Phantom Menace in 3D, but that was mostly for the pure sadistic thrill.) Am I saying Star Wars ruined my life? No, but i’m certainly saying that Star Wars ruined cinema for me. It made me question the magic. Star Wars was like that douche (look away if you don’t want films ruined for effect) who ruins Fight Club by telling you it was all in his head, that Christian Bale has a twin in The Prestige, or that Soylent Green is people. I’m done with spoiling wildly spoilt films for effect now, so you can all look back.
In the end I’m often not blown away by many movies for multiple reasons. Firstly; most movies suck and are made for the lowest common denominator. Secondly; I’m jaded, overly critical and a bit pretentious. And finally; because nobody really cares anymore. People are making money off crap, and that’s all they care about. Filmmaking isn’t the art it once was, It’s just a tool of the corporations and capitalism as a whole. And you know what? I’m as dragged in as those mindless people with their popcorn and supersized Pepsi. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t have bothered writing this.
by Matthew Husselbury
@Messiah_MPH
(edited by Ian Dutton)
AdvertisementsA few months ago SsBrewTech announced their new InfuSsion Mash Tun design that was going into production. Well good news, its almost here! You can read the original post here. They plan on starting shipping within the next few weeks (End of June early July) so get ready to have a shiny new piece of equipment to brew with. Start planning your recipes now.
With the latest announcement that they are getting ready to ship some more details were released as well as the announcement of some new extras! Majority of the features stayed the same but they did listen to feedback and will be doing volume markers at.5 gallon increments down to the very bottom. See all the features on SsBrewTech site.
Now on to some of the new extras. SsBrewTech announced that they have designed a sparge arm to go with the MT. This is going to be offered as an optional part and available to purchase from the site about 2 or 3 weeks after the MT release. This sparge arm is made from 304 stainless steel (as expected) and will be gravity fed by default, but you can always hook up a pump and an inline flow control valve to regulate the pressure of the spray nozzle (we will test it both ways). They also announced that the arm will feature an integrated silicone mount that will attach to the MT handle. The mount is removable and also allows you to adjust the arm up and down for optimal spray across the grain bed. Check out the photo in the slide show below.
They have also announced that there will be a temperature stabilization system for the MT as an optional part for purchase. Its a heating pad that will attach to the conical bottom via an adhessive and is powered by the FTSs digital controller. Now this isnt strong enough to do step mash or heat up the hot liquor to strike temp but is perfect for keeping rock solid mash temps without decay.
Last but not least, they also announced that in addition to the 10gal InfuSsion Mash Tun they began tooling and production of a 20 gallon version which is expected around September. The design should be the same as the 10gal (obviously only bigger) with the same features, however it will have a special feature, a customized manometer! For those who dont know what a manometer is its used to measure the pressure differential from the top and bottom of the grain bed. The idea is to keep the pressure differential as low as possible.
SsBrewTech is doing big things and bringing commercial style equipment into the hands and garages of homebrewers. Very excited to get our hands on the InfuSsion Mash Tun and get brewing!© Provided by AFP A conservation officer in British Columbia said cheetahs are typically shy and less aggressive than other large cats, after one of the African cats was spotted wandering through the outback
Canadian conservation officials and federal police were on the lookout Friday for a cheetah wearing a bright orange scarf and wandering through the snow-covered outback.
The big African cat was spotted crossing a highway near Creston, British Columbia, on Thursday by a motorist who stopped to photograph it.
"It was wearing an orange scarf or collar, suggesting it's a domesticated animal. So we don't believe it's a serious threat," British Columbia conservation officer Joe Caravetta told AFP.
He said cheetahs are typically shy and less aggressive than other large cats, and "this one is probably used to being around people."
But as a precaution, local schoolchildren have been kept indoors and residents have been asked to mind their small pets, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Ownership of exotic animals is allowed in British Columbia with a special permit, but no permits have been issued to anyone living in the area where the cheetah was spotted, Caravetta noted.
Three conservation officers have been sent to track the cheetah, helped by a fresh snowfall. With temperatures hovering just below freezing, Caravetta said a cheetah can probably last only a few days in the Canadian wilds.
The Toronto Star quoted a local school administrator as saying "some of the (students) are excited" about a cheetah in their midst. The official noted that bear or cougar sightings are common in the Canadian outback, but nobody in this area has ever seen a cheetah.
The driver who spotted the animal told public broadcaster CBC: "My first thought was, 'that's a cheetah. What's it doing there?'" She described it as panting and seemingly in distress.
She said she tried to "coax it over," but the animal just kept walking up the road until it disappeared over a snow bank.SINGAPORE - Businessman Ho Kwon Ping has called for limits to Singapore's Internal Security Act (ISA), under which people can be detained without trial if they are deemed to pose a threat to national security.
The one-time political detainee also called for the phasing out of caning and capital punishment, and the introduction of National Service for new male citizens and Singaporean women.
In a lecture on security and sustainability on Thursday, he said Singapore must evolve to keep up with changing social values.
"A willingness to change with the times... can prevent the intellectual rigidity which weakens the sustainability of our society as a dynamic and evolving culture," he said in the third of five Institute of Policy Studies-Nathan lectures.
Mr Ho, the first S R Nathan Fellow, suggested gradually liberalising old policies.
A former journalist, he was himself detained under the ISA in 1977 |
Tragic Slip
• -1 Ratchet Bomb
Red Aggro
In:
• +2 Doom Blade
• +2 Deathrite Shaman
• +1 Scavenging Ooze
• +1 Mutilate
Out:
• -3 Underworld Connections
• -3 Liliana of the Veil
Wrap Up
I’m taking a few weeks off of magic to move from my tiny apartment to a much larger town house! Going forward my next major event is SCG Cinti – hope to see you there.
Cheers,
~Jeff HooglandHALTOM CITY, Tex. — Exactly 100 days after the legislative filibuster that defied the Republican establishment and turned her into a Democratic star, State Senator Wendy Davis announced Thursday that she would run for governor, opening an underdog campaign to lead a state that last sent a Democrat to the governor’s mansion nearly 23 years ago.
Standing before an estimated 2,000 supporters at a modest redbrick arena in the working-class community where she received her high school diploma in 1981, Ms. Davis tied her candidacy to both the challenges that brought her to this unlikely campaign and to the promise of a state eternally entranced by its own mythology.
“We know that Texas is more than a state,” she said. “Texas has always been a promise. The promise that where you start has nothing to do with how far you can come. In Austin today, our current leadership thinks that promises are something you just make to the people who write the big checks.”
Ms. Davis’s speech, perhaps reflecting the difficulties of a Democrat in a conservative state, focused as much on her personal story as on her political agenda. Her mother, she has said, was a single parent with a sixth-grade education. Soon after Ms. Davis graduated from high school she got married, divorced and became a single mother herself at the age of 19, living in a trailer with her daughter, Amber, and, she told the audience, coming home to find the power turned off or her phone disconnected.Pelosi calls Bush a 'total failure' who has 'no ideas' Agence France-Presse
Published: Thursday July 17, 2008
Print This Email This House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called President George W. Bush "a total failure" who "has no ideas," in an interview with CNN. Responding to stinging criticism from Bush on the Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress and the slow pace of the legislative agenda, as Congress prepares for its one-month summer recess in August, Pelosi let loose: "You know, God bless him, bless his heart, the president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject." Pelosi, 68, said the House and Senate were busy "trying to sweep up after (Bush's) mess over and over and over again... The president knows it. He needs something to talk about. Because he has no ideas." The speaker was especially critical of Bush's proposal to lift a ban on offshore oil drilling as a means to ease the current fuel price crisis, calling it a ploy to draw attention away from his failures. "We have seven and a half years of failed energy policy by the Bush administration. We have a faltering, downturning economy. The president needs a decoy. "So he's going out there, he even has the nerve to say the economy would be better off if we could drill in protected areas offshore," she said, adding the Democrats' proposal to free up the US strategic petroleum reserve, which she said is 91.5 percent full. "And we're saying let's take 10 percent of that... and use that to put on the market so that we increase supply, reduce prices, and when the price comes down, we can buy back the oil at a lower price."Joe Raedle / Getty Images, file Dr. Trevor Smith, Florida Department of Agriculture, picks up a Giant African land snail as he works on eradicating a population of the invasive species in September 2011.
ORLANDO — South Florida is fighting a growing infestation of one of the world's most destructive invasive species: the giant African land snail, which can grow as big as a rat and gnaw through stucco and plaster.
More than 1,000 of the mollusks are being caught each week in Miami-Dade and 117,000 in total since the first snail was spotted by a homeowner in September 2011, said Denise Feiber, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Residents will soon likely begin encountering them more often, crunching them underfoot as the snails emerge from underground hibernation at the start of the state's rainy season in just seven weeks, Feiber said.
The snails attack "over 500 known species of plants... pretty much anything that's in their path and green," Feiber said.
In some Caribbean countries, such as Barbados, which are overrun with the creatures, the snails' shells blow out tires on the highway and turn into hurling projectiles from lawnmower blades, while their slime and excrement coat walls and pavement.
"It becomes a slick mess," Feiber said.
A typical snail can produce about 1,200 eggs a year and the creatures are a particular pest in homes because of their fondness for stucco, devoured for the calcium content they need for their shells.
The snails also carry a parasitic rat lungworm that can cause illness in humans, including a form of meningitis, Feiber said, although no such cases have yet been identified in the United States.
EXOTIC INVASION
The snails' saga is something of a sequel to the Florida horror show of exotic species invasions, including the well-known infestation of giant Burmese pythons, which became established in the Everglades in 2000. There is a long list of destructive non-native species that thrive in the state's moist, subtropical climate.
Experts gathered last week in Gainesville, Florida, for a Giant African Land Snail Science Symposium, to seek the best ways to eradicate the mollusks, including use of a stronger bait approved recently by the federal government.
Feiber said investigators were trying to trace the snail infestation source. One possibility being examined is a Miami Santeria group, a religion with West African and Caribbean roots, which was found in 2010 to be using the large snails in its rituals, she said. But many exotic species come into the United States unintentionally in freight or tourists' baggage.
"If you got a ham sandwich in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic, or an orange, and you didn't eat it all and you bring it back into the States and then you discard it, at some point, things can emerge from those products," Feiber said.
Authorities are expanding a series of announcements on buses, billboards and in movie theaters urging the public to be on the lookout.
The last known Florida invasion of the giant mollusks occurred in 1966, when a boy returning to Miami from a vacation in Hawaii brought back three of them, possibly in his jacket pockets. His grandmother eventually released the snails into her garden where the population grew in seven years to 17,000 snails. The state spent $1 million and 10 years eradicating them.
Feiber said many people unfamiliar with the danger viewed the snails as cute pets.
"They're huge, they move around, they look like they're looking at you... communicating with you, and people enjoy them for that," Feiber said. "But they don't realize the devastation they can create if they are released into the environment where they don't have any natural enemies and they thrive."Have you ever wanted to protest the evils of Capitalism alongside black-clad members of Antifa in-style?
Good news, Barneys New York has something for you: the “M-65 Anarchy” Antifa jacket, a “military inspired” green jacket that screams “I oppose the Trump-Pence regime” retails for a cool, and decidedly capitalistic, $375.
The jacket is emblazoned with incredibly obvious slogans, a couple of hastily-drawn “anarchy” symbols and a punk checkerboard motif from the early 1990s.
It turns out, though, that the jacket is very, very real, and still available on the Barneys New York website.
Alpha Industries, the jacket’s manufacturer, is a longtime supplier to the U.S. military, and unsurprisingly, they told the Daily Dot they were trying to sell the mystique of Antifa to all those Millennials whose progressive politics are little more than skin deep.
“We have seen resistance to power and authority become a trend in our current pop culture and society, often expressed through fashion,” a spokeswoman for Alpha Industries said. “Since 1965 the M65 field jackets have been a favored method to graphically express one’s opinion. We developed the Barneys M65 anarchy jacket to encompass the artistic and graphic expressions of individuality.”
In short, when Alpha Industries saw Antifa, it also saw upper-middle class white kids who would most certainly drop a few hundred at Barneys on some ready-made protest attire.Turnbull government MP John Alexander is scrambling to confirm whether he is a dual citizen, which if proven would trigger a byelection that would further threaten the Coalition's grip on power.
Fairfax Media can reveal Mr Alexander's father, Gilbert Alexander, was born in the UK and is likely to have conferred citizenship by descent to his son. Mr Alexander has never before been named as an MP with a parent born overseas, meaning his status has flown under the radar since the citizenship saga first erupted in July.
The Liberal member for the Sydney seat of Bennelong has confirmed he never renounced any British citizenship before entering Parliament, and cannot say definitively whether his father did so before the former tennis champion's birth in 1951.
This means he could be ineligible for Parliament under section 44 of the constitution.New research uncovers and replicates the mechanism by which a ketogenic diet curbs brain inflammation. The findings pave the way for a new drug target that could achieve the same benefits of a keto diet without having to actually follow one.
The ketogenic diet is low in carbohydrates and high in fat. The ketogenic diet is low in carbohydrates and high in fat.
The keto diet is focused on reducing the amount of carbohydrates as much as possible and increasing the amount of fat.
Besides its weight loss-related benefits, recent studies have pointed to many other advantages. For instance, Medical News Today recently covered research suggesting that the diet may increase longevity and improve memory in old age.
Other studies have noted the neurological benefits of the diet. The keto diet is used to treat epilepsy, and some have suggested that it may prove helpful in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
However, the mechanism by which a keto diet may benefit the brain in these illnesses has been a mystery. The new research - which was led by Dr. Raymond Swanson, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco - suggests that it may do so by reducing brain inflammation.
In the new study, Dr. Swanson and team show the molecular process by which the keto diet reduces brain inflammation. The researchers also identify a key protein that, if blocked, could create the effects of a keto diet.
This means that a drug could be designed to reduce inflammation in patients who cannot follow a keto diet because of other health reasons.
The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
A keto state lowers brain inflammation
A keto diet changes the metabolism, or the way in which the body processes energy. In a keto diet, the body is deprived of glucose derived from carbs, so it starts using fat as an alternative source of energy.
In the new study, Dr. Swanson and his colleagues recreated this effect by using a molecule called 2-deoxyglucose (2DG).
The 2DG molecule stopped glucose from metabolizing and created a ketogenic state in rodents with brain inflammation as well as in cell cultures. Levels of inflammation were drastically reduced - almost to healthy levels - as a result.
"We were surprised by the magnitude of our findings," said Dr. Swanson. "Inflammation is controlled by many different factors, so we were surprised to see such a large effect by manipulating this one factor. It reinforces the powerful effect of diet on inflammation."
The restricted glucose metabolism lowered the so-called NADH/NAD+ ratio. Dr. Swanson explained to MNT what this ratio refers to, saying, "NAD+ and NADH are naturally occurring molecules in cells that are involved in energy metabolism."
"Cells convert NAD+ to NADH, as an intermediary step in generating energy from glucose, and thus increase the NADH/NAD+ ratio," he added.
When this ratio is lowered, the CtBP protein gets activated and attempts to turn off inflammatory genes. As Dr. Swanson told us, "CtBP is a protein that senses the NADH/NAD ratio and regulates gene expression depending on this ratio."
So, the scientists designed a molecule that stops CtBP from being inactive. This keeps the protein in a constant "watchful" state, blocking inflammatory genes in an imitation of the ketogenic state.
Significance of the findings, future research
Speaking to MNT about the clinical implications of the study, Dr. Swanson said, "Our findings show that it is [...] possible to get the anti-inflammatory effect of a ketogenic diet without actually being ketogenic."
"[The keto] diet is difficult to follow [...], especially for people who are acutely ill. Our work identifies a potential drug target that can produce the same effect as [the] ketogenic diet." Dr. Raymond Swanson
"I think the work also increases the scientific legitimacy of the ketogenic diet/inflammation link," he added.
Dr. Swanson went on to highlight how important it is that the research conducted by he and his team uncovered a causal mechanism rather than simply pointing to an association.
"Most scientists," he told us, "are reluctant to accept cause-effect relationships between events in the absence of a defined mechanism. Here we have provided a biochemical mechanism by which diet affect inflammatory responses."
Dr. Swanson also shared with us some directions for future research. "Our work was very focused on brain trauma," he said, but "next steps will be to expand the list of pro-inflammatory conditions that can be modulated by the CtBP mechanism."
The findings could apply to other conditions that are characterized by inflammation. In diabetes, for example, the excessive glucose produces an inflammatory response, and the new results could be used to control this dynamic.
"[The] ultimate therapeutic goal would be to generate a [drug] that can act on CtBP to mimic the anti-inflammatory effect of [the] ketogenic diet," Dr. Swanson concluded.A decades-old, remarkably persistent rumor periodically rears its head on social media:
McDonald’s Uses Worm Meat Fillers But Can Legally Call It 100% Beef. Large companies have been the subject of rumors that they substitute unusual or unethical substances in their products, usually to decrease costs. McDonald’s is not immune to such claims. McDonald’s has been accused of using everything from worms to cow eyeballs in its burgers. Dating far back to at least 1978, there have been rumors that McDonald’s restaurants use earthworms in their hamburgers. The fact that McDonald’s uses cow eyeballs and worm fillers does not stop them from legally using the claim that they served 100% beef. McDonald’s has assured its consumers that its product contains 100% beef. They are allowed to do this because McDonald’s buys their “beef” from a company called “100% Beef Company”, making it possible for McDonald’s to call beef byproducts and soy products “100% beef”. McDonald’s then ships the beef to their grinding facility in Oak Brook, Illinois where they then take the ground worm filler and add it to their “100% beef patties”. McDonald’s serves billions of people around the world every year. This allows them to produce a higher profit margin by increasing the amount of patties that can be made, by increasing their product load with the worm filler. The worm filler is ground and packaged in a facility next to McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. The employees must sign a confidentiality waiver to never discuss the ingredients of the McDonald’s food products or face termination and legal repercussions. However many employees have stepped up over the years with the truth and have created a huge controversy over the quality of food that the company produces. McDonald’s has also been accused of using mutant laboratory meat, and pig fat their milkshakes and ice cream. Considering that one quarter of Americans eat McDonald’s every single day, although nutritionists recommend you do so only once a month, they are doing so unaware of the products they are putting into their body. If everybody truly knew what they were consuming, they definitely would not be eating this.
Rumors don’t rely upon common sense. It’s the “yuck!” factor that gets us, and so the earthworm additive rumor has long bedeviled McDonald’s. As chronicled by Fredrick Koenig, the McDonald’s “worm burger” rumor began in the American South in the late summer of 1978 as a tale primarily told about the Wendy’s and driven by (false) reports that an investigative television news magazine program had broken the story; then, in typical urban legend fashion, the rumor quickly focused on the most prominent exemplar in that marketplace, the giant McDonald’s fast food chain:
Toward the end of the summer of 1978, my mother-in-law said she had heard a new rumor about a hamburger chain: A story going around Chattanooga, Tennesse, alleged that Wendy’s put red worms in their hamburgers! Contamination rumors are fairly common occurrences in the food and beverage industries. They often sound silly and seem merely bothersome, but they can be devastating, as Wendy’s well knew. The first inquiring phone call was made to Wendy’s on August 15th. The caller said that the worm story had appeared on the television program 20/20. As the calls poured in, however, the name of the television program involved changed from week to week. Sometimes it was 20/20, sometimes 60 Minutes. Very early in this rumor series, a woman called Wendy’s main office to say that her husband saw a program (20/20) on which appeared representatives from Wendy’s and McDonald’s hamburger chains. The Wendy’s people, she said, admitted to putting worms in their hamburgers, but the McDonald’s spokesmen were noncommittal. Wendy’s was the main target of the worm rumor, with McDonald’s, Burger Chef, and Burger King named from time to time. After Labor Day, the Wendy’s worm rumors became even stronger in the Chattanooga area and included adjoining parts of Georgia. One whole section of Atlanta was affected. In desperation, Wendy’s Chattanooga people demanded that the head office do something. Steve Samons of Wendy’s decided to go public, while Doug Timberlake of McDonald’s opted to “lie in the weeds” and see how Wendy’s made out. A television newx conference was scheduled for September 15th. It was to feature a representative of the government meat inspection office in that region who would point out that nothing was added to the ground beef at Wendy’s or at any other fast-food chain. For some reason, he did not show up, so the production became exclusively Wendy’s, who denied all and made statements to exonerate themselves. After that effort, they were never again part of the rumor scene. From then on the rumor involved McDonald’s. It spread out from Chattanooga and for a while seemed to follow Interstate 75, over to Atlanta, up to Ohio. Doug Timberlake said that when it reached Indiana and Ohio, it really flared up. McDonald’s response was to deal with the rumor locally, denying it immediately, getting names and sending out letters, and passing out literature. It just so happened that McDonald’s had an illustrated promotion press kit, featuring the high quality of ingredients that went into their burgers — “Nothing but 100% pure United States Government-inspected ground beef,” and so forth. These materials were distributed to franchise owners in the affected areas and guidelines were laid down. If the literature did not seem to quell the rumors, it was recommended that they start a small, local advertising campaign stressing quality of products, with no specific mention of the rumor. If that failed to work, they were told to go to the local press as a last resort. In no case, however, were they to use the word worm. Managers who called to ask questions were told what to do “just in case.” Then things turned scorching hot in Ohio, Tennessee, and Georgia. It wasn’t even necessary for a person to find the rumor credible in order for it to affect his behavior. Just the thought in the back of one’s mind of worms in hamburgers was enough to steer one to a pizza parlor. As Doug Timberlake said, “The rumor was hitting at the bottom line. It was seriously affecting sales in certain areas, and these kinds of losses could not be sustained for a very long period. The affected franchises were hurting; their operations were getting badly mauled.” It was decided to hold a press conference in Atlanta. Timberlake was aware that “going public” would make many people aware of the rumor who had never heard it before. Public relations people often are leery of talking directly about a rumor problem or referring to rumors even indirectly, because they believe that such tactics spread rumor even more. On the other hand, an emphatic public statement possibly could immunize people from the effects of the rumor when they did hear it, as well as set the record straight for those who had already heard it. On November 23rd a national press conference was held in Atlanta in which the rumor about “protein additives” was denied. The “100% U.S. Government-inspected beef” position was re-asserted, and of course the word “worm” was never mentioned. A follow-up nationwide advertising campaign was launched in which color photographs of the product, with captions, celebrated its pure, uncontaminated ingredients. The “extinguishers” went into effect, and shortly thereafter the rumor was quenched.
The experience of one owner of four McDonald’s franchises in Atlanta, Georgia, was typical. Back in 1978, he saw his sales plunge by 30 percent and consequently had to lay off about a third of his employees. Corporate rumors aren’t victimless.
As McDonald’s CEO Ray Kroc noted at the time, the rumor didn’t even make sense from a financial standpoint: Rather than saving the company money, the idea of using of worm meat as a “cheap filler” was nonsensical because worms were much more expensive than beef:
Ray Kroc, who bought McDonald’s from Mac and Dick McDonald in 1955, added his own assurances: “We couldn’t afford to grind worms into our meat,” he countered. “Hamburger costs a dollar and a half a pound, and night crawlers six dollars.”
In April 2014 and again in November 2017, the “worm burger” rumors were revived when the faux news site Daily Buzz Live published an article (reproduced above) recycling that and several other old McDonald’s-related urban legends, accompanied by an unrelated photograph of ground beef mixed with pats of frozen butter that coincidentally resemble worms. For the record, not only is the worm additive rumor untrue, but McDonald’s also does not purchase and use cow eyeballs, skirt the law by buying adulterated meat from a company misleadingly named “100% Beef,” or put yucky stuff like styrofoam balls and feathers in their milkshakes.Welcome to Numix!
We're a small design collective that design themes for your Linux desktop, and icon themes and applications for your Android devices.
Our Work
You can find a full rundown of our main projects here or you can just try it out for yourself! You'll find us in the official repos for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Android as well as the Arch user repository. If you're on an Ubuntu based distro such as Mint or elementary, you can also use our PPA to get the latest versions of our stuff. Fire up a terminal and run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:numix/ppa sudo apt update sudo apt install numix-*
Alternatively, if you feel like getting your hands dirty check out our GitHub. There we host the source for all our projects with instructions for how to get them up and running.
Contact Us
Want to keep up with Numix news? Check out our social media for the latest!Updated with quotes at 4 a.m.
Bloomington, Ind. -- Zach Boren was ready to play linebacker two years ago.
When the Ohio State linebacking corps was getting run over by Wisconsin in 2010, the fullback ran to linebackers coach Luke Fickell and told him he was ready to go in.
On Saturday, the Buckeyes finally took Boren up on the offer. And he led Ohio State with eight tackles in a 52-49 win over Indiana.
“I'll do whatever it takes for this team to win,” Boren said.
With senior Etienne Sabino out for at least three weeks with a broken leg, the Buckeyes called not on a freshman to replace him, but a fellow senior who's been on the other side of the ball since he arrived on campus.
That led to what Boren called a long 72 hours of staying after practice to learn all the aspects of the defense with Fickell. A former standout high school linebacker at Pickerington Central, Boren knows the position, but after four years of offense in Columbus, he didn't know how the Buckeyes do things on that side of the ball. But Ohio State really had no choice. The move was desperate, flattering, crazy and completely sensible all at once.
Meyer said he asked Boren to make the move at Tuesday's practice, when Sabino was joined on the sideline by fellow injured linebackers Ryan Shazier, Camren Williams and Josh Perry. They were running out of bodies and Meyer wanted some veteran leadership in the unit.
"He jumped right at it and he really changed practice on Tuesday," Meyer said. "It's a very unselfish move by him."
At it wasn't a one-game thing. The move should stick at least until Sabino returns to action.
"I would think he might stay over there for a while," Meyer said.
I talked with Boren about playing linebacker last November, when it seemed like a more wide-open offense -- with Braxton Miller at quarterback -- was reducing his role in the offense. That's been amplified this season in Meyer's offense. Boren does his primary job at fullback, leading a running back through a hole, as well as anyone on the team handles the duties of their positions.
In Ohio State's old offense, Boren was a linebacker playing fullback. If he can't do that as often, then make him a linebacker playing linebacker.
And if he's not on the field as much on offense, it makes it that much easier to play on both sides of the ball.
11 Gallery: Ohio State Survives Indiana, 52-49
"I feel like, mentally, I could definitely handle it. Physically, I think I can handle it as well," Boren told me 11 months ago. He was playing about 60 snaps a week on offense then, and he thought he could handle as many as 80 total snaps.
Back then, Mike Vrabel, who coached the linebackers last season, told him he'd have to get down to 240 pounds to play linebacker. Boren was at 256. Now, he's 245.
And he should be able to do both. But when the Buckeyes had a fourth-and-1 run in the first half, Boren stayed out of the game. He wasn't a two-way player, and that is a shame. It seems he could handle both jobs.
He was just a linebacker, and a part-time one at that. He shared his spot with senior Storm Klein, at least until Klein went out of the game in the second half.
Even with the eight tackles, this wasn't Boren's kind of game. It seems as if Sabino should be back for the game against Wisconsin, after a bye week, on Nov. 17. If not, Boren could help the Buckeyes a lot then, plugging holes and trying to tackle Montee Ball. Before then, he'll be chasing teams that spread the field, which isn't what he, or the OSU defense as a whole, does best. Boren missed at least one play in space Saturday that made him mad.
Even given that, he may be the best option the Buckeyes have. Boren can play the game. The Buckeyes are still figuring out what exactly is the best way to use him. Here's hoping it involves both sides of the ball.
Injuries pile up: Fifth-year senior Sabino is out for at least three weeks after breaking a bone in his leg against Nebraska. Fifth-year senior defensive end Nathan Williams didn't make the trip to Indiana due to a concussion he suffered last week that kept him out the entire week of practice. That was two defensive starters the Buckeyes were down coming into Saturday night.
Then junior safety Christian Bryant went down in the first half with a bruised lower leg and was replaced by Zach Domicone. And after a big hit while breaking up a pass in the second quarter, fifth-year senior cornerback Travis Howard went to the sideline with a stinger. He dealt with shoulder problems earlier in the season as well.
So while Indiana was trying to get back into the game, the Buckeyes were looking for bodies.
Freshman Noah Spence took most of the snaps replacing Williams as the Leo rush end in the Buckeyes' defense, and he looked good on several tackles. But Ohio State worries about their freshmen defensive linemen against the run.
Domicone, a fifth-year senior, replaced Bryant, but he's battled knee injuries his entire career and has contributed primarily on special teams thus far. Sophomore Doran Grant replaced Howard, and he played well stepping in for Bradley Roby for a game earlier in the season. But Howard had just blocked a punt for a touchdown, providing a reminder that he can still make big plays.
Bryant was back to start the third quarter, and Howard came back in after Indiana hit a 39-yard pass against Grant and then he was called for pass interference.
But it's that time of the season in which injuries start to mount. We've talked a lot about the Buckeyes' lack of depth at several positions. Roby, starting safety C.J. Barnett and projected starting lineman Michael Bennett already missed games this year with injuries, and defensive lineman John Simon played through a shoulder injury earlier in the year that limited his effectiveness and probably should have sent him to the bench.
Every team deals with health issues. But at some point, the injuries for the Buckeyes may prove too much.A convicted sex offender has been accused of touching himself in the bushes near the beach volleyball courts in Delray Beach on Thursday, police say.
Oscar Rowell, 59, was released without bail on Thursday and was arrested again Friday on a trespassing charge. A judge ordered him to be held on no bond Saturday, and he is facing charges of indecent exposure and resisting arrest without violence.
According to the police report, Rowell denied allegations from witnesses, but told police he was urinating in the sea grapes.
Witnesses told police they did not see Rowell’s genitalia, but observed his hand motions and alerted a lifeguard. Rowell was not at the scene when officers arrived, but was found near Veteran’s Park a few blocks away. Police say they chased Rowell who originally fled on his bicycle and later on foot.
A resident of Delray Beach, Ann-Margo Cannon, was present in Rowell’s court hearing, and told the judge she is concerned for her children’s safety.
"This man is a threat to the community," Cannon said. "I’m afraid my children could be exposed to his indecent behavior."
Rowell has been arrested eight times this year, including one charge of lewd and lascivious exhibition in June. In court, a public defender said Rowell has been arrested 32 times in total on similar charges of indecent exposure and lewd acts.
"People are wondering why this keeps happening," Cannon said to the judge. She also said Delray police are putting "tremendous time (into the prevention of) people becoming his next victim."
A judge also ordered that Rowell be given a psychiatric evaluation and have no contact in the area where he was arrested and to stay at least 1,000 yards away.Lyft is having what could only be described as a banner week.
The ride-hailing service earned praise from customers for condemning President Trump's travel ban and pledging to donate $1 million to the ACLU over the next four years. Many on social media urged followers to #DeleteUber for appearing to break up a driver strike about the ban. On Monday, Lyft cracked the top 10 free apps on Apple's App Store.
Less noted, however, is the fact that Peter Thiel is one of Lyft's investors. Thiel, the billionaire investor and PayPal (PYPL) cofounder, is Trump's top tech advocate and an adviser on his transition team. He also recently appeared to defend the travel ban, despite the many concerns about it in Silicon Valley.
"Peter doesn't support a religious test, and the administration has not imposed one," Jeremiah Hall, Thiel's spokesman, said in a statement provided to USA Today this weekend. The executive order on immigration affects seven Muslim-majority countries.
Hall did not respond to a request for comment.
As one software engineer put it on Twitter, "So you're boycotting Uber, and running to Lyft where Peter Thiel is an investor? This ain't the woke you're looking for." (For those keeping track, Carl Icahn, a special adviser to Trump, is also an investor in Lyft.)
"We don't always agree with our investors and aren't afraid to say so," Adrian Durbin, a spokesman for Lyft, said in a statement provided to CNNTech. "We do respect their right, and that of every American, to freedom of expression."
"Our position on Trump's executive order is clear," Durbin added, when asked if the company disagrees with Thiel specifically. "I haven't seen if Thiel has made public comments about the EO, but if he supports it then it's safe to say we don't agree with him on that particular issue."
Lyft isn't the only tech company to be outspoken against Trump's controversial executive order while opting not to distance themselves from Thiel.
Related: The tech firms fighting Trump's travel ban with cash
Brian Chesky, the cofounder and CEO of Airbnb, slammed the ban as "not right" and announced his company would provide free housing to "refugees and anyone not allowed in the U.S." Patrick Collison, the cofounder and CEO of Stripe, said he would match $50,000 in donations to the ACLU.
Yet both companies count Thiel as an investor. Neither business responded to CNNTech's requests for comment.
Artsy, a startup whose CEO signed an open letter to Trump opposing the ban, downplayed Thiel's involvement in its business.
"Thiel was an early investor in Artsy and has no involvement in the day-to-day of the business," said Graham Newhall, a spokesman for Artsy.
Tech companies faced criticism during the campaign for speaking out against Trump's policies and rhetoric while refusing to distance themselves from Thiel.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook (FB), where Thiel is the longest-serving board member, framed the issue as allowing for diversity in all things, including politics.
"We can't create a culture that says it cares about diversity and then excludes almost half the country because they back a political candidate," Zuckerberg wrote in a post shortly before the election. "There are many reasons a person might support Trump that do not involve racism, sexism, xenophobia or accepting sexual assault."
Zuckerberg spoke up against Trump's executive orders on immigration and refugees last week. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on Thiel.
Related: Former Google exec calls Trump travel ban an 'enormous problem'
Y Combinator president Sam Altman, who wrote a blog post Saturday calling on the tech industry to "start speaking up" against the Trump administration, struck a similar tone to Zuckerberg about Thiel.
"I do not believe that deciding to get rid of all founders/employees who voted for someone is much better than a Muslim ban," Altman wrote on Twitter in response to a comment on his ties to Thiel, who is a part-time partner at Y Combinator.
Pando, a tech publication that counts Thiel's Founders Fund as an investor, has published articles critical of Thiel and Trump. But founder Sarah Lacy notes the challenges that startups face in speaking out against the influential investor.
"Entrepreneurs are under a lot of pressure and Thiel... [is] very powerful," Lacy told CNNTech. "Think about it this way: Look at how many people at the very top of the food chain are not speaking out or are only doing so recently and in mealymouth ways."This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to investigative reporter Barrett Brown, who recently completed a 4-year prison sentence related to the hacking of the private intelligence firm Stratfor, which exposed how the firm spied on activists on behalf of corporations. At one point, Brown faced a hundred years in prison before pleading guilty to lesser charges, including transmitting threats, accessory to a cyber-attack and obstruction of justice. Supporters say Brown was unfairly targeted for investigating the highly secretive world of private intelligence and military contractors. Prior to his arrest, Brown appeared in the documentary We are Legion and talked about the importance of information obtained by hackers.
BARRETT BROWN: Some of the most important things that have been—have had the most far-reaching influence and have been the most important in terms of what’s been discovered, not just by Anonymous, but by the media in the aftermath, is the result of hacking. That information can’t be obtained by institutional journalistic process, or it can’t be obtained or won’t be obtained by a congressional committee or a federal oversight committee. For the most part, that information has to be, you know, obtained by hackers.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2009, Barrett Brown created Project PM which was, quote, “dedicated to investigating private government contractors working in the secretive fields of cybersecurity, intelligence and surveillance.” He was particularly interested in the documents leaked by WikiLeaks and Anonymous. In 2011, the group Anonymous hacked into the computer system of the private security firm HBGary Federal and disclosed thousands of internal emails. Barrett Brown was not accused of being involved in the hack itself, but he did read and analyze the documents, eventually crowdsourcing the effort through the Project PM. One of the first things he discovered was a plan to tarnish the reputations of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald, who would later win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
While serving in prison, Barrett Brown won the 2016 National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary for columns |
so we decided to come out and support all the other people that came out here."
In the post, Mellott said he was frustrated at the state of the country's social progress, claiming because of that, he wasn't proud to be an American.
"He didn't desecrate the government when he said that, he desecrated the men and women who died so he could have that right to say those things."
So they set up the stars and stripes on Vine Street, even though they originally intended to be in front of the courthouse. Inside the courthouse, State's Attorney Julia Rietz was making a decision.
"Really we had no basis under the law to file criminal charges against this individual for burning the flag."
Under Illinois law, desecrating the flag is a class four felony. It has been since 2013. But Rietz says no one's ever been charged with violating it, nor has it been challenged, because the 1989 Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson already has an answer for this situation.
"Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled that that was a form of expression, he was making a statement by his actions, and that was protected under free speech by the First Amendment."
But she says that doesn't mean the police were wrong to arrest Mellott.
"The police officers looked at the law they had in front on them on the books in Illinois and made the decision to place him under arrest. From my understanding, really out of concerns for his safety and the safety of others."
Mellott has been released from jail and has no further court dates. Rietz says an important lesson from this case is to be careful about what you post on social media, even if you may technically not be doing anything wrong.
So why is Illinois's flag desecration law even on the books? Illinois is actually the only state that considers flag burning a felony. We asked longtime U of I law professor and First Amendment law expert Steve Beckett why that is. He says, regardless of what the Supreme Court says, laws against flag burning are politically popular.
"Somebody in the legislature said there was political hay to be made, and that's what this is, but if I was in the position of a prosecutor, or if I was in the position of the chief of police, this would be a bad day because we can't have a rush to judgment about this sort of thing. Free speech is the speech we love to hate, it's the speech we don't agree with. If our society's gonna mean anything, that kind of speech has to be tolerated." Beckett says, if anything good has come from the situation, it's that it's started a community-wide conversation about freedom of speech.
Original: 7/4/16, 3:31 PM, Monday
URBANA -- A man was arrested after he was suspected of burning an American flag.
22 year-old Bryton Mellott was taken into custody today. Urbana police say people saw a picture on social media of him holding a flag in flames. They say after that, Mellott started receiving violent threats-- some of which were directed toward his co-workers.
Because of that, he was booked on disorderly conduct, as well as violation of an Illinois flag desecration statute. Police say despite that, there's a possibility it could be considered protected speech because of a Supreme Court decision. UPD says they're going to let the legal system determine that.
There's no word yet on whether he will be charged with a crime. He was released and given a notice to appear in court.President Barron was supposed to address the media after Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting about a “very important” subject, according to the public relations people. Because the meeting went long — the longest in the last several years, in fact — Barron was unable to make the promised press row visit. It is now clear what exactly Barron intended to discuss.
Charles Thompson of the Harrisburg-Patriot News has the exclusive — President Barron will launch an official presidential review of the raw materials that went into the Freeh report.
“If there are issues [with the report’s completeness or credibility] that I felt the board needed to know about, I committed myself to come forward to them and report what it is that I found,” Barron told the Patriot-News. “I committed myself that I would spend the time to do that … and I will come back to [the trustees] and tell them if there are issues, or no, I do not feel there are issues.”
The Freeh report, which faulted Penn State’s entire culture for Jerry Sandusky’s actions not being reported sooner, was a controversial document from the start. Numerous trustees have fought against its validity, despite the non-alumni elected part of the Board collectively choosing to ignore its purported inadequacies in the name of moving on. In any case, Barron vowed to waive Penn State’s attorney-client privileges to conduct the most comprehensive review.
“I’m reviewing it with legal counsel so that as I’m examining it I’m advised of the legal significance of the things that I find,” Barron told the Patriot News. “I really don’t want people to be looking at us, saying: ‘They’re hiding something…I feel strongly about this notion that I don’t want it to look like we’re hiding anything.”
Barron reportedly discussed his plan during executive session Friday morning. He’s in a unique position — he wasn’t around when a few of the more powerful trustees accepted responsibility for the Freeh report before actually reading it, and can maintain a position of independence. How long the investigation will take is still to be determined.
“I just told them I would move with all deliberate speed,” Barron said.
***
UPDATE: 11/15 2:50 p.m. — President Barron just released another statement:
“On Friday, I informed the University’s Board of Trustees that I will conduct a thorough review of the Freeh Report and supporting materials produced during the course of the investigation. The contents of the report have led to questions by some in the Penn State community. I do not want people to believe that Penn State is hiding something. I feel strongly about this. For this important reason, and since I was not here during its completion, I will conduct my own review. There is considerable documentation to analyze, but I assured the Board I would move with all deliberate speed.”
— Eric J. Barron
Your ad blocker is on. Please choose an option below.
Sign Up Sign up for our e-mail newsletter: OR Support quality journalism:
About the Author
Kevin Horne Kevin Horne was the editor of Onward State from 2012-2014 and currently holds the position of Managing Editor Emeritus, which is a fake title he made up. He graduated from Penn State with degrees journalism and political science in 2014 and is currently seeking his J.D. at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. A third generation Penn Stater from Williamsport, Pa., Kevin is also the president of the graduate student government. Email: [email protected]
East Renovation Continues With Approval For Sproul, Geary Halls Penn State’s Board of Trustees approved the next phase of East Halls renovations at its meeting Friday, setting the stage for construction to begin on Sproul and Geary Halls.Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.
If one moment stands out as the clearest signal yet of US President Trump turning his back on supporters, it was his announcement this week to re-escalate American military intervention in Afghanistan.
His signature campaign promise of putting “America First” and ending the folly of overseas wars launched by previous administrations was shredded on prime time television when he gave orders for thousands of more US troops to be sent to Afghanistan. The already 16-year war in that country – America’s longest – will now go on indefinitely longer.
The Huffington Post headlined: “Trump’s vague new Afghanistan strategy continues an endless war.”
'No rapid exit': Trump's dramatic switch on Afghanistan strategy https://t.co/VZRGA2ycwE — RT America (@RT_America) August 22, 2017
Not only that, but this president is refusing to give any public information on force numbers or timescale. America’s overseas wars are not just expanding under Trump; they are going secret and unaccountable.
This surge in militarism is precisely what candidate Trump said he would not do when he campaigned for votes among blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt states, vowing instead to channel US economic resources to revive “forgotten” communities at home. Recall his blustering inauguration speech on January 20 when he bemoaned the “American Carnage,” at home and abroad.
As the Huffington Post writes: “When Obama was still in office and overseeing a massive troop presence in Afghanistan, Trump repeatedly bashed the operation as a waste of money and called for a quick withdrawal from the country.”
‘US will never leave Afghanistan and they have never had plans to do so’ - Russian senator https://t.co/phWhNu4SE3pic.twitter.com/3UQhiHrIhP — RT (@RT_com) August 22, 2017
How’s that for a U-turn? This is at a time when support among Trump’s voter base in the Rust Belt states has plummeted. There is weakness in the heartland, reported NBC, because workers fear Trump is reneging on past commitments to revitalize their livelihoods. Their concern is that this president is too interested in giving tax breaks to corporations and kowtowing to the Pentagon.
Ironically, Donald Trump likes to portray himself as an “alpha-male” who is his own boss. It is abundantly clear now that Trump is a mere manikin who sits in the White House taking orders from his generals.
When Trump ousted Stephen Bannon, his staunchest ally in the White House, it was under the orders of the military figures who are now dominant in his administration. Trump’s chief of staff, former Marine General John Kelly, wanted Bannon out because of his contrarian views.
When Bannon gave a surprise interview last week contradicting the militarist policy on North Korea that was the last straw. Bannon said there was no military option in solving the North Korea standoff, which flew in the face of what the Pentagon has been advising Trump, with “all options on the table.” Only days later, he was kicked out.
Americans did not elect Donald #Trump to expand foreign military intervention (Op-Edge) https://t.co/D4i6Htyqlz — RT (@RT_com) August 21, 2017
Bannon has now returned to edit Breitbart News, the nationalistic website which has in the past served as a media booster for Trump. Following the announcement on Afghanistan, Breitbart News declared: “Trump reverses course” and blasted his speech a “flip-flop,” as reported by Politico.
Bannon had been a vigorous counsel to Trump against overseas militarism and in particular about Afghanistan. He is thought to have been the primary influence behind Trump’s economic nationalism of America First.
It is no coincidence that Trump decided to get rid of Bannon while huddled with military generals and intelligence chiefs at Camp David last weekend. Then three days after his departure from the White House, Trump delivers his U-turn on re-escalating the military involvement in South Asia, exactly as the Pentagon top brass had been urging.
With little or no policy achievements so far, Trump is emerging as a blowhard who is all too willing to toe the line to survive – even if that means stabbing his supposed allies in the back. This is a president who has a big mouth and big ego, and not much else. All the promises to his voter base are being seen to be cruel hoaxes, perpetrated by one who is always denouncing others over hoaxes.
The rise of the generals in Trump’s administration, alongside a weak-kneed figurehead president, should surely be cause for concern for its sinister constitutional implications. But disturbingly, the drift toward a military government in the US hardly causes a public ruffle; indeed, it is actually welcomed by prominent news media.
Read more
In an editorial last weekend condemning “The Failing Trump Presidency,” the New York Times seems to be oblivious in its endorsement of military control over the White House.
It states: “One measure of the despair caused by Mr. Trump’s behavior is that we find ourselves strangely comforted by things that in any normal presidency would be cause for concern… Americans accustomed constitutionally and politically to civilian leadership now find themselves relying on three current and former generals — John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff; H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense — to stop Mr. Trump from going completely off the rails.”
Last week, too, when the five Joint Chiefs of Staff roundly rebuked Trump over his ambiguous comments on racial violence, the US media widely saw that intervention by the Pentagon as a welcome “disciplining” of the president.
It’s a sobering reality-check on how the supposed radical, populist president who promised to return governing power to the ordinary citizens is now firmly in the vice of a corporate-military cabal.
Look at Trump’s cabinet. Apart from the three generals, Kelly, McMaster and Mattis, the other key posts are run by an ex-oil CEO, Rex Tillerson at the State Department, and former Wall Street executives, Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, Gary Cohn as national economic adviser, and Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary.
This combination of military and industrial corporatism at the executive level of government is a definition of a fascist state. Combine that with a malleable megalomaniac who is willing to betray his allies and voter base, and that makes for a dangerous cabal.
Trump’s readiness to go to war in Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran and to give license to the Pentagon to step up its air force slaughter in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen are all signals of how far this presidency has degenerated.
But it is Trump’s brazen backtracking on Afghanistan that most transparently shows his unscrupulous character and just how much the Pentagon has taken control over this presidency.
'We are making clear to the #Taliban that they will not win on the battlefield' - Tillerson https://t.co/DOKURRVb8y — RT America (@RT_America) August 22, 2017
Last November, the American people voted for a radical change, one that would deliver economic revival and jobs at home, while implementing more peaceful foreign relations.
Today, Americans have got the opposite of what they were calling for when they elected President Trump. The implications are blatant and disconcerting. American democracy no longer exists, if it ever did. The will of the people has been subverted by the will of the military-industrial complex. Trump is but a pathetic puppet who is taking orders from the generals and his oligarchic friends in Wall Street.
The so-called “exceptional nation” – the one that never tires of proclaiming its lofty democratic virtues to the rest of the world – has degenerated into a military-corporatist state. Trump’s betrayal is complete and stands out as one of the biggest cons in modern political history.Today, July 25, KDE e.V., the organization behind the modern, mature, and robust KDE desktop environment, which is used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems, has had the great pleasure of announcing a new project targeted at mobile device, Plasma Mobile.
We reported the other day that some detailed information was posted on the Internet about a so-called Plasma Phone UI that runs on top of the next-generation Wayland display server and is based on existing technologies from Canonical's Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system and the Kubuntu Linux distribution.
Now it's official, as KDE has posted detailed news about its upcoming Plasma Mobile interface, which promises to offer you the freedom you've always wanted to hack it, modify it how you see fit, and redistribute it. It also promises to be user-friendly, to protect and respect your privacy at all times, as well as to be highly customized and modular.
"Plasma Mobile offers a Free (as in freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling, customizable platform for mobile devices," says Sebastian Kügler. "Plasma Mobile is Free software, and is now developed via an open process. Plasma Mobile is currently under development with a prototype available providing basic functions to run on a smartphone."
A prototype is available now for LG Nexus 5
According to KDE, the Plasma Mobile project is designed from the ground up to use the full power of a mobile phone, and it promises to offer support for all kinds of applications, including native KDE apps written in Qt, GTK+ apps, Ubuntu apps, as well as Android apps.
Plasma Mobile is available today as a developer preview, supporting the LG Nexus 5 smartphone from Google. At the moment of writing this article, the software offers support for making and receiving phone calls, a workspace for system management, as well as a task switcher for controlling and navigating apps.If we don't drown or suffocate first, it's a very real possibility that life on earth will starve to death as climate change ravages planet Earth. Though it serves as the background story for Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar, the agricultural implications of climate change haven't been the face of the planetary event—polar bears are much cuter, of course—but a new documentary film from Academy Award-winning director Sandy McLeod aims to change that, bringing the human toll of drought and crop extinction to the forefront of the discussion.
The film, Seeds Of Time, tracks agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler as he races to preserve as many plant species as possible to retain genetic diversity as plant species extinction marches forward. As the former Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Fowler traveled to places like Peru to help farmers catalogue and archive their crops, specifically potatoes in this case. Together with samples from other parts of the world, Fowler helped to found the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a seed storage facility in Norway that's like the Noah's Ark for agriculture.
Along with the vault, the film also explores the human angle of what will happen when biodiversity and agriculture fail. Namely, that the drought conditions we're already experiencing will lead first to rising food costs, then to increased conflict in starving regions and finally to the extinction of life-sustaining crops as we know it.
Below, an exclusive clip from Seeds Of Time—which debuts at Cinema Village tonight—followed by a brief Q&A with the film's director about why this is the kind of message that should be delivered more often.
What drew you to Cary's story and why did you want to tell it? David Byrne, who is a friend, sent me an article in The New Yorker called "Sowing for the Apocalypse." Oddly enough another close friend had sent me the same article. While I was reading it, my husband was on a call that he had on the speaker phone. I noticed that he was talking to a guy named Cary, and I was reading about a guy named Cary, but didn't really think much about it until I read a line in the article that said "Cary Fowler was given 30 million dollars by the Gates Foundation to collect the seeds."
About 10 seconds later I heard my husband ask the person on the phone how much money they got from the Gates Foundation and when the answer came back "30 Million dollars" I was stunned. After he hung up the phone I said, "Was that Cary Fowler you were speaking to?" "Yes," he replied. "How do you know Cary?" So just let me say that this knotting of things doesn't happen to me all the time, and when it does I really pay attention.
So that summer I read Cary's book called Shattered and I went to Memphis to interview him and see if there was a film there. When I began to realize the magnitude of what he was trying to do and how little most people, including myself, know about seeds and seed banks and the fragility of agriculture, I became really excited about doing a film about this subject. The problem was that people who generally fund films don't find agriculture "juicy" and people who have funds to spend on agriculture can barely fund the programs that so desperately need their help. So it was a very difficult film to fund and ended up taking 8 years to get it done.
Do you think focusing more attention to rising food costs will help get the message out more deeply? Yes, I do.
The film Interstellar deals with dying crop diversity as its main thrust. Is that the kind of future you wanted to get across with your film? I am more concerned with what's happening in the present and how our food security is threatened on an amazing number of fronts that range from limited arable land, to water shortages, from loss of genetic diversity to higher fertilizer costs due to peak oil, from a growing population which equals more mouths to feed and then to weather that is becoming more unpredictable. The farmer's job is not an easy one.
What was the most shocking or dire prediction/fact you learned while making this film? I think that the climate is changing much faster than scientists first predicted and is going to make it really hard to grow food. Farmers along the equator are really feeling those effects and have been for awhile. Scientists are now predicting that the polar ice caps will be melted by 2020, which will raise water levels and not only displace people along the coasts but mean that all of that farmland will be lost and that crops that aren't saline tolerant will no longer grow where they used to along rivers that will be inundated with salt water. This will be a huge problem.
With all the attention being given to climate change, why do you think we're still in a place of denial in many ways? I don't think most people are in denial anymore, I just don't think that they know what to do about it. The fact that there are politicians out there who are getting a lot of press who don't want to endorse climate change [initiatives] because it's not to their advantage, is hard to fathom at this point in time. They insist that it's not happening when the vast majority of scientists agree that it's not only happening, but it appears to be happening faster than they originally thought.
Seeds of Time debuts today at Cinema Village in New York City and May 29th at the Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Los AngelesTaking Shape Posted by The Landing School on October 2, 2014 · Leave a Comment
We love this time of year at The Landing School. Students are no longer brand new to the marine trades and their projects are starting to take shape. It’s amazing how quickly parts begin to look like boats and engines and systems. Many of our students come here with little or no experience with building stuff. Yet, as a team, they improve in those areas where they might be lacking experience and shine in areas where they are most comfortable. It’s a balancing act, but one that yields truly positive results.
This week, the Composites students are working together to clean up some boat molds and ready them for construction. They are also putting together the spray booth that will be used during the construction of composite dinghys and kayaks. Up in Yacht Design students continue to work on their drawing skills. The pieces they are drawing will help them better understand the importance of accuracy and ensure that when they move to the computer they are able to translate paper ideas to renderings. Meanwhile, the Wooden Boat Building students continue to chip away at the assembly of the LS16 frames. In less than two months the hulls of these four boats will be completed. Marine Systems students are crossing items of their list quickly. Last week was laminates, this week they are learning how to change oil. The diversity of skills they will learn will help them become highly experience systems technicians, understanding everything from plumbing to hull repairs.Seriously, guys, just be cool about this. Murray Close/Netflix
We’ve been living in the age of fan campaigns since 1968, when Star Trek was saved from cancellation by a bunch of Caltech students who literally marched to NBC’s Burbank offices with torches. The basic model hasn’t changed much over the years, for the simple reason that the villagers-from-Frankenstein approach is still working: Just this spring, NBC reversed its decision to cancel Timeless after hearing from outraged fans. But, as Vulture reported, Netflix isn’t NBC, and it wants to be very clear about one thing: Stop telling the company to bring back Sense8. It’s not gonna bringing back Sense8. In a statement on Sense8’s Facebook page, the company politely asked fans of the Wachowskis’ Netflix series—which the network canceled on June 1—to lay off the hashtags for a while:
To our Sense8 family…
We’ve seen the petitions.
We’ve read the messages.
We know you want to #RenewSense8, and we wish we could #BringBackSense8 for you.
The reason we’ve taken so long to get back to you is because we’ve thought long and hard here at Netflix to try to make it work but unfortunately we can’t.
Thank you for watching and hope you’ll stay close with your cluster around the world.
#SensatesForever
Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos also addressed Sense8’s cancellation at the Producers Guild conference on Saturday, according to the Hollywood Reporter, telling the audience, “They made a beautiful show … the audience was very passionate, but not large enough to support the economics of something that big, even on our platform.” Of course, “not large enough to support the economics of something that big” is not at all the same thing as “not large enough to drive everyone at Netflix crazy.” It’s unclear yet if its new approach will manage to pour oil on the troubled waters of Sense8 fandom—the mood in the #RenewSense8 hashtag was, unsurprisingly, defiant. But every network is going to need to develop effective strategies for dealing with “very passionate, but not large enough” audiences, or else resign itself to never cancelling anything. Either way, this seems like a good time to try to convince NBC to #RenewMyMotherTheCar.A man was arrested in Glendale after he attempted to steal a bus with more than 50 people on board, according to police.Glendale police said they were called to Glendale Avenue just north of California Avenue at about 12:55 p.m. on Sunday.Officials said a bus was being loaded for a day trip to a casino when a man walked up and closed one of the doors to the outside storage on the bus.Employees with the bus company asked the man what he was doing and he stated he didn't like open doors.The man then tried to get on the bus, but was told he couldn't enter without a reservation.When the employee walked away, police said the man entered the bus and got in the driver's seat.Passengers grabbed the man and pushed him off the bus.He ran northbound on Glendale Avenue and was later detained near Glendale Avenue and Lexington Drive.Witnesses positively identified the man and he was placed under arrest for attempted kidnapping.Police said the suspect refused to provide his name to the officers and he was booked under the name "John Doe."He is described as a white man approximately 37 years old.On Monday, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office filed one count of attempted vehicle theft against the suspect.NEWARK — A four-alarm in Newark late Saturday night that severely damaged two houses and affected two others has displaced dozens of residents, officials said.
Newark Fire Department spokesman John Brown said the blaze on the 200 block of Lafayette Street started just before 10 p.m. Saturday night. He said the fire was under control in roughly two hours.
Nobody was injured in the fire, Brown said, but more than 40 residents have been forced out of their homes.
Brown said the cause of the fire is not yet known.
The Red Cross posted on social media that the organization was helping the displaced families.
Disaster Action Team responding in #Newark to help families affected by #fire. — RedCrossNorthJersey (@RedCrossNorthNJ) November 16, 2014
Diane Concannon, a spokeswoman for the North Jersey region of the American Red Cross, said at least nine families were affected by the fire. She said the Red Cross opened a reception center nearby and "we had 33 people in the center as of late last evening."
"We were preparing to open a shelter, but many people left to stay with friends and family," she said. "A shelter was not needed."
She said the Red Cross provided emergency assistance and comfort kits to 10 people from two families who were in need of temporary lodging.
Erin O'Neill may be reached at eoneill@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter NJ.com on Facebook.Introducing Graphene
Graphene is a new Ruby gem for transforming collections of Ruby objects into subtotals, percentages, tables and graphs. See the source code at github.com/jhollinger/graphene and read the full documentation at jordanhollinger.com/docs/graphene.
While the things Graphene does aren’t particularly difficult, they are repetitive and annoying enough that I wanted a quicker, DRYer way of doing them. So here’s my attempt. Let me know if it’s useful to you or can be improved.
Calculations
logs = SomeLogParser.parse('/var/log/nginx/access.log.*') # Calculate percentages puts Graphene.percentages(logs, :browser) => [["Firefox", 40.0], ["Chrome", 35.0], ["Internet Explorer", 25.0]] # Calculate on combinations of attributes percentages = Graphene.percentages(logs, :browser, :platform) puts percentages => [["Chrome", "OS X", 40], ["Internet Explorer", "Windows", 25], ["Firefox", "Windows", 25], ["Firefox", "GNU/Linux", 8], ["Chrome", "GNU/Linux", 2]] percentages.each do |browser, platform, percent| # Do stuff end # Calculate subtotals puts Graphene.subtotals(logs, ->(log) { log.browser.downcase }) => [["firefox", 600], ["chrome", 525], ["internet explorer", 375]] # Add an X axis Graphene.percentages(logs, :browser).over(:date) => {#<Date: 2012-07-22> => [["Firefox", 45], ["Chrome", 40], ["Internet Explorer", 15]], #<Date: 2012-07-23> => [["Firefox", 41], ["Chrome", 40], ["Internet Explorer", 19]], #<Date: 2012-07-24> => [["Chrome", 50], ["Firefox", 40], ["Internet Explorer", 10]]}
Tablize
puts Graphene.percentages(logs, :browser, :platform).tablize => +-----------------+------------+----------+ | Browser | Platform |Percentage| +-----------------+------------+----------+ |Firefox |Windows |50.0 | |Internet Explorer|Windows |20.0 | |Safari |OS X |20.0 | |Firefox |GNU/Linux |10.0 | +-----------------+------------+----------+
Gruff Graphs
This is the primary purpose of this library. I find Gruff’s documentation to be lacking. You have to dig through the code to find all of the available graph types and their options. And for some charts, the task of converting your objects into the proper numerical arguments is quite tedious. I’ve tried to fix all that.
Graphene supports Gruff’s pie charts, bar charts, stacked bar charts, side bar charts, side stacked bar charts, accumulation bar graphs, spider graphs, line graphs, net graphs and dot graphs.
Sample pie chart
# Create a pie chart of browser share Graphene.percentages(logs, :browser).pie_chart('/path/to/graph.png', 'Browser Share') do |chart| # Optional block to customize Gruff's chart options end
Sample line graphResearchers at Disney have demonstrated a computer interface that changes the way ordinary, everyday objects feel using a weak electric signal fed through a user’s entire body.
Revealed at the Siggraph 2012 conference in Los Angeles this weekend, wearable technology modifies a user’s tactile perception of the physical world without requiring him to wear special gloves or use a force-feedback device. Sensations can be induced when the wearer touches a computer screen, walls, furniture, plastic or wooden objects, even other people.
Computer interface research has accelerated in recent years as hardware has become cheaper and software more sophisticated. This research has led to new products, including multitouch screens (see “iPhone-Style Touch on a Giant Screen”), motion-sensing devices (see “Microsoft Kinect” and “Gestural Interfaces”), and glasses-free 3-D displays (see “A Glimpse of Glasses-Free 3-D”). One area of growing interest is touch, or haptics, although this normally involves having users interact with a specialized device, and it has so far seen limited commercial application (see “The Slow Rise of the Robot Surgeon”).
The Disney interface exploits a tactile effect known as “reverse electrovibration,” and has been dubbed REVEL. An imperceptible electrical signal is introduced across the user’s whole body to create an oscillating electrostatic field around the skin. When touching a physical object, such as a tablet screen, that shares a common electrical ground with the REVEL signal generator, an electrostatic force modulates the friction between the sliding finger and the object to create the sensation of a texture.
“Sight and sound are important, but we believe the addition of touch can create a really unique and magical experience,” says Olivier Bau, lead researcher on the REVEL project. “Instead of making objects and devices simulate tactile effect, we are changing your feeling of the real world. We are altering human perception. The rest of the world remains passive.”
By tracking the objects that a person is touching, an interface could combine augmented reality imagery, on a smartphone or tablet screen, with virtual tactile sensations provided by the REVEL device.
Varying the properties of the signal, such as the shape, amplitude, and frequency, can provide a wide range of tactile sensations, according to Ivan Poupyrev, another Disney research scientist working on the project.
“The sensations at this point are carefully designed and range from feeling virtual pebbles, to fine textures, such as sand, to glassy or rubbery materials, to larger spatial geometrical patterns such as grooves, bumps,” he says. “A lot more work needs to be done to design and investigate really rich tactile sensations with this technology.”
The REVEL device can coordinate tactile sensations with images on almost any surface, including walls and tables, providing they have a conductive element. Paint on a wall, for example, could include copper emulsion to make it conductive, according to the Disney lab.
Users do not have to be directly connected to the REVEL input via electrodes, because the weak signals sent from the REVEL device, which could be embedded in a chair, a shoe, or the casing of a touch screen, can still pass safely into the user’s body.
Possible applications include guides and augmentation for the blind and, perhaps further in the future, augmented images and films from the entertainment industry—like the “Feelies” Aldous Huxley predicted in his 1932 futurist novel Brave New World.
“REVEL could change the feel of objects in a bespoke environment, according to what ‘story’ you are in. It could augment reality with new textures,” says Carl Telford, an analyst at U.K.-based electronics business consultants Strategic Business Insights.
“What is really interesting is that it doesn’t require the surface of the object being touched to change, so it could prove flexible and perhaps cheap to implement, although I think it’s likely at least a decade away from commercialization.”UT Austin Study Raises Question: Why are Fossilized Hairs so Rare?
When most people hear the word fossil, they probably think of gigantic leg bones or sharp teeth. But, given the right conditions, after an animal dies even delicate body coverings like skin, hair and feathers can be preserved.
New research led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that when it comes to preserving these body parts, fossilized hair is rare—five times rarer than feathers—despite being an important tool for understanding ancient species. This finding has researchers trying to determine if the lack of hair in the fossil record has to do with physical traits that might make it more difficult for hair to fossilize, or an issue with scientists’ collection techniques that could lead to them missing important finds.
“This pattern of where and when we do find fossilized feathers and hairs can be used to inform where we look for future fossil discoveries,” said first author Chad Eliason, a researcher at the Field Museum of Natural History who conducted the research while a postdoctoral fellow at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences.
The study was published on Sept. 6 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Co-authors include Julia Clarke, a professor in the Jackson School’s Department of Geological Sciences who led the study, and three Jackson School undergraduate students, Leah Hudson, Taylor Watts and Hector Garza.
Fossils of body coverings contain unique data on the ecology and lifestyle of extinct animals, including what color they might have been. They also might affect our understanding of when kinds of body coverings, such as feathers and hair, evolved. In this study, the researchers used data on fossil type and age to determine that hair probably evolved much earlier than current fossil samples indicate.
Fossil beds that preserve soft tissues like hair and feathers are called lagerstatte (‘fossil storehouses’ in German) and are rare on their own. The researchers were interested in understanding how frequently different types of body coverings were found preserved in these exceptional sites, which include the Yixian Formation in China and the Green River Formation in the western United States.
Eliason and his collaborators assembled the largest known database of fossilized body coverings, or integument, from land-dwelling vertebrates, a group known as tetrapods, collected from lagerstatte. They found that unlike feathers, hairs are extremely rare finds.
“Mammal hair has been around for more than 160 million years yet over that time we have very few records,” Eliason said.
The rarity might be explained by feathers and hair containing different types of the protein keratin, which may impact the likelihood of fossilization. However, the study notes that the lack of hair samples could have nothing to do with fossilization, and be explained by the collecting behavior of paleontologists, with a single feather usually being much easier to identify than a single hair.
The database also allowed the researchers to conduct a type of statistical method called gap analysis, which models the probability of finding a fossil in a given time. The team found that |
the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?”
That is very similar to the questions posed by DeSmog's executive director Brendan DeMelle in his coverage of Justin Farrell's other recent study on this issue: Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media. DeMelle listed three questions for media outlets to ponder:
Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation? Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop? Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?
Image credit: P.WOLMUTH/REPORT DIGITAL-REA/ReduxU.S. Announces Coalition To Fight Against The Islamic State
The United States says it has formed a coalition of 10 countries to help in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq.
The group consists of the United States plus Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark.
The New York Times reports that the coalition will act in two ways: It will support allies fighting against the Islamic State on the ground, and it will continue attacking the Sunni militants using air strikes.
Reuters reports that in a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Wales, Secretary of State John Kerry said the strategy for the coalition was to contain, not destroy, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
"We need to attack them in ways that prevent them from taking over territory, to bolster the Iraqi security forces and others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own," Kerry said, according to Reuters. "Obviously I think that's a red line for everybody here: no boots on the ground."
The Times adds:
"American officials are hoping to expand the coalition against ISIS to include as many countries as possible, particularly in the region. Obama administration officials said privately that in addition to the countries that attended the meeting Friday morning, the United States was hoping to get quiet intelligence help about the Sunni militants from Jordan, whose leader, King Abdullah, was participating in the NATO summit. "United States officials said they also expected Saudi Arabia to provide money and aid for moderate Syrian rebel groups. Yousef al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States, said in a statement earlier this week that the United Arab Emirates stood ready to join the fight against ISIS. 'No one has more at stake than the U.A.E. and other moderate countries in the region that have rejected the regressive Islamist creed and embraced a different, forward-looking path,' the ambassador said. The Emiratis, he said, are'ready to join the international community in an urgent, coordinated and sustained effort to confront a threat that will, if unchecked, have global ramifications for decades to come.' "
The Islamic State, if you remember, caught the international community's attention when it began a brazen and lightning-fast attack on Iraq over the summer. Since then, the group has overtaken several Iraqi cities and has taken responsibility for the beheading of two American journalists.
As the Islamic State moved further into Iraq, the United States began an air campaign against the group.Tax and spend: Seattle outpaces other governments
The City of Seattle's operating budget has increased by 65 percent since 2000, a significantly faster clip than the jumps in spending at King County and the state.
But it still hasn't been enough.
Seattle faces a $67 million deficit next year, a situation that has led Mayor Mike McGinn to propose broad cuts to next year's city budget -- including the elimination of nearly 300 jobs and reductions to the arts, neighborhoods and human services.
Most governments are underwater due to a combination of rising expenses and tax revenues coming in at a slower than expected rate due to the Great Recession. However, Seattle has outpaced others when it comes to taxing and spending, according to a review by seattlepi.com.
King County's operating budget has gone up 32 percent during the decade, while its general fund revenues have increased 41 percent. The state's operating budget increased by about 53 percent in 10 years while its revenues rose by about 50 percent. The money the city gets from taxes, fees and other sources to pay for day-to-day services has gone up 67 percent over the past decade.
It's tricky to compare governments because they do different things and serve different populations. King County has fewer taxing resources and it's charged with providing services for unincorporated areas that are expensive to cover, for example. And the state's operations dwarf those of cities and counties, while Olympia lawmakers can rewrite tax and spending laws to help deal with downturns. And the state writes its budget on a two-year cycle. Seattle and King County operate on one-year budgets.
Seattle, the state's largest city, has a famously tax-friendly electorate. It's rare for Jet City residents to reject a tax hike, so its political leaders are less wary than their counterparts elsewhere to reach for that option.
"The vast majority of the differences between growth at the county and the city are the revenue tools allowed by state law. The city has the ability to rely on property taxes, sales taxes, B&O (business) and utility taxes, while the county does not have the B&O or utility tax," said Hall Walker of Seattle's budget office.
King County relies on the property tax for the bulk of its funds. In 2001, voters passed Initiative 747, which limits property tax growth to 1 percent plus new construction. It had been 6 percent before that. "King County's general fund revenues are more constrained than either the state's or a city's," said Frank Abe, spokesman for Executive Dow Constantine.
Walker said there were other reasons for the discrepancy in government growth. The county removed park funding from its general fund and the Emergency Medical Services levy renewed at a much higher rate in 2007, $630 million over six years. The owner of a $400,000 home is paying $120 a year for the service. The county funnels the EMS monies into a separate account, while Seattle puts its EMS revenue in its general fund. And Seattle has raised its business and occupation tax rates and added more paid, on-street parking spaces to try to bring in more money.
In 2000, Seattle's adopted operating budget was $548 million. This year it was just over $905 million. Ten years ago the city took in $542 million from taxes and other sources to pay for its daily operations. This year that figure was about $900 million.
In his budget for next year, McGinn proposed no general tax increases. But he did suggest $23 million in higher fees and other revenue-generating proposals. The business community objected to plans to significantly raise the hourly parking rate.
Last month McGinn and a coalition of city unions announced they'd tentatively agreed to forgo automatic 2 percent cost-of-living raises in future years. Previously, unions got at least a 2 percent annual bump, regardless of inflation.
Going forward through 2013, raises will track the Consumer Price Index. For next year that would mean a 0.6 cost-of-living increase and a $2.3 million savings for the general fund. Labor costs are the biggest chunk of the operating budget, and, since 2000, what the city has paid its workers in salary and benefits has gone up 58 percent -- from $733.8 million to $1.1 billion.
On Monday, McGinn, the City Council and labor leaders have scheduled a news conference to discuss potential labor savings.If you believed the internet, you'd think there's huge debate over whether eggs, coffee, or salt are good or bad for you. In reality, there's significant agreement on diet and health issues among experts, but the general public is conflicted. So why are we so confused when experts agree? Let's clear the air.
If you asked most people about foods that are "good" or "bad" for you, you'd get a dozen different answers. You'd find people who vehemently argue that eggs are both good or bad for you, that sodium does and doesn't contribute to hypertension, or that carbs do or don't make you sick. In general, you'll find a lot of laypeople with opinions that may or may not be based in real science. Researchers however, generally have some pretty solid opinions on these issues, and are quick to note where their own shortcomings are.
Advertisement
So where's the disconnect? In this post, we'll look at where the breakdown happens, who's to blame, and what you can do about it all. We sat down with a number of our own experts to get their input. It's going to be a bumpy ride, so let's get started.
The "Health and Diet" Industry Carries Much of the Blame
Advertisement
Americans spend billions on health and diet products every year. From books and meal plans to prepackaged foods and DVDs, we eat the stuff up (pun intended). It's natural to be attracted to any path that promises big results for little effort, but there's more to it. People who would otherwise consider themselves rational are often duped by marketing and half-truth statements made in the name of science.
This is where the diet industry flourishes. By taking advantage of the public's desire for practical health information, so-called "experts" sell us everything from juicers to supplements, convincing us the whole time we'll live forever thanks to their advice. It shouldn't work, but it does. Beth Skwarecki, a science writer and educator, explains why:
We respond strongly to warnings about danger, and promises of really awesome stuff (like health, or weight loss)—but only if those warnings or promises are actionable. And with food, that really applies: We can act on a warning to avoid gluten or eat superfoods (or whatever) at our next meal or our next trip to the grocery store. It makes us feel good to have control over ourselves. I'm not a psychologist and this is just my personal opinion, but I'm sure there is research that backs this up.
Why this causes confusion: Truth and falsehoods are both presented this way. “Vitamins are magical substances that will make you more healthy if you are deficient!” Well, yeah. That's actually true. “Vitamins are magical substances that will make you more healthy!” Sounds similar, but it's not the same, and it's not true in most cases. Then you can substitute various other chemicals or superfoods for the word "vitamins" in that sentence. True claims and misleading ones sound very similar. People selling diets or exercise programs will latch on to true things that help them sell their product; they'll also latch onto false ones. Just look at Dr. Oz: plenty of what he's pushing is true, but lots of it isn't, or is misleading. Which is which? I don't know that he cares. He just needs a steady stream of things to endorse.
Advertisement
We don't mean to single out Dr. Oz here. There are a number of physicians and other medical professionals who are highly educated, but have made the decision to "sell health." They may believe they're doing good, or just want to make a living. In all of those cases, the message is similar: "Living healthy doesn't have to be hard, just do this thing/eat this food/buy my book."
Selling health is only half of the job. The other half is undermining public trust in science-based medicine and traditional authorities (although they carry blame too—we'll get to that in a moment) so they can swoop in to the rescue. Andy Bellatti, registered dietitian and frequent Lifehacker contributor, explains:
The food industry thrives on confusion, and it loves to propagate the notion that "Gee whiz, one day you're told coffee is good for you, the next day you're told it's unhealthy!" By making nutrition advice seem "confusing," they attempt to gain the public's trust.
It also doesn't help that, increasingly, food companies are setting up "institutes" (i.e.: Coca-Cola's Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness, General Mills' Bell Institute) that are essentially PR efforts that oh-so-coincidentally frame these companies' products as healthful (or, in the case of soda, in no way problematic from a health standpoint). To make matters more confusing, these institutes have doctors, cardiologists, and dietitians on their payroll—as well as key media contacts—resulting in a health professional talking to media about, say, how soda is "unfairly vilified." Most times, the general public isn't aware that this isn't an objective health professional choosing to say that.
Advertisement
When we debunked stubborn exercise myths, we ran headlong into one of these groups. The "Gatorade Sports Science Institute" has papers explaining why Gatorade is better than water for exercise—papers we saw copied word-for-word on other sites. In reality, depending on the exercise you do there's either no difference between water or sports drinks, and for most people (and for moderate exercise) there's clear evidence that water is the better option unless you're doing for bouts of prolonged exercise.
All of these tactics may seem underhanded, but they're just part of the marketing game. By playing on the public's confusion and presenting their own products as quick fixes they convince us to buy their books, follow their diet plans, and perhaps most dangerously, ignore legitimate advice and real research.
Advertisement
It's not just companies that do this though. Individuals with a message to sell also do it. Skwarecki's article, Why It's So Easy to Believe Our Food is Toxic, is an exceptional case study in this. She explains how "experts" take good premises—like the need to take your health in your own hands and be critical of the things you eat and buy—and go off the rails when the sales pitch gets involved. She calls out nutrition gurus and health "experts" you've likely seen reposted on Facebook, like Vani Hari (aka The Food Babe,) and Joseph Mercola, among others, who thrive on obfuscating nutrition so much that the only clear thing they do suggest is that you should buy their books, sponsored foods, and DVDs.
Food industry marketing firms and "diet guru" salesmen both use the same tactics, and both groups make money from your fear and lack of knowledge about health. You should treat both with the same skeptical eye, even if one's message is more attractive than the other.
Advertisement
Corporate-Influenced Government Writes the Guidelines
The diet industry only shares part of the blame here. Much rests squarely on the shoulders of our government. We're not talking about a political party or person. This problem extends back for over 50 years, and it's not just an American problem. Our dietary guidelines and food industries have far-reaching global impact. People in countries around the world aim to adopt a more luxurious, first-world lifestyle, and that includes all of the food products available in countries like ours. Our industry reps are at the table when writing trade agreements. Nutrition scientists however, are not.
Advertisement
Dietary guidelines issued by government agencies responsible for food (largely the USDA) have changed over the years. They now focus less on foods and more on nutrients, which has three big problems:
A "balanced diet" has transformed from a selection of foods and portion suggestions into a concoction of nutrients that people have to "make sure they're getting enough of," (which they would anyway with a balanced diet.) It's led the public to panic over specific nutrients and ingredients in our foods. So-called "nutritionism" has led to the low-fat craze, the salt-is-evil scare, and the eggs-cause-heart-disease panic, all of which have been largely refuted (with special cases excepted.) The people responsible for dietary guidelines are directly at odds with (and often influenced by) food industry groups, agricultural companies, and other businesses with a massive stake in making sure you eat the food they pack and sell—and they're willing to spend politically to make sure the government recommends their products.
Advertisement
Just like money can buy influence in politics, it can buy influence in dietary guidelines. Kamal Patel, director at Examine.com, a site that aims to bring relevant studies to nutrition topics, explained the connection this way:
The USDA created the food pyramid to encourage a healthy diet, but the USDA also has a mission to encourage agricultural products grown in the US. There can be a LOT of conflict between those two goals. So the food pyramid (ahem, I mean "MyPlate") is not simply an objective summary of the available evidence. In fact, if the dietary guidelines had to go through peer review, I'm not sure it would be accepted for publication.
Speaking of the dietary guidelines...some people are of the mindset that they don't really matter. Nobody really reads the whole guidelines document, unless you're a researcher or just really into nutrition. But the guidelines are actually hugely important. Who's the biggest provider of food in the US? It's not McDonald's. It's the US government, by far. They provide food for the school lunch program and for over a million military members, in addition to subsidizing food for people with low incomes and a variety of other groups. And that's outside the indirect effect the guidelines have on physicians, who then inform their patients, who often aren't Lifehacker types who do their own research but rather just do exactly as their doctor directs. Or at least attempt to.
Equally important is the huge size of supplement industry and the food lobby. Farmers have little to no power compared to Unilever, General Mills, etc. They made it so that packaged foods are the norm, food and supplement marketing has become insane, and whole foods have lost out big time. In the beginning days of the food pyramid, they were using the slogan "Eat Right". Kraft used that slogan, so they told the government to stop, and they did! Companies always win. A few more examples: Government policy favors packaged foods that can display health claims (e.g. Granola bars, Lunchables) rather than natural foods that come loose or in clear plastic (e.g. strawberries, chicken thighs). Grains were originally 2-3 servings per day until food companies complained and they more than doubled the recommendation. Fruit and veggie manufacturers make very little money compared to General Mills and Unilever, so it took the National Cancer Institute to step in and tell the first-draft writers for the food pyramid that they really need to bump up the fruit and veggie intake. Even the person in charge of the first pyramid, Louise Light, wrote a book about how screwed up the process was by industry and differing interests. She said that the grain-based pyramid would cause obesity and diabetes, and it did. The people in charge told her that fruits and veggies are kind of interchangeable with grains, plus grains are cheaper for food stamps. Although few if any researchers are out to lie to the public, note that for the 2000 Dietary guidelines committee, 6 out of 11 members had financial ties to food and agriculture manufacturers. Researchers have pet projects and advocate for them, and funding and careers are dependent on that.
Advertisement
When Patel explained this, I asked how the government—probably the closest thing to a trusted resource—could re-shape its recommendations. He explained:
A better way to form the guidelines may be to avoid focus on individual nutrients (since few nutrients are categorically good or bad, other than manmade trans-fats which are always bad) and rather encourage whole foods. But if that message was the basis of a more simple guideline, and processed packaged foods were discouraged, where would that leave General Mills, Monsanto, and Unilever? Not that they directly write the guidelines, but they have lobbies and fund studies. And the government allows them to label Fruity Pebbles as healthy, just because they add some sprinkling of vitamins into the sugary mix. One last reason why it's good to focus on foods rather than nutrients for recommendations: single vitamins often fail in trials. Researchers used to think that vitamins E and A may protect against disease if supplemented. Dozens of trials later, it turns out that both may slightly lower lifespan or cause a bit more disease. One reason is that nutrients work in concert — eating a healthy diet where the foods naturally have a variety of nutrients is probably a better idea than relying on supplements to save you from a crappy diet. Indeed, there are no "superfoods" or "supernutrients"...it's probably more important to eat a natural diet that has some of each nutrient in addition to some healthy plant and animal components that aren't classified as essential nutrients (these are good/great for optimal health, but not technically necessary to live).
Advertisement
Unfortunately, that won't happen as long as major food industry groups play a significant role in drafting nutritional guidelines. This isn't to say they're not at all useful, but they should be viewed with a skeptical eye. Alannah Dibona, frequent Lifehacker contributor, MS in Nutrition Studies and registered dietitian, sums it all up:
We humans are experts at changing our minds, issuing inaccurate self-reports, and, well, living. Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health explains this beautifully alongside other issues with nutrition research in his latest book "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating." Dr. Willett takes care to point out another major factor: in this country, nutrition research for governing bodies is frequently in direct conflict with agriculture and its stake in the economy. The research that contributes to the USDA food pyramid, for example, is largely funded by grants from the dairy and beef industries. Thus, dietary "recommendations" from different bodies should be examined with a critical, research-oriented eye. The consumer must ask, "Who paid for this?"
Advertisement
The Media and the Scientific Community Communicates Poorly
So we've established that money talks. But surely science-based medicine must offer useful data that we can all use, right? Not quite. When I asked Skwarecki about it, she explained it this way:
The other reason there is confusion? Because there really ARE old beliefs that were held as true that are being corrected. Saturated fat is a subject with genuine controversy. Experts have not come to a consensus, but decades of public-health messages are in the process of being potentially overturned. When you hold to something as a foundation (Of course fat is bad for you! Of course stretching prevents injury!) and that belief gets challenged, you're tempted to give up on everything. It's a very reasonable thing to do: My facts were wrong, I need to reevaluate all my facts.
Advertisement
The truth is, while there's consensus on many things, there's a huge lack of it on others. Epidemiology, or the study of the patterns and causes of disease, is extremely difficult to do. Says Patel:
Nutritional epidemiology is a really, really tough thing to study. Harder than most other areas of health. Much harder than it sounds. Some people think "Oh nutrition! I know about food and nutrition! That's much easier than some analyzing some obscure medication that I can't even pronounce." Wrong. Medication effects can be complex, but nutritional epidemiology makes that look like child's play.... It's easy to see how the public can get mixed messages. Research results are notoriously unpredictable, since only some of the total number of studies get published. Studies have a higher chance of getting published if they show positive results, and food and supplement manufacturers can keep funding trials until one gets published. Nutrients interact with each other, so the effects of any one nutrient are hard to predict, let alone the effect of any one food in the midst of a diet comprised of dozens or hundreds of foods. So while I don't agree with everything Michael Pollen says, his message is generally on point: "nutritionism" is bound to fail. If you obsess about your diet and individual nutrients, you not only lose the benefit of the occasional cronut or thanksgiving dinner, but you lose the forest for the trees. Natural foods are what's healthy, nutrients and the controversies they cause are what keeps research dollars flowing and flip-flops popping up every couple weeks. It's important to get nutrients, but it's wise to get them mostly through food, and only after that supplement what you need in a very targeted manner.
Advertisement
In short, the science here is complex, difficult, and slow-moving. Patel explained that while there is consensus on some things, everyone's body is different. For every factor where there is agreement, there's another factor that influences everything:
There is a rough agreement that a balanced diet is probably a good idea. While there are some regular people who experiment with meat-only diets, macrobiotic diets, etc, most researchers are old dudes who eat normal diets and believe that veggies and fruits and whole grains are good, and red meat is bad, and some other things are in between. I'm just one person who has had the opportunity to make a career out of reading articles and grading their study quality — but I can honestly say that I don't know what is correct for sure. Gluten and wheat is bad for some people, low carb could help certain diabetics but so could a very nutritious diet, and low carb can also cause side effects in some people. Some people live long lives with "healthy" diets, some live long lives eating milk chocolate and fried chicken every day. For any specific nutrient, I can summarize the evidence. And for any type of diet, I can find the totality of observational evidence for it. But there haven't been many (any?) long term randomized trials of low carb, high carb, etc etc. It would be too expensive, deemed unethical, and just not logistically feasible for compliance — the primary researcher for long term observational trials (where they just follow people and collect data, not make them eat certain diets) often die in the middle of the trial, so it's quite an effort to keep a long randomized trial going that costs millions. Especially when food trials are funded at levels so much lower than pharmaceutical trials.
This is where the media comes in. Research that you hear about may be just one study designed to tackle a specific angle to a much larger problem. This is where the media (yes, ourselves at Lifehacker included) are at fault. Preliminary results published and popularized as cure-alls, rat cures touted as future human cures, it makes the public believe every miracle is a few trials away, and when it's not, people are frustrated and confused. This kind of poor communication and science reporting is a topic we've covered before in detail, and it plays a huge role in making the public's perception of science and medicine worse. As a result, it sends people running into the arms of diet hucksters and snake oil salesmen, eager to capitalize on that lack of trust.
Advertisement
We Are Predictable and Easily Influenced
Advertisement
We're part of the problem too. Our buying habits are predictable and easy to capitalize on. Our psychology is even predictable, and well studied by marketers. The power of the word "natural" to drive sales even though we all know it's meaningless is a good example, as is the fear around the word "processed" without context.
The scare over the "yoga mat chemical" (aka azodicarbonamide) is a good example too - we're poorly educated when it comes to science issues, don't read beyond headlines, succumb to confirmation bias, take up sides and arms in specific camps, and carry our message around to anyone who'll listen without listening ourselves.
Advertisement
Similarly, where we put our money influences who has power and amplifies their message, even if it's not backed by science. We put our money where those opinions are, and those opinions are influenced easily. The industries and companies we support grow, even as we look elsewhere in the world for examples of healthy living. Those companies in turn export our lifestyle into new markets. Unless there's strength in the food traditions in those markets, they become more like us and suffer the same illnesses we do. In the process, they lose the very things we could learn the most from.
So What Can We Do?
Advertisement
By now it may seem like we're pretty screwed. Where can you turn for legitimate advice? I asked our panel for their suggestions, and unfortunately they all agreed that we have to properly calibrate our bullshit detectors, and seek out multiple, trustworthy resources. Be ready for conflicting data—if you find it, it just means the topic isn't settled. The image above, from this pocket guide to bullshit prevention over at io9, is a good starting point.
You could ask your doctor, or a nutritionist—but Patel explained that's not always the best route. Most physicians get minimal nutrition training during medical school. A "nutritionist" could be anyone with a range of certifications, some of which can be earned in months without any real science study or knowledge. Even some registered dietitians (RDs) can unflinchingly toe the official government line just because it's easy and the closest thing we have to an evidence-backed recommendation, even though it's far from perfect.
When I asked Patel, he suggested everyone take time to learn about nutrition science and empower themselves:
It's best to learn a bit of basic nutrition science (like from a free online course or book—online courses from Udemy, Khan, MIT, etc), and then get to finding people who seem logical to discuss things with. These people can be at a local meetup, they could be a doctor or an alternative medicine practitioner or a dietician. Do not rely on Mayo Clinic, WebMD, etc. They are very conservative and go with whatever the government says for the most part. People who like food, who like cooking in particular, often eat healthy even if they don't know everything about nutrition. This is because eating plants and animals is probably the healthiest diet, rather than eating mostly packaged foods comprised of some type of flour, some type of vegetable oil, and a long list of other ingredients.
Advertisement
Bellatti suggests you be critical, but also don't boil it down to the old adage, "everything in moderation." It oversimplifies things:
The basic principles of healthful eating—eat a generous amount of fruits and vegetables, eat as little sugar as possible, prioritize whole foods (i.e.: avocados and chickpeas as opposed to Lucky Charms and Cheetos)—have remained unchanged for decades. The issue of moderation is problematic because it sounds good in theory, but it has been so watered down and so co-opted by the food industry that it now means nothing. The food industry loves to use "everything in moderation" to state that all their offerings—no matter how heinous—"fit in a healthy diet." Alas, a diet that includes frozen pizza, sugary cereal, soda, chips, and fast food all in "moderation" quickly becomes a diet where these foods, "in moderation," take up the most real estate. I urge people to remain curious and open-minded, but also to remember common sense and, whenever possible, read the actual study or seek the opinion of a well-informed individual who is able to understand the studies. Sometimes, a study like "X food lowers diabetes risk by 35%" is based on a study where the servings needed to slash that risk are preposterous.
Advertisement
At the end of the day, the reason why there's so much confusion is because there's too much to be gained by keeping us all confused and looking for guidance. Similarly, the fact that nutrition and health science is difficult and slow doesn't engender much faith from a quick-fix addicted public.
The big lessons here though are ones you probably knew already: Eat smart, cook your own food, and think critically when someone tries to sell you a diet or lifestyle. Think just as critically when someone is trying to sell you fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Do your own research, challenge your confirmation bias, and be willing to change your mind as new evidence arises (don't fall for the "I've done this my whole life and I'm fine" excuse.) Finally, and most importantly, remember that what works for you may not work for someone else. Nutrition is never a one-size-fits-all science.
Kamal Patel is the director of Examine.com. He's a nutrition researcher with an MPH and MBA from Johns Hopkins University, and is on hiatus from a PhD in nutrition in which he researched the link between diet and chronic pain. He has published peer-reviewed articles on vitamin D and calcium as well as a variety of clinical research topics. Kamal has also been involved in research on fructose and liver health, mindfulness meditation, and nutrition in low income areas. Examine.com and Kamal are both on facebook.
Advertisement
Beth Skwarecki is a science writer and educator. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, PLOS Public Health Perspectives, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can find more of her work in her portfolio here, and you can follow her on Twitter at @BethSkw.
Andy Bellatti, MS, RD is a Las Vegas-based dietitan and the author of the nutrition blog Small Bites. You can follow him on Twitter at @andybellatti.
Alannah DiBona, MA, MS, is a Boston-based nutritionist and mental health counselor, and the woman behind mindbodysportconsulting.com.
Advertisement
All four graciously volunteered their expertise for this story, and we thank them.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jose Manuel Barroso: "Without the EU Britain will have less influence"
The UK would have "zero" influence if it voted to leave the EU, the outgoing president of the European Commission has said.
Jose Manuel Barroso said Britain could not negotiate with the US and China "on an equal footing" on its own.
He also said free movement of people within the EU was an "essential" principle that could not be changed.
Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said Mr Barroso was "out of touch" and an "unelected bureaucrat".
Mr Barroso was asked about Prime Minister David Cameron's stated intention to negotiate a better deal for the UK in Europe, ahead of an in/out referendum.
The prime minister has said he will "not take no for an answer" and "get what Britain needs" on the question of freedom of movement.
'One last go'
If the Conservatives remain in power, a referendum would be held by 2017, Mr Cameron has said.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Barroso, whose term of office ends this month, said he believed Mr Cameron wanted Britain to remain in the EU.
"Britain is stronger in the European Union," Mr Barroso said, pointing to the Ebola crisis as an area where Britain would not have the same level of influence if it was outside the EU.
"David Cameron wrote to all of us about Ebola... What would be the influence of a prime minister of Britain if it was not part of the European Union?
"His influence would be zero."
Mr Cameron has said he wants to curb migration within the EU and last week pledged to have "one last go" at renegotiating the rules for Britain.
The Conservatives lost the recent Clacton by-election to the UK Independence Party, which wants the UK to leave the EU.
Image caption Conservative chairman Grant Shapps said Britain had negotiated "lots of impossible things" from the EU
Mr Barroso would not comment on a report in the Sunday Times that the government could limit the number of national insurance numbers given to low-skilled immigrants.
But he said that while the EU was willing to discuss benefit fraud and sham marriages, an "arbitrary cap" on migration would "not be in conformity with European rules".
He said Mr Cameron had previously asked him to enforce the free movement principle between Spain and Gibraltar.
Mr Barroso said 1.4 million Britons lived elsewhere in the EU and it was a "matter of fairness" that other EU citizens had the same rights.
He also criticised comments by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond last week that Britain was "lighting a fire under the European Union" with the proposed referendum.
'Slap-down'
Mr Barroso said: "I'm told the foreign secretary was the former minister of defence. I think this reference to fire and weapons is more appropriate for defence than foreign secretary.
"It is very important to have a positive tone regarding these issues between Britain and the EU."
BBC political correspondent Matt Cole said this was a "bit of a slap-down" for Mr Hammond although Jean-Claude Juncker would shortly be taking over as commission president.
Analysis
Image copyright Reuters
By BBC political correspondent Ben Wright
These comments are definitely unhelpful - and a window into Brussels thinking.
But Jose Manuel Barroso is on his way out - he's the outgoing president and a whole new commission will take over next month.
And in several areas where David Cameron wants to renegotiate, he has allies in Europe.
On restricting benefits that EU migrants can claim, his concern is shared in several capitals - most importantly Berlin.
I think there is some support for returning powers from Brussels to national governments.
But the big hurdle is this question of free movement of existing EU citizens which Mr Cameron is now talking about - even though we don't have a clear policy proposal from the government.
A change of treaty would be impossible, I think.
There could be an attempt to change the directive that puts the freedom into practice but that would require agreement by EU leaders and the parliament.
The incoming commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said he is prepared to make a "fair deal" with Britain. But it won't be at any price.
'Total free movement'
Mr Shapps said Mr Barroso had "dismissed" the UK, adding: "If he can dismiss us... then every other country in the EU ought to look out because apparently no country means anything to him."
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics, Mr Shapps said "a whole bunch of things" needed to change in the EU, of which immigration control was "one of the important ones".
Image copyright PA Image caption The government wants to get net migration below 100,000 a year
He said: "[Mr] Barroso is only the latest person from Europe to tell us we will never get what we want."
Mr Shapps said "there are lots of impossible things that we have negotiated" including a cut to the EU budget.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said there was no way of limiting European migration while the UK remained an EU member.
"Do not take Mr Barroso's comments on their own," he said. "Everyone in Brussels... says the same thing.
"We are committed by treaty - we have been since 1973 - to total free movement of peoples within the European Union."
Non-negotiable
The level of net migration stands at more than twice the government's target of 100,000 a year.
International Development Secretary Justine Greening told Sky's Murnaghan programme: "Free movement of labour was never meant to be an unqualified principle, irrespective of how it might have worked on the ground.
"We do need to see action taken in relation |
aw P.O. Box as an address and does not include a phone number.Kwheezy GNU / Linux
Debian KDE, made eezy...
About
"Kwheezy is Debian 7 (Wheezy), with a pre-configured KDE desktop experience and a good selection of GNU/Linux/Open Source software."
Kwheezy is a Debian based operating system designed for general purpose desktop computing.
Not so much a distribution based on Debian, but rather "a well configured Debian KDE installer". It is designed to give you more out-of-the-box. To be easier for Linux or Debian newcomers. It is full-featured, with all the applications, plugins, fonts and drivers that you need for daily use, and some more.
Kwheezy is 100% compatible with Debian 7.
Features
Debian 7 (Wheezy)
KDE 4.8.4
Linux Kernel 3.2 - Long Term Support (LTS)
Inbuilt Remastering Tool (kwheezy-livecd)
Kwheezy Profiler (backup/restore user profiles)
Kwheezy Keyboard Selector (GUI for debian keyboard selection)
Kwheezy Localizer (GUI for changing / adding locales)
Kwheezy AutoStart Chooser (GUI - choose some applications to start at login)
Kwheezy Switch Video Driver (GUI tool to quickly and easily switch video driver)
Kwheezy Toggle Screens (GUI tool for switching display to projectors etc.)
Kwheezy Connector (GUI tool for setting up SFTP and WebDAV connections)
Comprehensive Media Codecs
VLC media player
Clementine music player
Flash Player (plugin)
Mozilla Firefox - extended support release (ESR)
Mozilla Thunderbird - extended support release (ESR)
Calligra, LibreOffice (office suites)
Gimp, Krita (bitmap graphics editors)
Inkscape, Karbon (vector graphics editors)
Scribus (desktop publishing)
PDF-Shuffler (split, merge and re-arrange PDF documents)
Digikam (photo album manager)
Kdenlive (video editor)
Arista Transcoder, WinFF (video/audio transcoders)
Audacity (sound editor)
Imagination (DVD slideshow creator)
Konversation (IRC chat)
Kopete (multi-protocol instant messaging)
Linphone (VOIP voice & video calling)
QTransmission (bittorrent client)
WINE (Windows compatability layer)
VirtualBox (Virtual Machine; run multiple operating systems at the same time)
Google Earth (interactive globe)Â Â
Architectures
32bit (x86-32 / IA-32)
64bit (x86-64 / amd64)Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 to come with Intel SoC and dual Boot News oi-Sayan
A month back, an interesting rumour regarding the upcoming Mi Pad cropped up. It claimed that the next tab from Xiaomi will not be an Android one, but a Windows. The move sounded pretty strange then.
Nevertheless China publication Mobile Dad today blankly denied the previous leak by saying that the upcoming Mi Pad 2 won't at all be a Windows device. Instead the tablet will be able to Dual Boot between Android and Windows as per user requirements. Impressive stuff! But will this Xiaomi tablet at all make it to the market if the rumour turns out to be true? Chances are 50/50.
SEE ALSO: Sony At IFA 2015 Berlin: Watch Live Blog Here!
Just in case the rumours turns out to be true, Xiaomi can launch the Mi Pad 2 in China without much hassle. In fact a few other small manufacturers have pulled off this feat before in the country. But when it comes to international markets, Xiaomi is likely to land up in a tiff between two OS manufacturers - Microsoft & Google!
When launched the Mi Pad 2 won't be the first company trying to pull of this stunt in the international market. Rather Asus Transformer Book Duet and the Micromax Canvas LapTab were the first two devices sporting this dual boot. Despite unveiling these devices, both the company failed to bring them to the market, since Microsoft and Google weren't happy regarding the proceeding. But that was last year and now it's 2015, so it's quite possible that Microsoft and Google might think otherwise this time round.
SEE ALSO: The All-New Gillette FlexBall Razor Comes To India
Nevertheless the report further add that the Mi Pad will come with a 9.7-inch QHD display (2560 x 1440) along with an unnamed latest gen Intel processor under the hood. Additionally it sports either a 3GB or 4GB of RAM and a 13MP main camera.
We are expecting to receive more words on the device in the coming few weeks.MADRID (Reuters) - Russia has withdrawn a request to refuel warships in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta, Madrid said on Wednesday, after NATO allies said their carrier battle group could be used to target civilians in Syria.
Britain said earlier it had raised concerns with NATO ally Spain over its decision to allow three ships in the Russian flotilla to resupply in Ceuta on their way to the eastern Mediterranean. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said all allies were aware of NATO’s concerns about the Russian mission.
The Spanish government said it had granted permission in September for the three Russian ships to dock in Ceuta between Oct. 28 and Nov. 2 in line with its long-standing practice of allowing Russian Navy ships to visit its ports.
The Foreign Ministry said it had asked the Russian Embassy in Madrid for clarification after reports that the three ships would support attacks on the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo.
“The Russian Embassy in Madrid has just informed us that it is withdrawing the request for permission for stopovers for these ships and these stopovers have therefore been canceled,” the ministry said after saying earlier that it was reviewing the Russian request.
The Russian embassy in Spain confirmed that Moscow had withdrawn a request for the warships to refuel in Ceuta, the RIA news agency reported. It gave no reason for the change of heart.
NATO is monitoring the eight-strong carrier battle group from northern Russia on its way to the eastern Mediterranean, where alliance officials fear it will launch fighter bombers to hit rebels in northwestern Syria early in November.
“SERIOUSLY?”
Speaking earlier in Brussels, Stoltenberg said it was up to Spain to decide whether to refuel a Russian tanker traveling with the carrier battle group, but that NATO had expressed its concern to allies, including Madrid.
“We are concerned about the potential use of this carrier group to increase attacks against civilians in Aleppo,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the war-ravaged Syrian city where government forces are besieging its rebel-controlled eastern half. “All allies are aware of our concerns.”
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told reporters in Brussels that London would be “extremely concerned that any NATO member should consider assisting a Russian carrier group that might end up bombing Syrian civilians.
“NATO should be standing together,” he said.
Britain has raised concerns with Spain over the possible refueling of Russian warships on their way to Syria, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May said.
Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who leads the Liberal bloc in the European Parliament, said on Twitter: “Spain signed EU statement on Russian war crimes in Aleppo last week; today helps refuel fleet on way to commit more atrocities. Seriously?”
The naval group, which passed through the English Channel on Friday, is made up of Russia’s sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, as well as a nuclear-powered battle cruiser, two anti-submarine warships and four support vessels, likely escorted by submarines, according to NATO officials.
The naval deployment is carrying dozens of fighter bombers and helicopters and is expected to join around 10 other Russian vessels already off the Syrian coast, diplomats said.
Washington’s envoy to NATO said Russia was within its rights to move vessels through international waters. But U.S. Ambassador Douglas Lute raised concern that the aircraft carrier would be used to contribute to bombing of civilian targets around Aleppo.1.1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
So North Carolina has just made it incredibly hard for people to exercise their right to vote. Is the Obomaphobic, IRS-hating Ted Cruz (R-TX) upset about that? No, he is not upset by this abridgement of rights; he is upset about the extension of rights: the right to get married.
In fact, he is more than upset. Apparently, stripping that most essential right, the right to vote, from Americans does not threaten liberty. What threatens liberty is granting people the same rights he enjoys.
He says America is going down a dangerous road where “hate speech” is concerned. Letting gays and lesbians get married will lead to hate speech laws, he warns, and before you know it, pastors will be in jail for speaking up in defense of what extremists like himself pretend is “traditional” marriage.
Cruz told David Brody of CBN’s The Brody File, “If you look at other nations that have gone down the road toward gay marriage — that’s the next step where it gets enforced.”
Of course, he could not think of any examples of this. Just trust him: it happens.
It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage and that has been defined elsewhere as hate speech.” “And I think there is no doubt that the advocates who are driving this effort in the United States want to see that in the same place.
Again, he can’t offer any examples of who might be driving these alleged efforts. But trust him; it’s true. And they’ll have already taken away all the white evangelicals’ guns so they can’t protect themselves and their families from all those black predators like Trayvon Martin.
Let’s face it: if there were laws against being stupid, our jails would be full of Evangelical pastors. Speaking of Ted Cruz, they would be full of stupid politicians too. But lamentably, that’s not going to happen either.
When Brody asked him if America needs a spiritual revival (and here I thought Rick Perry had given us one at his prayer fast in Houston a couple of years ago), Cruz said,
Everywhere I go people are afraid for the future of our country. I think we’re at the edge of a precipice. If we keep going down this path, we’re risking losing our nation, we’re risking losing the incredible oasis of liberty.
Again, just to stress here, it is the granting of rights that is leading to this loss of liberty, not the stripping away of the right to vote.
What has happened is that Christian nationalist Ted Cruz is a member of a party/religion that has come to the bizarre and oxymoronic conclusion that stripping away rights protects liberty while giving rights threatens liberty.
From there, I suppose, anything is possible and we should not be surprised at any words that come out of a Republican mouth.
But hey, this is the guy who knows what President Barack Obama is saying without listening to what he says.
Ted Cruz has proved to be a gift that keeps on giving. If you want to put the stupid face on the GOP, look no more at Mitt Romney, but focus your attention on Ted Cruz and he will deliver.
You would like to think that he is the sacrificial lamb sent out to say catastrophically stupid things and distract us while his thuggish compatriots get away with murder (sometimes litereally) elsewhere.
Don’t get your hopes up. Cruz is just the tip of the iceberg, the leading edge of the avalanche of stupidity that has overwhelmed conservative America.
There are so many more saying and doing the exact same thing and we will be seeing an exponential increase in the stupid quotient leading up to 2016. Think of the potential for a moment: Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Peter King…and Christine O’Donnell might run again.
And again, it will be the media’s fault they lose, because the ever-reluctant, right-leaning mainstream media will be forced to report at least some of their horrific rhetoric in an attempt to cover Republican election campaigns.
What the mainstream media ignored, we didn’t. So speak on, Ted Cruz. We’re listening.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Next Game: LSU 3/26/2017 | 1 PM SEC Network Gator IMG Sports Network
Kevin O'Sullivan
Brady Singer
GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Florida's starting pitching once again showed its mettle, astossed a complete game in the Gators 8-1 win over No. 4 LSU at McKethan Stadium to clinch the series over the Tigers.Florida (16-8, 2-3 SEC) struck early and often on Saturday and limited LSU (17-7, 3-2 SEC) to just one run on five hits.Singer was fantastic once again. He tossed his first complete career game and allowed just one run after a leadoff double in the fourth inning came around to score. He has limited opponents to two earned runs or less in all six of his starts this season.In the first two games of the series, UF's starting pitchers – Singer and– have held a potent Tigers offense to just one run in 16 innings with 11 strikeouts and zero walks.Over the past three games against LSU, including a 1-0 win in the SEC Tournament, the Gators have allowed just one run in 27 innings.On the offensive side, Florida tallied 10 hits and scored a run in six of eight offensive frames.went 3-for-3 with a pair of RBI on the afternoon while(2-for-2, 2 R, 2 BB) and(1-for-3) also had two RBI apiece.Entering the game, LSU starter Jared Poche had allowed just one run in 36 innings pitched, but the Gators got to him early.In the second inning, UF loaded the bases and got a run after a pitch hit Hicks. Florida manufactured a run in the third afterpicked up his fourth hit of the series.Maldonado stroked a two-out, RBI single to center field to make it 2-0.The Tigers got a run back in the following inning. Antoine Duplantis led off with a double and came in to score on a groundout to first.Florida answered immediately, pushing the lead back to two runs in the bottom of the fourth.led off with a single and moved around the bases on a couple of groundouts.A wild pitch from Poche allowed Larson to trot home from third for a 3-1 lead.Singer worked out of a jam in the fifth for a scoreless frame and Florida knocked Poche out of the game in the bottom of the inning.led off with a stand-up double to left and Maldonado doubled to bring home Schwarz. Rivera then drew a walk and LSU made the call to the bullpen.Right-hander Austin Bain took over and got out of the inning without any further damage.In the seventh, Florida struck again after Maldonado led off with a walk. Rivera laced a ball into the gap in right center to score Maldonado from first for a 5-1 lead.The Gators added three more runs in the eighth inning on RBI singles from Schwarz and Rivera and a RBI double from Hicks.Game three of the series between Florida and LSU is Sunday at 1 p.m. The game will air on SEC Network and will be available to stream via the WatchESPN app. It will also be live on the Gators IMG Sports Network."I've said it all along, obviously it's been a little bit frustrating, but the guys that needed to hit have had really good weekends so far. Deacon's had a great weekend, especially today against Poche, left on left, JJ's swinging the bat really good, Nelly's had a good weekend so far.'s had a really good weekend. If we can just get a couple more guys going. I've said all along, I do like our offense. We had some opportunities with runners at third again and we didn't get them in, we've got to do better there. Certain guys in the lineup are going to be asked to handle the short game, we've just got to get a little bit better there as well."With the starting pitching we have, those guys have been great, and that's not an easy lineup to throw to. They've got a lot of different ways to score, they've got three or four guys that can really run in their lineup. They've got some strength with Deichmann there in the middle. It's not an easy lineup. But our starting pitching has been good, and it needed to be because that's a very good offense.""It was good. He's got an explosive fastball. It sinks. He can throw it to both sides of the plate. He's got a good slider. He threw a couple quality changeups today. It's a fastball maybe similar to Tanner Houck's, at Missouri. It's just different. You talk about spin rate, those types of things. It's just a fastball that's different. They're hard to find. A guy's got a good fastball when the hitter knows it's coming and they can't do much damage with it. That's a real fastball. He was a second rounder for a reason out of high school. He pitched really good today."According to multiple sources, supplies of the iPod Shuffle are dwindling across Apple’s physical retail and online channels. In fact, Apple has warned its retail employees that Shuffle supplies will be short for an unspecified period of time and that customers seeking to buy a Shuffle via a retail store should be directed to Apple’s online store.
Supplies of Apple's lowest priced iPod, the $49 iPod shuffle, are temporarily dwindling as shipping times on Apple's website drop to 7 - 10 days and Apple Retail Stores run out of stock around the country, reports 9to5Mac.The other two iPod lines, the nano and touch, aren't seeing the same dwindling of supplies as they both display 24 hour shipping times and are available now in most of Apple's retail stores. It's unclear why the shuffle is seeing supply problems, but one possibility is that Apple is seeing a temporary shortage of iPod shuffle components, impacting the company's ability to make new iPod shuffles.New York City appears to be the city mostly suffering from the iPod shuffle shortage, while the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Chicago seem to have a sporadic number of stores without any stock.Apple hasn't updated the iPod shuffle since September 2013. In early 2014, CEO Tim Cook said that the iPod was a "declining business". In September 2014, Apple discontinued the iPod Classic due to the difficulty in purchasing parts to manufacture it and a shrinking audience for the device.The Android market is saturated with devices for every budget but very high quality or premium devices are a rare breed, with only a handful rightly able to make that claim. Oppo wants to be among those select few and show the rest of the world what they are made of and their flagship Find 7 is their best weapon for the task.
Design
The Find 7’s design upon first glance is not anything that would make you swoon but the real beauty of the device comes through when you look closer. The handset was clearly made with excellent craftsmanship. The metal alloy body feels really nice and solid in the hand and the flat sides allow for easy gripping. The back of the device is removable and is made up of carbon fibre. Frankly speaking, the material feels very nice and is a pleasantly refreshing departure from the overused plastic and slippery metallic finishes of many devices in the market. The back features a very subtle curve which at first sight is not really noticeable but can clearly be felt when the curve rests gently on the palm. Removing the back reveals the removable battery, microSD slot and SIM Card slot. Though the device has a pretty large 5.5 inch screen, it does not feel very big in the hand or pocket.
One of the main reasons behind this is due to the thin profile and slim bezels which make holding the device in one hand an easier task. even though it does not feel very big, the device has a good bit of weight to it which again, gives a reassuring feel of sturdiness. The power and volume buttons are conveniently positioned to either side of the device and is in just the right spot for you fingers to easily reach. However good the aesthetics are, the main standout aspect of the design is the skyline notification LED that sits discretely on the chin of the device.
The blue LED gently glows and permeates from the centre to the edges of the chin and looks downright fantastic. Very few companies pay attention to notification LEDs but Oppo has implemented this rather unnoticed yet vital feature in a very elegant way. The only downside to this is that the LED is only blue and can not be configured to glow a different colour for a different notification but you can’t’ have everything can you?
Display
Oppo has never shied away from pushing the boundaries when it comes to their displays, having made one of the first 1080p displays on smartphones with the Find 5. The Find 7 brings again to the table their bold willingness to push for maximum pixel count with the first quadHD (2560 x 1440) smartphone display to hit the market. Many have argued over whether or not 2k is overkill but those who have experienced 2k displays first hand will usually beg to differ.
The Find 7 comes with an IPS LCD display which is 5.5 inches across and has a massive pixel density of 538 pixels per inch. This screen size therefore requires the user to perform some tricky hand gymnastics in order to use it in one hand. Colours look good and accurate, the display is not oversaturated and it offers great viewing angles. Our one gripe with the display was the maximum brightness level which was below what we are used to but it is most certainly not a deal breaker.
Software
The Find 7 runs on Android 4.3 Jellybean with their in house Colour OS on top. Colour Os, as the name suggests, is vibrant and colourful. It comes packed with a boatload of customizations and also offers the user the ability to greatly change the look and feel of things. Now depending on your particular taste, Colour OS could be either a good or bad thing. I know many people love nothing but the purity of vanilla Android Dr others (such as yours truly) loves to change every possible aspect of the software. Right out of the box, Colour OS come with a built in theme engine that has access to a store filled with numerous themes for both the homescreen and lockscreen. If stock Android is your preference, there is a Jellybean theme along with many other cool ones.
Even though you can change certain aspects of the UI, there are some things that can not be changed such as the notifications shade or the look of the settings app. Applications like the dialer and messaging have also received some sprucing up from Oppo and in essence, carries a white futuristic or ultra modern pallet throughout. Where Colour OS really stands out though is in its gesture functionality. Oppo has paid a lot of attention to gestures and even has a dedicated panel for drawing gestures by simply sliding down from the top left corner.
When the device is off, a short double tap on the display will unlock it whereas double tapping the home key will put it back to sleep. In the settings panel, there is a section dedicated completely to gestures. The gestures are fully customizable so you can configure your own gestures such as drawing a circle on the screen when off to instantly launch the camera. While screen off gestures have a slight bit of latency, the screen on gestures are very fast.
What impressed me most though was the voice unlock feature where you just have to say the command “OK Snapdragon” to instantly unlock the device completely hands free. All in all Colour OS is very vast and goes deep to make changes to the stock Android experience. Whether you like it or not relies mostly on your own personal tastes but the bottom line is that the OS is fast, responsive and just flies on the Find 7.
Performance
As mentioned before, the phone is very zippy. It flies through all functionality and is really helped by the fact that the device runs on a Snapdragon 801 SoC clocked at 2.5GHz with 3GB RAM. We could not find any noticeable stutters throughout our usage and overall enjoyed the buttery smooth experience.
The 3,000 mAh battery will get you through a day of moderate use but for more intensive users, pulling off a full day may be a stretch. In the modern day, given how phones are getting thinner and more powerful, battery life becomes a huge concern and one way to counter this is via fast charging. Fortunately Oppo ships the Find 7 with what they call VOOC charging, the special 4.5 ampere charger fills the battery up from 0% to 75% in just a half hour!
Camera
Going into the unboxing, we knew that the camera was one of the Find 7’s highlight features and sure enough, it left us very impressed. The 13 megapixel f2.0 SONY EXMOR RS sensor found in the device is no slouch when it comes to producing quality images and video, that combined with a rather minimalistic UI allows for a great camera experience. While the camera offers things like panorama, HDR and a beauty mode,the main draws are in features like long shutter and Ultra HD picture which basically takes numerous pictures and stitches them together to form one giant 50 megapixel photo.
The camera even allows you to shoot in RAW format. Taking pictures is an instantaneous procedure although there is a bit of processing time required for Ultra HD and RAW format photos. To keep it short, the photos produced are great. Even in low light, the camera did not fail to impress us. Switch over to video mode and the Find 7’s camera continues to show off. You can record video at Full HD and even in 4k at 30 fps. What we enjoyed using the most was the 120 fps slow motion video recording which gave us some quality clips. Below the camera module is a dual LED flash that gets the job done in most situations. Going to the front of the device, we have a 5 megapixel camera with a wide angle 80 degree lens that allows more people to fit into a shot.
[divider]Final Thoughts [/divider]
The Oppo Find 7 is an awesome smartphone from nearly every perspective. It offers virtually everything the smartphone consumer looks for in a product and even some extras. Given that the device was unveiled earlier this year, the rest of the market has since moved on to slightly faster SoCs. Nevertheless the Find 7 strongly holds its ground and delivers a wonderful experience and we would strongly recommend the device for purchase, especially if you are in the market for phablets.As you already know, Comcast Sportsnet is the exclusive rights holder of Capitals television telecasts. What you might not know is that they hold the same rights for all Philadelphia Flyers broadcasts as well. Both of these CSN outlets have their own Twitter accounts and, boy, were they busy today.
Through 40 minutes, the Capitals led the Philadelphia Flyers by only one goal. That’s unusual for the Caps of late, as they have been running roughshod over teams during their nine-game winning streak. That would change fast in the third period and the CSN Capitals Twitter account let their sister station, know all about it.
Tweets
.@CSNPhilly sorry to make you update that scoreboard graphic again after you just made one when it was 2-0. pic.twitter.com/CTpaIzf2rG — CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals) January 15, 2017
.@CSNPhilly oops we did it again. keep those updated graphics comin’ — CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals) January 15, 2017
.@CSNPhilly you can just skip the 4-0 graphic and just make the 5-0 one. — CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals) January 15, 2017
.@CSNPhilly this is the only time we’re ok with you flooding our twitter feed. — CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals) January 15, 2017
have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again https://t.co/NVI4IQZRnT — CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals) January 15, 2017
Absolute savagery. And the response from CSN Philly? Nothing but just updated graphics.
POWER RANKINGS: ALL-TIME BEST PHIL 1) grubauer
2) uncle from fresh prince
3) collins
…..
492718) adelphia pic.twitter.com/QtyKrXO9Zt — CSN Capitals (@CSNCapitals) January 15, 2017
Credit for all images and tweets to CSN’s social media and graphic design teams
Full Coverage of Caps vs Flyers
Advertisements
Share this story: Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Tumblr
PinterestSimon Pegg and Justin Lin Say Star Trek Beyond Will Deconstruct the Trek Franchise
"What's the point of it all?" continues Pegg. "We're gathering a great community within the galaxy, but to what end? What does it all mean?"
"This is the 50th anniversary," says Linn. "I felt like it was important to really deconstruct the idea of Star Trek, the idea of the Federation and why it's special. We'll really be poking at a lot of different things."
Star Trek Beyond might be coming to theaters in just a few months, but we still know barely anything about the movie or what it will add to the Star Trek franchise. One thing we do know is that geek legend Simon Pegg has stepped in on writing duties, while Justin Lin has filled JJ Abrams' directing boots. So far, the pair have done a good job at keeping key plot points a secret, but in a new interview, they gave details on their upcoming movie and its attempt to take a deeper dive into what the Star Trek franchise is all about.Pegg and Lin sat down with Empire recently to reveal the long-awaited details, and it would seem that there is a certain weariness to the crew who are now two years into their famous five year mission.said Pegg. But we soon learn that there will be very little rest for the Enterprise crew, as Idris Elba's Krall –an alien with a deep hatred for The Federation – is quickly leaving his mark on the weary party. Pegg says Krall's violence leaves Kirk and the crew questioning their mission.All of this introspective thinking appears to be characteristic of Lin's goal for the movie. The director says he wanted Star Trek Beyond take a deeper look at the various elements that make the franchise what it is.Whilst this seems like an admirable motive, it might have many rolling their eyes. It's one thing to pay homage to a great franchise, but you need to be able to offer more than a bit of fan-service. Take a look at Star Wars: The Force Awakens, for example – I admit I am committing the cardinal sin of comparing Trek with Wars, but it feels relevant here. JJ Abrams may have received a little flack for coming too close to A New Hope with familiar Star Wars tropes throughout, but many will be hard-pressed to deny that he offered up brilliant foundation with which to drive the franchise into a new era. Taking a deeper look at what Star Trek and its story stands for is all very well and good, but if it does nothing to drive the characters forward, then that has to be bad news for the future of this movie franchise.With so many long-running TV shows and its plethora of movie titles, Star Trek has been regularly deconstructed over the course of its 50 year history. We've often found ourself questioning the effectiveness or even the purpose of the Federation, and if it takes a nasty Blue Idris Elba to do that on the big screen, so be it.Some people will no doubt jump on Lin's comments with outrage locked and loaded, and while the first trailer did little to convince us that Star Trek Beyond will right the wrongs of Into Darkness, let's at least wait until the next trailer is released before we get too carried away. Speaking of which, you will likely be able to catch the second trailer shortly after it's premiere at Paramount's Star Trek fan even on May 20thA Russian citizen was confronted and briefly detained in Indonesia for wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, an international symbol of communism and the best recognized symbol of the former Soviet Union.
Igor Riabchuk, a Russian national, was accosted by a group of local people in Batam, Indonesia, December 31, for wearing a t-shirt with the communist symbol.
The people turned out to be members of an organization that calls itself Children of the Red Beret Command (AKBM); the group tried to explain to Riabchuk that he was violating Indonesian law by wearing a communist symbol, but could not overcome the language barrier. Unable to communicate with Riabchuk, who can only speak Russian, not English or Indonesian, the locals took him to a police station by force, where he was detained.
According to Riau Islands Police spokesman Saptono Erlangga, the police decided to detain Riabchuk "for his own safety."
"He can only speak Russian so he didn't understand why these people approached him," said Saptono.
Later, the police confiscated the t-shirt, which Riabchuk had bought in Vietnam, and returned Riabchuk to his hotel.
"He's only a tourist. [There was] no political motive," said Saptono.
Riabchuk is reportedly the third person to be detained in Indonesia for wearing communist symbols. According to police reports, one citizen of Singapore was detained for wearing a similar t-shirt. His t-shirt was also confiscated by the police, and he was subsequently released without charge.
A local taxi driver who was heading to a New Year's eve party, ended up having to spend the night at the police station for the offensive sign.
Communism has been officially banned in Indonesia for more than 50 years and this ban is unlikely to be lifted any time soon. According to Indonesian law, a person promoting communism may end up in jail for up to seven years.
The ban was imposed after Suharto became president following a US-backed coup against the progressive government of Sukarno in 1965. Following the coup, Suharto carried out a nationwide purge of communism known as the Indonesian Genocide. The death count from the purge is estimated to be between half a million to 1 million people. The Indonesian Communist Party-the third largest in the world at the time-was systematically destroyed.The indie scene has been overrun in recent years with games that play with time travel, in particular using that gimmick as an excuse to have multiple copies of the player character on screen simultaneously.
Blame Braid, I suppose, although clones were used only sparingly in Jonathan Blow's breakout hit in 2008.
That said, there's something refreshing about Time Paradox, an amateur Flash game submitted to the Game Brain contest on the Square Enix website. In Time Paradox you have a mere 30 seconds to reach an exit blocked by locked doors. There's never enough time to unlock all the doors yourself, but by stepping into a time machine you can reset the clock and work with your past self to escape.
The catch is this: Unlike all those other time travel clone games, you must not encounter your past self at all. Even looking him in the eye will cause you both to "faint" and create a time paradox, resetting the stage. There's even a horrible little scream that plays when you fail, one that is at odds with the cutesy retro graphics.
Time Paradox has an old-fashioned look to it, one that reminds me of Half-Minute Hero – which come to think of it also has a 30 second time limit. Unfortunately, the game is also very much old-fashioned in its design. There's no pause or mute button (rather unusual for a Flash game) and you are limited to three lives.
You can continue from the title screen, sure, but the unnecessary Game Over screen is pure tedium. I also found the controls to be oddly unresponsive at times, though that could be a limitation of my PC or my web browser.
My hope is that someone out there will pick up on the good ideas this game has and put them to use in a better game. Time travel is scary stuff; more games should reflect that.
Screengrab: Daniel Feit/Wired.com
Time Paradox [Square Enix, via AV Club]US President Barack Obama has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his dispatch of troops to Ukraine flouted international law and warned he was courting political isolation if the incursion continues.
Obama also spelled out the right of the Ukrainian people to chart their own destiny and symbolically began to line up the long-time Western alliance against Russia, calling the leaders of France and Canada.
US Secretary of State John Kerry also hosted a joint conference call with six other foreign ministers from Europe and Canada as well as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and the Japanese envoy to the US "to coordinate on next steps."
Obama's 90-minute telephone call with Putin represented the kind of direct confrontation between the men who run the White House and the Kremlin rarely seen since the end of the Cold War, the AFP news agency reported.
The White House account of the call was unusually detailed and blunt, hinting at tense exchanges as fractures deepened in a relationship that has been deteriorating since Putin returned as president in 2012.
"President Obama expressed his deep concern over Russia's clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity," the White House said.
Obama told Putin his actions were a "breach of international law, including Russia's obligations under the UN Charter, and of its 1997 military basing agreement with Ukraine."
Kerry also warned in a later statement that Moscow was risking the peace and security not just of Ukraine, but also the wider region.
If Russia did not de-escalate tensions, it would have a "profound" effect on ties with the US, said Kerry, who is due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of talks in Rome next week.
Asked about the tone of the call, a senior US official resorted to diplomatic parlance indicating an uncomfortable conversation, describing it as "what you'd expect: candid and direct."
Canada recalls ambassador
Obama's national security team met at the White House to mull options on Ukraine, a day after the president warned Putin's actions would incur "costs."
Those costs would entail an immediate halt from the US side to preparatory talks on the G8 summit in the Olympic resort of Sochi on the Black Sea in June, Obama told Putin.
The crisis deepened after Putin secured an endorsement by lawmakers to send troops to Ukraine.
Officials in Kiev had earlier said Russia had already dispatched 30 armored personnel carriers and |
world of fast-jet journalism, Sweetman stressed that the pics might be fakes.
Fantastical Photoshop art is a hallmark of Chinese military-themed websites. See the giant, flying "heli-carrier" or the submarine flattop – both creations of over-excited Chinese Photoshoppers.
But there are hints that the J-20 photos are real – and that much clearer shots exist, somewhere. "Rumor has it that better shots have put in transient appearances on Chinese Websites before being zapped by the censor," Sweetman wrote. That those rumored photos were yanked is itself perhaps proof that Beijing really does have a new fighter. "In China's military fan Web culture, the rapid intervention of the censors is always a boost for the credibility of the poster," aviation journalist Rick Fisher told Sweetman.
Most convincingly, the airplane depicted in the snapshots apparently has many of the right characteristics for a fifth-generation stealth-fighter prototype: a chiseled front-section, triangular wings, all-moving tailplanes. In fact, the supposed J-20 seems to combine the front fuselage of the U.S. Air Force's F-22 with the back half of Russia's T-50 stealth prototype, which appeared a little less than a year ago.
If it's real – and that's a big if – the J-20's appearance could signal a big step forward for the Chinese air force, which to date relies mostly on airplanes bought from Russia or reverse-engineered from Russian or Israeli designs.
Panicky Western air-power advocates, who a year ago claimed America would be "less safe" if the Pentagon pressed forward with plans to end production of the F-22 stealth fighter at 187 copies, might just announce the end of America's 50-year dominance of the skies. Alarmists made similar claims when Russia's new T-50 fighter first flew, despite that plane's many non-stealthy attributes and dubious production prospects.
The Pentagon hasn't had a chance to comment on the J-20 photos, but is likely to remain sanguine. In deliberations over the F-22, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged that the Chinese were working on a stealth fighter, but insisted the Communist country would have "no fifth-generation aircraft by 2020," while the United States would have more than a thousand F-22s and F-35s.
In the year-and-a-half since Gates made that claim, the Pentagon has delayed F-35 production and China has apparently accelerated its own stealth development – alleged J-20 photos aside – but the spirit of Gates' assertion remains valid.
Even if the photos are real and the J-20 exists as more than blueprints, there's probably no cause for alarm. The United States flew its first stealth prototypes – the YF-22 and rival YF-23 – in 1990; the J-20 hasn't even flown yet. It took 15 years for the F-22 to enter front-line service. Considering China's quality-control problems with high technology, it could take a decade or more for the J-20 to appear in numbers that make any difference in the Pacific balance of power. Gates might have been slightly off in his assessment of the Chinese air force, but probably not by much.
And that's all assuming Beijing's Christmas stealth-fighter surprise isn't all just Photoshop magic. With so little good information on military hardware coming out of China, fighter fakery is a real prospect. In which case, we'll wait for China's first stealth fighter to make its true debut.
Update, 7:28 EST: There's another photo up – the clearest yet. "The impression here is of a big, long aircraft, 70+ feet from nose to tail, which would make sense for a number of reasons," Sweetman wrote in reaction. He speculated the J-20 might have "lower supercruise performance and agility than an F-22, but with larger weapon bays and more fuel."
"Why would China need or want a short-range stealth aircraft?" he continued. "Any targets with defenses that call for that capability are a long way from the mainland. Also, the bigger that the aircraft is, the more likely it is that it is a bomber as much as, if not more than, a fighter."
Photo: via Aviation Week
See Also:With the trade deadline rapidly approaching, rumours, speculation and trade ideas will be plentiful. The Canucks situation is one which will be followed closely leaguewide, as Radim Vrbata and Dan Hamhuis still may or may not be in play. If they are, that changes the entire market.
Ideally, the Canucks take advantage of the trade market and deal both for picks and prospects. There should be quite a few teams that would be a fit for either. Supply and demand indicates the Canucks will be able to pick their dance partner should they present themselves with a worthy offer.
Which has us wondering which pieces might be of interest and what thought process the Canucks will enter this hugely formative stretch with.
It’s often suggested that the Canucks prospect stable is at it’s weakest on the backend. A fair criticism, as the Canucks still lack that blue-chip defensive prospect that can play huge minutes and contribute on both ends of special teams. These concerns are likely overstated, as the Canucks depth in this area is relatively impressive.
In fact, there’s a case to be made that there’s too much depth. Vancouver’s farm team, the Utica Comets, will likely be overcrowded next season. It’s likely that current Comets blue liners Jordan Subban and Ashton Sautner will be asked to step into larger shoes next season in a more premier role, with their first season of professional hockey behind them.
Last week, news broke that the Canucks were pulling Nikita Tryamkin’s strings to get him on their side of the Pacific, playing professional hockey in Utica. There are the obvious financial and contractual reasons why one might not expect Tryamkin to make the Canucks next training camp, so let’s assume the Comets are where he plays.
This brings us to the other big Russian (or Lithuanian, depending on who you ask) defenceman in the Canucks system, Andrey Pedan. Pedan sipped a cup of coffee with the Canucks this season and didn’t look out of place. He has been rounding out his game well in Utica and looks to be ready to take the next step. Pedan’s waiver eligibility next season means the Canucks will be reticent to risk a Frankie Corrado redux, so you can pencil him in the lineup.
This leaves the Canucks with six defencemen going into next season, assuming everything remains constant.
There’s also a good chance that the Canucks fifth-round selection from 2015, Carl Neill, will also turn pro and join the Comets. I won’t speculate in either direction, but given his age and production in the QMJHL, it seems likely.
That leaves the Comets with four prospects patrolling the blue line next season. The Canucks general manager, Jim Benning, has said many times that he wants his prospects to have veteran players to learn from. So it’s safe to expect the Canucks to sign one or two players of that ilk, like Taylor Fedun or Biega types to help out.
Obviously, there are some variables in there but based on these aforementioned player situations, it’s clear that the Comets are not in dire need of defensive prospects for next season specifically.
If the Canucks can acquire a high-end defensive prospect, in the same vein as Madison Bowey, then they should. Or if they can get a defenceman drafted early in the 2015 draft, perhaps that’s worth exploring. But it shouldn’t be something they target just for the sake of it.
Looking at the forward group in Utica next year is where things get interesting.
Former first round picks Brendan Gaunce and Hunter Shinkaruk are clear frontrunners to push for a spot next season. I doubt both of them crack the roster out of camp, but one of them making it isn’t a far-fetched thought. It will all depend on what the Canucks do in the UFA market to clog up their path, but with Brandon Prust, Radim Vrbata and Adam Cracknell as pending UFA’s, there are 3 spots being opened up. That is before any trades to open more spots. Once again, those spots could be quickly taken but (the unlikely) return of Chris Higgins, or on the trade market or in free agency, but at the very least Shinkaruk and Gaunce would be the go-to injury recalls.
Another player that could make the Canucks is Alexandre Grenier, who becomes subject to waivers next season. As the Canucks have shown in the past with Frankie Corrado, they aren’t afraid to place a player on waivers who they feel needs to play. Regardless, he is another name in the mix to make the Canucks roster next season or could be gone.
Those three are currently in the top 5 for scoring for the Comets, so any absence by them will be noticed. The Comets do have players like Alex Friesen and Mike Zalewski, who are at this point, long shots to make the NHL and can’t be relied upon to carry the offence for the Comets next year. So that brings us to ‘Who is coming?’
Let’s start with the 2014 draft class.
With Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann establishing themselves as full-time NHL’ers this year, they obviously won’t be available to join the Comets next season. Normally, the 1st round pick (s) would be turning pro next season and would be looked upon to help handle some of the offensive load. After that the Canucks drafted 3 defenceman (Stewart has been converted to forward since), one goalie and one centre. 6th round pick Kyle Pettit is not an offensive player in the slightest and I won’t be surprised if the Canucks don’t sign him. Stewart played four games in the AHL this season, where he didn’t score a goal. He went to the ECHL and didn’t score any goals there. He is now in the WHL and has 2 goals in 14 games. With that, there is no offensive help coming from the draft class that would be ‘turning pro’ this season.
Looking at the 2015 draft class, the Canucks took Brock Boeser in the first round, and he is more then likely going to return to University of North Dakota next year. I would also suspect that if and when Boeser turns pro, he will likely go straight to the Canucks roster, or only see a handful of games in the AHL. Next forward taken, Zhukenov is just getting his taste of hockey in North America and although he has been steadily improving, he needs to add strength before the AHL is even an option. Gaudette will likely return to Northeastern. Jasek is a bit of a wildcard as it is rumour the Canucks want him to come over to North America next year, but I would suspect that he will go to the CHL for a year. So again, there are no reinforcements on the offensive front from this class.
I will give credit where credit is due – Canucks management through the acquisitions of Sven Baertschi, Emerson Etem and Linden Vey (yes, even him) have successfully helped fill the gap that was created from bad drafting between 2008-11. But there is a gap that is being created right now that likely will need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
There is the possibility of Anton Rodin being in Utica next season, but I doubt that would happen or last for very long. If he is signed and unable to crack the Canucks roster out of camp, he could spend some time in Utica to start the year but if it is for an extended period of time, I would suspect that he would ask to be assigned back to SHL or have his contract terminated.
Through a combination of trading picks for the Etem, Baertschi and Vey, the rapid promotion of Bo Horvat, Jake Virtanen and Brendan Gaunce and taking Boeser in the first round there has been a void created. After Shinkaruk and Gaunce, the Canucks are lacking high skilled offensive players on the horizon to help create competition at the AHL level. Thus taking advantage of the trade market and moving pending UFA’s to acquire some 19 to 21-year-old forward prospects would be a wise venture.
These age blocks that I have been alluding to are something that I will delve further into in the coming weeks, taking a look at the Canucks roster and their prospect pipeline.
With that, I won’t speculate who is available or who the Canucks should target specifically, but merely suggest that the Canucks would be wise to tackle this gap now. One or both of Shinkaruk and Gaunce will likely start the season in the AHL next year, but the following year, they are both waiver eligible. Then that gap that I mentioned above will be even more prevalent and worrisome. Competition is key to creating a successful organization from the bottom up.
Depending on the market, the Canucks may be able to squeeze a ‘high end’ defence prospect from somewhere. Although that is unlikely to happen, the trading deadline is the best chance for the Canucks to do so, as teams will have their eye on the cup and may be willing to part with a player that they vehemently opposed to moving just mere weeks ago.
So don’t be surprised that if the Canucks do choose to move players like Hamhuis and Vrbata that some young forwards may be coming back. They likely see the same gap as I do and will want to address it before it becomes an issue like the terrible drafting from 2008-2011 did.WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Friday that there’s “no question” there are allies of former President Barack Obama who are “burrowed into government” and working to push a liberal “agenda.” Spicer’s comments came after Yahoo News asked if the White House believes there’s a “deep state” that is actively working to undermine President Trump.
“Well, I think that there’s no question when you have eight years of one party in office that there are people who stay in government … and continue to espouse the agenda of the previous administration,” Spicer said. “So, I don’t think it should come as any surprise that there are people that burrowed into government during eight years of the last administration and, you know, may have believed in that agenda and want to continue to seek it. I don’t think that should come as a surprise to anyone.”
The concept of the “deep state,” a shadowy network of staffers at military and intelligence agencies who work to influence the government, has increasingly become part of the conversation since Trump took office in January. Trump has repeatedly alleged that Obama ordered surveillance on his team during the campaign and suggested that the ex-president’s allies are to blame for leaks that have dogged his administration. While the White House has not used the term “deep state” publicly, according to the Washington Post, “many” presidential aides employ the phrase and chief strategist Steve Bannon has “spoken with Trump at length about his view that the ‘deep state’ is a direct threat to his presidency.” During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference late last month, Bannon framed Trump’s administration as a fight for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Trump’s allies outside the White House have been far more direct about their concerns that the “deep state” is out to get the president. Breitbart, a conservative site formerly run by Bannon that is reportedly widely read in the White House, has published multiple articles alleging there is an anti-Trump “deep state.” Last month, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., claimed “it’s really the deep state versus the president” in an appearance on CNN. And on Thursday night, Fox News host Sean Hannity aired a segment focused on “purging the deep state” wherein he argued that Trump needs to “act right now” and execute mass firings to “end the leaks that are plaguing this administration.” In a follow-up column published on Friday, Hannity claimed “deep-state Obama holdovers embedded like barnacles in the federal bureaucracy are hell-bent on destroying President Trump” and must be fired.
During the White House press briefing on Friday, Yahoo News also asked Spicer if the director of national intelligence or the CIA director will have a “presidential mandate” to find and fire national security staffers who are working against the president. Spicer said no.
“That’s not part of the CIA’s mandate under any circumstances, so, no on that one,” Spicer said.
Read more from Yahoo News:Advertisement
Is this robot the factory worker of the future?
The pi4 Workerbot is a new industrial robot capable of using its two arms to perform a variety of handling, assembly, and inspection tasks. It's designed to work alongside human workers -- and the robot's LCD face even displays a broad smile when things are running smoothly.
The robot is a creation of German firm pi4 robotics in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology, in Berlin.
One of the innovative things about the robot is its control system. The Workerbot, which made its debut at the Automatica show last June, relies on a method known as impedance control, which allows the robot's arms to cooperate as they handle objects, keeping forces at desired levels and adjusting to disturbances -- a crucial capability when it comes to bimanual manipulations.
With its human-inspired size and looks [see images above], the Workerbot is a far cry from traditional factory bots, especially those used by the auto industry.
That's not to say that the automotive industry hasn't been good to robotics. Quite the opposite. Thanks to car manufacturers, industrial robots evolved into fast, reliable, powerful, and precise machines. But there's a flip side to the story.
Traditional industrial robots are rather complex to integrate into existing manufacturing processes; deploying them at a factory is an arduous, costly, and time-consuming task. The robots are also difficult to reprogram when changes become necessary, and they can't safely share spaces with human workers.
This barrier to entry has kept small and medium companies in industrialized countries "robot-less" -- at a time when robots, more than ever, could boost productivity and ameliorate labor shortages. To automate their production lines, which often include many different items manufactured in low volumes, these companies need robots that are inexpensive and intuitive, but still reliable and precise.
This is a promising, and potentially hugely lucrative, market that pi4_robotics and other companies -- including, it appears, Rodney Brooks' secretive start-up, Heartland Robotics -- want to explore.
The Workerbot's arms have seven degrees of freedom each (like humans arms), with grippers equipped with force sensors that can adjust the pressure that they apply. The head has two inspection cameras on the sides, a 3-D camera on the forehead, and a display screen that provides feedback to operators (a smile means all is okay; a frown indicates that something is wrong, or that the robot could work faster). The Workerbot is not a mobile robot, though human workers can use its wheeled base to move it manually.
Watch the robot in action:
According to Fraunhofer engineer Dragoljub Surdilovic, their approach to compliant control is what makes the Workerbot different from similar two-armed bots, like the Motoman SDA10D and the DLR/KUKA Justin humanoid.
"We created a new dual-arm programming language and environment that incorporate impedance control and make it easier to plan, program, and realize bimanual contact tasks," Surdilovic says.
Most industrial robots don't use impedance control, but rather they implement position control. In this approach, the robot tries to make its arms follow as closely as possible a series of positions in space. If the arms go off their trajectory, the motors try to bring them back on track.
The problem is, if you have two robots, or one robot with two arms, that need to collaborate and they are position controlled, coordinating their movements can be difficult. Imagine that the two arms are manipulating the same object. If at any point one of the arms becomes off-trajectory and starts pushing to get back on track, the other arm might go off-trajectory and start exerting forces as well.
Using impedance control, bimanual manipulation becomes much easier. The way this scheme works is the robot simulates a dynamic behavior for its arms that is different from the arms' intrinsic mechanical dynamics (which depends on its linkages, motors, and joints). The idea is to actuate the motors by simulating a mass-damper system. Imagine moving an object through a viscous liquid. The control system can adjust its parameters so you feel that you are moving a greater mass, for example, or add more damping so you don't overshoot when trying to bring the arm to a given position.
The upshot is that impedance control makes the arms capable of adjusting to errors and disturbances while at the same time keeping applied forces within desired limits.
This approach is also key to improve safety, because the robot won't push back if a person accidentally comes into contact with it. Indeed, the Workerbot meets the ISO 10218 norm for "inherent safe design of industrial robot." Another important benefit is that human operators can manually guide the robot arms to teach it an assortment of tasks, simplifying the programming process.
It will be interesting to compare the Workerbot to the Heartland Robotics system. Both companies seem to target assembly, handling, and inspection tasks. Whereas pi4_robotics claims that its bot will "help keep European production competitive," Heartland wants to "reinvigorate American manufacturing." The German firm plans to lease their robot for about 4,800 euros per month, and recent reports indicate that Heartland might sell its robot for US $5,000, although details are still murky.
One thing is certain: This is going to be an exciting chapter in robotics, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things will unfold -- and most important, whether these robots will help the many manufacturers that have long awaited for them.
Images: Copyright pi4_robotics
Samuel Bouchard is a co-founder of Robotiq Gripper, in Quebec City.
READ ALSO:
Super Robust 'Terminator' Hand Tue, January 25, 2011 Blog Post: Researchers have built a robot hand that can endure strikes from hard objects without breaking into pieces
Little Helper Factory Bot Is Big Help Wed, January 05, 2011 Blog Post: The manufacturing industry can certainly use a little help. How about some robot help?
A Robotic Gripper that Loves Coffee Fri, October 29, 2010 Blog Post: Can this coffee-powered robot hand fetch you a cup of coffee? (Answer: Yes!)St. Lawrence was one of seven famous deacons of the early Church. The other six deacons were captured by the Emperor Valerian on August 6, 258, and martyred. The oppression of the Christian Church was very severe, and many Christians fled Rome or died.
As librarian and archivist, Lawrence was thought to have a list of all the members of the early Church, and the locations of all the mythical hidden hoards of gold belonging to the Vatican. Captured by the soldiers of the Emperor Valerian, he was told to produce all the wealth of the Church. He was given only two days to bring all the treasures to the imperial palace. Lawrence gathered up all the diseased, orphaned or crippled Christians on the appointed day, brought them to the palace, and told the startled emperor that "These are the treasures of the Church!"
According to tradition, for his impudence, Lawrence was slowly roasted on a grill on the site of the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Rome, in the hope that he would publicly renounce his religion and reveal the names of the wealthy Christians. He is often represented holding a gridiron to memorialize this grisly manner of martyrdom. Although St. Lawrence was most certainly beheaded and not roasted, the traditions of his being cooked are somewhat stronger than actual fact. As a result, St. Lawrence is also considered a patron saint for cooks.
There is also the popular story that he was so willing to embrace Christ in heaven, that he did not mind the pain from the fire of his martyrdom, and indeed, he found the strength to tell his executioners "Turn me over. I am done on this side." The courage and dignity of St. Lawrence and many of these other early Christians in facing their death did much to gain respect for their religion in Rome, and after the death of St. Lawrence, there was widespread conversion to Christianity.
His feast day is August 10th.The MX4 is rumored to come in two versions -- one with a 5-inch, 1080p display, and another with a 5.5'' 1536 x 2560 pixel resolution one. Odd as that latter version's resolution may sound, do keep in mind that the MX3 has a resolution of 1080 x 1800 pixels. We're also told that at least one of the two models will carry a Snapdragon 805 processor from Qualcomm, along with 3GB of RAM. The camera is said to be a 16MP one. Currently, we're expecting Meizu to launch the MX4 in August.
Meizu, a company that is set to become one of the first smartphone vendors to offer an Ubuntu-powered device, may also be on path to manufacture a flagship with extremely thin bezels. That much, at least, is plainly visible form a set of leaked photos that are allegedly showing us the front panel of a yet unreleased device, along with the schematics that will be used to craft it.Mario Draghi, history’s greatest monster.
Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images
The European Central Bank’s decision this morning to hold interest rates steady at 1 percent rather than cut closer to zero should go down in history as the latest in a series of inept decisions out of Frankfurt that have greatly exacerbate the problems of the world and the continent.
To be clear, the Euro itself suffers from a number of very serious design flaws and European economies suffer from various problems that are non-monetary in origin. But within that context, the people running Eurozone monetary policy still need to try to do their jobs properly. And with the Eurozone clearly headed for a recession, that means monetary easing. Especially in a context when a moderate amount of German inflation would be actually helpful in redressing some of Europe’s systematic imbalances, there’s absolutely no good reason for being this inflation-averse. What’s more, the ECB is perversely failing to even support its own policy agenda properly. Right now Spain and Italy are both governed by conservative political parties who are committed to the Frankfurt agenda of fiscal contraction and labor market reform. In Italy’s case the government was pretty literally selected by the European Central Bank in a weird contravention of normal democratic politics. So if nothing else, from a cynical perspective you might expect the ECB to try to “have the back” of friendly national governments who are desperately in need of help. In Spain, meanwhile, almost 25 percent of the workforce including a majority of younger workers are unemployed. To the extent that the European Central Bank continues to indicate that it simply doesn’t care about this the case for pulling an Argentina grows stronger.
One can only hope that François Hollande’s iminent election in France can somehow lead to a reordering of ECB thinking.The death rates among HIV/Aids sufferers fell by 60 per cent when they were treated with anti-retroviral drugs, according to the study which was the first major assessment of a Chinese government scheme to hand out free anti-retroviral drugs.
China’s government launched the scheme in 2002 in a bid to restore public confidence after a scandal involving blood donations for profit left at least 250,000 innocent people infected with HIV in the 1990s.
The study praised the impact of Chinese government efforts to combat the disease and showed “the difference that can be made with high-level political commitment”, Hong Kong’s department of health said in *The Lancet Infectious Diseases.* However despite the reaching nearly 100,000 Aids suffers, China still has an estimated 740,000 people infected with HIV-Aids of which less than half have even been formally diagnosed with the disease, according to the World Health Organisation.
Ray Yip, the director of the Gates Foundation in China and an international HIV-Aids expert, said the *Lancet *study was really aimed at sending a clear message to other countries that were slow with dealing with HIV-Aids.
“We’ve known for 20 years that anti-retroviral drugs lower mortality rates, this isn’t news. *The Lancet* must believe that it is important to send a message to other countries to follow China’s example,” he told *The Telegraph*.
“China is seen internationally as a late-responder to the Aids crisis and this is a clear example of what can be achieved.” The authors of the study concede that despite the improvement, much more work needs to be done in China to improve Aids care.
“Given the size of the country, and the geographical spread of individuals with HIV…China’s treatment coverage is remarkable,” said Professor Fujie Zhang from the National Centre for AIDS Control, “But it is far from the goal of complete coverage of people who meet the treatment criteria.” Dr Connie Osborne, the HIV program officer of the World Health Organisation in China, said that while a 60 per cent reduction in mortality was welcome, it still was not “good enough”, since if AIDS sufferers were caught earlier, the figure could rise to 80 per cent or better.
“It is important to remember that the great majority of those people dying of HIV in China are still dying before they receive any antiretroviral drug treatment at all,” she added.
Official Chinese government data shows that HIV-Aids has topped the list of deaths caused by notifiable infectious diseases every year since 2008, with nearly 80 per cent of those dying from HIV over the last five years receiving no anti-retroviral therapy.
International health experts in China say they would like to see an significant increase in the amount and effectiveness of screening for HIV-Aids in China in order to pick up sufferers before the develop full-blown Aids.
However the difficulties were illustrated by another report this week released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which showed how mainstream hospitals were routinely refusing to treat Aids sufferers.
One HIV-positive man interviewed for the report said that he was denied medical treatment for his back problem because of his HIV status in hospitals in Tianjin and Beijing and was forced to leave his job in a steel firm after his boss discovered he was infected.
“The doctor said at our hospital, many patients need surgery, and if other patients get infected, it will be a very bad thing,” said the man, who declined to be identified.
“At the second hospital... the doctor told me: ’I sympathise with your suffering but because of your status, I dare not operate on you’. I’ve visited many other hospitals and encountered similar denials and excuses such as a lack of equipment.”The Originals continues to amaze my taste buds with their dynamic and complex flavored liquids. When you first inhale you get an explosion of flavor that hits your mouth with a smooth blueberry and cream. I can’t emphasize enough the smooth aspect of this liquid. As you continue to inhale you start to get the waffle flavor they were intending you to taste. It is very subtle and it’s perfectly fine with me because I just want that blueberry cream to linger. The exhale is where the complexity really comes to fruition because the light cream turns to a heavier custard while the berry flavor remains but it switches from the heavy blueberry to an ever so soft and sweet berry. They mention strawberry in the description but I taste a sweet dark berry closer to a blackberry or gooseberry. When the exhale is done you are left with a sweetness in your mouth leaving you smacking your lips and wanting to take another pull to try it all over again. They put the time into this liquid and it was well worth it. This is a GREAT liquid. I wish they made a max VG but it probably would take away from the flavor so I guess I’m okay with it. Still puts out an average cloud that is pretty milky but not real thick. 70/30 3mg
Rating: 5
AdvertisementsIn an interview Tuesday night, former Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold characterized Governor Scott Walker’s crusade against public sector unions as an “assault on Wisconsin’s traditions,” and called on him to drop his bid to ban state and local workers from engaging in collective bargaining.
Feingold took particular issue with the threat Walker issued in his fireside chat Tuesday evening — that if Democratic state senators don’t return to Wisconsin and help him pass his legislation, thousands of state workers will lose their jobs.
“This is not about the budget at all this is about trying to destroy people’s right to collectively bargain,” Feingold told me. “If you begin with a dishonest approach…and begin making threats, it’s a really an assault on Wisconsin’s traditions. It’s really something a new governor shouldn’t be doing.”“I call on him tonight to pull back, to drop this issue of collective bargaining and get back to budgeting,” he added.
Democrats lost all elected branches of government in Wisconsin this past November. Feingold thinks Walker’s actions should be a wake-up call to Democratic voters to take back the legislature from the GOP in 2012. But he declined to endorse a fledgling push by progressives to recall Walker early next year, at least until the new governor has established a more complete record of leadership.
“We’re going to have to elect a different legislature so this guy doesn’t have the kind of absolute power that he’s trying to abuse,” Feingold said. “This is about stopping this now, so we don’t have to recreate these rights that have been in place for so long on.”In the Davis household, two toddlers live in a world of dolls and playtime, and their parents Tyler and Arianna try their hardest to keep it that way.
Recently Tyler and Adrianna learned, though, even the best of parents can’t always prevent bad things from happening to their innocent children.
A slap from a complete stranger across their daughter’s face at a 24 Hour Fitness ended up on the social media app Snapchat.
“My heart just sinks,” Arianna said.
It happened in December to the twins, both 18 months old at the time. Tyler was close by, working out at the 24 Hour Fitness on West Grand Parkway South after he dropped off the girls at the in-house daycare.
A few days later, he got a call from the manager after another employee reported the Snapchat incident.
“He wanted us to know that one of my daughters had been slapped and it appears that one of the employees had been horse playing with the girls,” Tyler said.
An employee at the gym gave the video to the family.
In the video captured from inside the daycare, you can see one woman cradling one of the girls and shaking her, flailing the girl’s body.
Then at one point, both girls are spun in circles until they are so dizzy they fall down, while the women laughed at them.
It doesn’t stop there.
“This one’s walking over and this one is just gonna slap her on the back of her head and make her fall down,” Arianna said as she points to her computer screen displaying the footage.
The Davis’ grapple with how to feel about their children being exploited for so many to see.
“Kind of an anger, but then I guess the Christian side of me just said, ‘You know, we have all made a mistake, we’ve all done something wrong. I need to find a way to forgive these people for what they’ve done,’” Tyler said.
A 24 Hour Fitness spokesperson did confirm they fired the two employees. They sent KHOU this statement:
“At 24 Hour Fitness, we take matters of this nature seriously. Our members and team members’ safety and security are top priorities for us, and our employee training includes protocols for safeguarding member and team member safety. Once we learned about the incident that took place in the Kids Club of our club located at 5270 West Grand Parkway South, Richmond, Texas, we took immediate action. We informed the parents of the child about the incident, as well as local law enforcement. The employees involved in the incident are no longer with the company. Because this was a personnel matter and for the privacy of those involved, we don’t publically discuss details.”
The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office has opened up an investigation and plans to hand it over to the district attorney’s office.
“I think the two women that are involved need to be prosecuted and put in jail just due to their age at the time,” said Tyler. “These people are possibly still out there doing this to other people’s kids.”GREEN turtles are swallowing plastic at twice the rate they did 25 years ago, according to a new study.
The finding is based on data collected across the globe since the late 1980s and analysed by researchers at the University of Queensland.
Study leader and PhD candidate Qamar Schuyler says green and leatherback turtles are eating more plastic than ever before and more than any other form of debris.
The ages of turtles and their habitats are also factors.
"Our research revealed that young ocean-going turtles were more likely to eat plastic than their older, coastal-dwelling relatives," Ms Schuyler said on Friday.
Amazingly, stranded turtles found adjacent to heavily populated New York City showed little or no evidence of debris ingestion.
But all stranded turtles found near an undeveloped area of southern Brazil had eaten debris, Ms Schuyler said.
"This means conducting coastal clean-ups is not the single answer to the problem of debris ingestion for local sea turtle populations."
But she said it was an important step in preventing marine debris input into the ocean.
Ms Schuyler said an estimated 80 per cent of debris comes from land-based sources.
That fact showed how critical it was to manage man-made debris at every point, from its manufacture to the point of a product's consumption.Many sites have a match of the week but ours is a little different. These matches are the ones that are fun to watch… in the non-traditional way.
This week, we’ve chosen Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca from Victory Road 2009. Members of the site @TimWelcomed, @typicalROHfan and @TomBlackett give their (lack of) expertise on the greatness, with @TJHawke joining in the fun. He runs Free Pro Wrestling which, unsurprisingly, features some great (and FREE!) pro wrestling matches for you to watch!
Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca (Victory Road 2009)
Part 1: The Introductions
Tim:
I haven’t seen this match since it originally aired but within a few seconds of Sharmell’s entrance I began to have haunting flashbacks of that night. I’m sitting here in my chair, powerless, and drenched in a cold sweat.
Don West’s magnificent commentary echoing through my brain. Sharmell’s decision to wrestle in a big blue trash bag is the best heel move ever. Jenna Morasca’s entrance was “awkward girl trying to be sexy.” I feel like someone should |
firearm or handgun or any type of a gun off the streets, it's going to make the neighborhood and the city a lot more safe," said OPD Sgt. Matt Manhart of the Bomb Response Team.
Twenty-one guns were taken from 45 vehicles that stopped, including eight semi-automatic handguns, six revolvers, four shotguns and three rifles along with enough ammunition to fill nine, five-gallon buckets. A live grenade and live mortar round were dropped off as were numerous air rifles and air pistols plus 50 pounds of fireworks.
All items will be destroyed.Democrats gave Mr. Franken no quarter.
“This is unacceptable behavior and extremely disappointing. I am glad Al came out and apologized, but that doesn’t reverse what he’s done or end the matter. I support an ethics committee investigation into these accusations and I hope this latest example of the deep problems on this front spurs continued action to address it,” said Patty Murray of Washington, one of the most senior Democratic women in the Senate.
The realm of comedy, which spawned the charges against Louis C.K., has been particularly suspect, and Mr. Franken, who emerged from “Saturday Night Live” as a nationally known celebrity, appeared to acknowledge that.
“Coming from the world of comedy, I’ve told and written a lot of jokes that I once thought were funny but later came to realize were just plain offensive,” he wrote. “But the intentions behind my actions aren’t the point at all. It’s the impact these jokes had on others that matters. And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come to terms with that.”
Ms. Tweeden published a first-person account of the incident on KABC Radio in Los Angeles on Thursday. She wrote that it occurred in December 2006, not long before Christmas, when she was a performer for the tour alongside Mr. Franken, then a well-known comedian. Ms. Tweeden was then a Fox Sports Network correspondent and model. U.S.O. tours are meant to boost morale among American troops abroad and typically include celebrity entertainment.
She also presented evidence, including a photograph of Mr. Franken, his head turned toward the camera, with his hands placed over Ms. Tweeden’s breasts as she slept.
According to Ms. Tweeden’s account, Mr. Franken wrote a bawdy script that included a kiss for the two to perform onstage. When it came time to rehearse the skit, she wrote, Mr. Franken insisted on kissing despite her protestations.
“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time,” Ms. Tweeden wrote. “I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.”At best, Trump can makes smaller legislative adjustments to weaken the law and enact his own system. Only that would require Trump to know how the system works. And unfortunately for Trump, and frankly all of America...
1 Trump Has No Idea How To Be President
Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Continue Reading Below Advertisement
Voting for Trump because you think the system is corrupt is like buying a car on eBay because you hate dealerships. You weren't wrong in your assessment, but your solution was impulsive and grotesquely misinformed. Honestly, I don't think it was all racists who voted for this man... because even some racists took civics class, or at least remembered that Monorail episode of The Simpsons. This wasn't about ideology, or a frustrated rural Midwest, or an out-of-touch liberal bubble. This was about basic lack of education in America, combined with apathy and spite. And for that reason, we passed up one of the most experienced candidates ever in favor of a shifty man with zero background in politics. Name a single fucking job where you'd rather have an "outsider" in charge, you goddamn children.
DarkoStojanovic/Pixabay
"Sure, he's never been to med school... but I love the way he tells it like it is."
Continue Reading Below Advertisement
And now here we are, with a president-elect who has no idea what goes into the day-to-day logistics of running a government. A president-elect who has, on multiple occasions, expressed disinterest with certain parts of the job he was trying to get. A man who has never taken an economics class or gone to law school or shown any competence in foreign affairs is going to run the United States. This is the man who is going to fill the shoes of scholars before him -- and he's about to learn how goddamn hard and boring that task really is.
Because being president is not like the TV and movies say, you know. It's dull, and it's filled with paperwork and minutiae and patience. It's a brainy, nerdy job that requires constant attention and devotion. You have to love it.
CNBC
Like-like it, at the very least.
On his first meeting with Obama, Trump was apparently so overwhelmed by the position that our soon-to-be-ex-president agreed to spend extra-special time tutoring him on the job. As one blogger recently pointed out, the best revenge Obama could have taken was to treat Trump as an equal and assume he knew the functions of the Executive Branch. Instead, Obama took pity on this toasted clown of a man. Because that's what a real president does -- he shows humility and thinks about the bigger picture, and doesn't act like some petty fucking nobody.
Donald Trump/Twitter
You mean other than the entire episode they let you host earlier?
Imagine walking into an airport, screaming that you should get to fly the plane, and then, to your complete dumbfuckery, having that demand fulfilled. Suddenly you're sitting at 40,000 feet in front of a massive jumble of switches and lights and have no clue what to do. That would be a nightmare. For everyone on board.
Make David great again by following him on Twitter.
Also check out How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind and Don't Panic.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out A Brief History Of Donald Trump's Many, Many, Many Lawsuits and other videos you won't see on the site!
Follow us on Facebook, and we'll follow you everywhere.SAT Solvers: Is SAT Hard or Easy?
Are practical SAT problems easy or hard?
Ed Clarke, a Turing Award winner, was at the recent NSF workshop on design automation and theory. Ed has, for approximately three decades, worked successfully on advancing the state of the art of verification, especially that of hardware.
Today I want to talk about a discussion that came up at the workshop. Ed and others stated that in “practice” all the instances of SAT that arise naturally are easily handled by their SAT solvers. The questions are simple: why is this true? Does P=NP? What is going on here?
I have know Ed since he presented his first paper at the 1977 POPL, a conference that I used to attend regularly. He proved a wonderful theorem about an approach to program correctness that was created by Steve Cook. I worked on extending Steve’s and Ed’s work, my work appeared later that year at the FOCS.
Cook had a clever–not surprising it was clever–idea on how to circumvent the inherent undecidability of determining anything interesting about programs. I will try to motivate his idea by the following program:
Search all natural numbers x,y,z ordered by the value of x+y+z, and if f(x,y,z)=0, then print x,y,z and stop.
Here is some polynomial. Steve’s insight was the reason this program is hard to understand has nothing to do with the complexity of the program. Rather, it is all due to the domain complexity of the natural numbers.
Cook’s brilliant idea was to figure out a way to “factor” out the domain complexity. He did this by adding an oracle that would answer any question about the domain. In the above program, this ability means that telling if the program halts is easy: just ask the oracle “is there an so that?”
Sounds like a trivial idea. But, wait. If you have access to an oracle for the natural numbers, then anything is easy to determine about any program. This would lead to a trivial theory. Cook had to rule out the possibility that the oracle would be asked “unnatural questions.” By this I mean that you might be able to use the fact the arithmetic is very powerful and encode the analysis of your program into an arithmetic formula. Cook did not want to allow this.
The way he did this is cool: the analysis of the program has access to the domain oracle, but the analysis must be correct for all oracles. Thus, if you try to encode information in some “funny way”, then for some domain(s) your analysis is wrong. This was the clever insight of Cook.
Steve showed that certain kind types of programs could be analyzed with such an oracle and any domain, while Ed proved that certain more powerful type programs could not. I proved a necessary and sufficient condition on the type of programs for which Steve’s method works. My proof is quite complex–I try not to say that about my own work–but it really is tricky. Look at the papers if you are interested, or perhaps I will do a full post on this work in the future.
Thanks Paul
Before we turn to SAT solvers, I want to thank Paul Beame who has helped tremendously with this post. I thank him profusely for his time and effort. Think of this a guest post, but all the errors and mistakes are mine. Anything deep is due to Paul.
SAT is hard, SAT is easy, SAT is hard,
There is something fundamentally strange going on. The theory community is sure that P NP, and so SAT is hard. The solver community is sure that they can solve most, if not all, of the problems that they get from real applications, and so SAT is easy. What is going on here?
In my post on P=NP is Ill-posed, I raised some of the many ways that the P=NP question could play out. There are plenty of ways that both the theorists and the solvers could be right. As you know I like to question conventional wisdom, and in particular I am not convinced that P=NP is impossible. But, I also question the conventional wisdom of the solvers that practical SAT problems are all easy. So I feel a bit like we are living in Wonderland with Alice: (with apologies to Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll.)
“There is no use trying; one can’t believe impossible things, like P=NP.” Alice says. “I dare say you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, like L=P, P=NP, NP=QBP, and ” The Queen replies.
SAT Solvers
In order to start to understand the situation let me first discuss the state of the art in SAT solvers. I have used many comments from Paul, and also have relied on the pretty survey paper of Carla Gomes, Henry Kautz, Ashish Sabharwal, and Bart Selman. This is definitely not my area of expertise, but I hope I can get the main points right. As always all the errors are mine, and all the correct stuff is due to Paul or my ability to transfer the facts correctly from the survey. Please let me know if I made any mistakes.
My understanding is SAT solvers divide roughly into two classes: complete and incomplete. Complete means that the algorithm always finds an assignment if the problem is satisfiable; incomplete means the algorithm may not. The complete ones all use Martin Davis, Hilary Putnam, George Logemann, and Donald Loveland (DPLL) as a basis, but usually add sophisticated methods to make the algorithm go faster. The incomplete methods tend to be different variations on random walk methods. I known the D and second L well in DPLL: I known Davis for a long time and Loveland taught me logic while I was a graduate student at CMU.
The DPLL method is based on a backtracking method. It assigns literal values and makes recursive calls to the simplified set of clauses. If it gets stuck, then it backtracks and continues searching. This method was initially called the DP method, until Logemann and Loveland who added two additional insights: take advantage of unit clauses and “pure” literals. If a literal occurs, for example, always as and never as, then all clauses with can be removed. Such a literal is called pure. Paul points out the history and relationship from DP to DPLL is more complex, but I will leave that out.
Paul says that there are three keys to fast solvers today.
Branching heuristics that take into account where the action is based on the learned clauses. One method is called VSADS and uses a weighted majority algorithm. Clause learning which is a way of adding new clauses to the formula based on failed branching. This can potentially help avoid large segments of the search. Watched literals that allow the modified formula to be kept implicit. This makes the propagation of the updates fast and tends to keep everything in the cache.
Like all backtracking methods, the selection (1) of which literal to set next is extremely important. The same is true, for many other search algorithms. For instance, linear programming with a good pivot rule seems to take polynomial time in practice. Another example, is searching game trees with search. If the “best” move is always used first, then the search tree is dramatically decreased in size.
There are many additional ideas that are covered in the survey. One key idea is to make random decisions when to restart the backtracking. The method is restarted even if it is not stuck. The methods usually keeps the clauses already set to guide the next restart (2) of the backtrack algorithm. Finally, note that idea (3) is an implementation one, which is of great importance on modern computers. No doubt similar methods will soon be needed due to the rise of many-core processors.
The second class of SAT solvers is based on random walk technology. These algorithms start at a random assignment and then use various local moves to change the assignment, hopefully toward the correct one. Some algorithms make local improvements, some allow plateau type moves, others use more complex types of random walks. There is evidence that these methods can work well on random SAT problems as well as some of those from real applications.
There also are methods that are random, but are fundamentally different. A relatively new one is called Survey Propagation (SP), which was discovered in 2002 by Marc Mézard, Giorgio Parisi, and Riccardo Zecchina. The solvers based on SP are like belief propagation methods that are used for decoding error-correcting codes. In each iteration about of the literals are set. When the formula density gets too low, SP switches to a random local search algorithm. Paul points out that the survey seems to not say anything about this part of SP.
Why are Real SAT Problems Easy?
The solvers know well that any DPLL type method cannot be fast on all SAT problems, based on known lower bounds for resolution. However, that still does not explain why these methods seem to work so well in practice. Even the contests–see this site–which are held regularly on solving SAT divide the problems given to the solvers into three classes:
randomly generated sets of clauses;
hand crafted sets of clauses;
examples from “real” applications.
Paul points out that he would take Ed Clarke’s contention that “SAT is easy in practice” with a grain of salt. First, before SAT the verification community was trying to solve PSPACE-hard problems, so SAT is a great advantage since is only NP-complete.
Second, the SAT solvers work except when they fail–reminds me of an Amazing (James) Randi story, for another time. The real difficulty is that no one understands what causes a SAT solver to fail. Tools that have this type of unpredictable behavior tend to create problems for users. Many studies of human behavior show that it’s the variance that makes tools hard to use.
Paul goes on to say that one of the research directions is the discovery of why SAT solvers fail. One problem is symmetry in the problem, since large amounts of symmetry tend to mess up backtracking algorithms. This is why the Pigeon Hole Principle is a “worst case” for many SAT methods.
Even if solvers cannot do as well as Ed claims, I still think that one of the most interesting open questions for a theorist is why do the algorithms do so well on many real problems? There seem to be a number of possible reasons why this behavior is true. I would love to hear about other potential reasons.
The real problems may have sufficient entropy to behave like actual random SAT problems. Mike Mitzenmacher suggested this idea to me. For example the SP method can handle over one million clauses of randomly generated sparse clauses, according to Selman.
The real problems may have small tree width. More precisely the graph that describes the interaction of the literals has small tree width. If you do not know this concept please check here. Suffice it for now that many search problems with tree width and size can be solved in time order. See this paper for results that relate to this.
The real problems may have some modular structure. Clearly, if a problem comes from modeling a hardware circuit, the SAT clauses may have special structure. They may not have small tree width, but they should have some additional structure. What this structure is and how it interacts with the SAT solvers is unclear. Luca Trevisan suggested this idea to me. One problem that I pointed out is that many crypto-systems, such as AES, have a very structured hardware circuit. Yet the folklore, and published papers, suggest that SAT solvers do not break these systems. So the notion of modular SAT problems is perhaps yet to be found.
The real problems may have been selected to be easy to solve. A hardware designer at Intel, for example, may iteratively refine her design so that the SAT solver can succeed in checking that it satisfies its specification. This is a kind of “natural selection”: perhaps designs that cannot be checked by the solvers are modified. The closest thing that theorists study that has a bit of this flavor is famous smooth analysis technology of Dan Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng. Maybe for every practical design there is one “nearby” that can be checked efficiently. Suresh Venkatasubramanian suggested this idea to me. I think it raises some nice questions of how to model smooth analysis in a discrete domain.
The real problems may have More ideas needed. Please feel free to suggest some other ideas.
Open Problems
I keep quoting Alan Perlis about the power of exponential algorithms. I will soon start to quote Paul Beame who has made some great comments on this issue. Somehow we teach our theory students that exponential algorithms are “bad.” This seems quite narrow and theorists should look at the design and analysis of more clever algorithms that run in exponential time.
I also think another issue raised here is the reliance we place on the worst case model of complexity. As I stated in an earlier post there is something fundamentally too narrow about worst case complexity. The fact that SAT solvers seem to do so well on real problems suggests to me a problem with the worst case model. How can we close this gap between theory and practice?
Perhaps the main open problem is to get theorists and solvers more engaged so that we can begin to build up an understanding of what makes a SAT problem easy, and what makes it hard. And what are the best algorithms for “real” SAT problems.
AdvertisementsRock, DBT, AKG Topics
Disc 1
01. Intro/Tuning
02. Marry Me
03. Feb 14
04. Easy On Yourself
05. A Blessing And A Curse
06. When the Pin Hits the Shell
07. Sinkhole
08. Decoration Day
09. Goodbye
10. Gravity's Gone
11. Aftermath USA
12. Never Gonna Change
13. 18 Wheels of Love
14. Women Without Whiskey
15. Ronnie and Neil
Disc 2
01. Moonlight Mile^
02. Hell No, I Ain't Happy
03. Daddy's Cup
04. Do It Yourself
05. Outfit
06. Putting People On The Moon
07. Lookout Mountain
Encore:
08. A World Of Hurt
09. Goddamn Lonely Love
10. Zip City
11. Let There Be Rock
12. People Who Died
Notes
^ Rolling Stones cover
John Neff on pedal steel for the whole show
Identifier dbt2006-06-22 Lineage DA-20 mkII > Dio 2448 > Cool Edit Pro >.Wav >.Flac Location Kansas City, MO Run time 145:11 Source JW Mod AKG 463 > MP-2 > mod SBM-1 > D100 Taped by KCMoeJoe Transferred by KCMoeJoe Type sound Venue The Beaumont Club Year 2006Samsung’s big reveal at the Samsung Developer Conference 2014 (SDC14) was Project Beyond, a new 360 degree video camera designed for use with the Gear VR. Unlike most of its rivals, Project Beyond films in full stereoscopic 3D, and the hands-on demonstration available on the show floor is nothing less than impressive.
The demonstration takes you through four pre-recorded scenes, beginning with a costal destination. In each scene you are static – glued to a single spot denoted by a black platform. This, of course, is where the camera was mounted for the purposes of filming. In this first instance you can look in every direction, watching the tide slowly caress the jagged brown rocks all around. A cliff ahead plays host to the edge of the scene, limiting your field of view but in the same instance signifying the quality of the stereoscopic 3D footage; it’s easy to identify exactly how far away the cliff lies.
Following this introduction is a lighthouse. A white picket fence surrounds as you stand next to the towering support structure. Filmed during the daytime, the lighthouse is not emitting any light, however it remains impressive to view the surroundings that the structure has been erected to protect.
The next sequence takes you to the ‘Palace of Fine Art’, a San Francisco landmark, a museum denoted by the columns supporting its intricate architecture. The depth of the groove on each column is easily recognisable, and the decaying beauty of its stone is only surpassed by the surprise entrance of a Pikachu and Power Ranger in the next scene.
The final sequence is, at odds with the rest of the demonstration, an internal scene at a low-key Halloween party. A man dressed in a Pikachu onesie enters first, followed by the red Power Ranger. A number of other costumed people enter the scene and dance around you, tumbling over one another and enthusiastically entertaining with their childish antics and a Cookie Monster head resides on a table and vending machines decorate the yellow coloured walls. The scene was most likely filmed in a university cafeteria, though there is no confirmation beyond the youthful antics and decoration.
The quality of the video was incredibly high, though the resolution is fairly low given the quality of the Galaxy Note 4’s screen. VRFocus was informed that this first public viewing is merely a prototype and an upgrade is in the works for the final product release. However, at present there are no plans to include wi-fi on-board for the release version, instead requiring Project Beyond to be tethered to a mobile phone or wi-fi enabled device for live streaming.
No release date or price has been confirmed for Project Beyond. VRFocus suggested that a 2015 release would help Samsung beat many of their competitors to the punch, and while the research developer spoken to stated that this ‘would be a good target’ he was not willing to confirm or deny any further details. VRFocus will of course keep you updated with all the latest details on Project Beyond and the Gear VR, reporting back with more details from the SDC14 show floor.Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Growing up in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Liverpool transfer target Thomas Lemar dreamed of one day emulating his hero Andres Iniesta.
He left his homeland at the age of 15 after he was handed the opportunity to join the youth ranks at French outfit Caen. His potential was spotted by coach Philippe Tranchant when he was playing at the Solidarite Scolaire Academy in the town of Baie-Mahault.
“Guadeloupe means everything to me. My family and friends are there and it’s where I spent the first 15 years of my life,” he said.
(Image: (Photo by Maja Hitij/Bongarts/Getty Images))
“When I was little I thought about playing in the Champions League one day. I used to love watching that Barcelona midfield of Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets, especially Iniesta.
“His movement, his passing, his dribbles. You can really learn from a player like him.”
Lemar progressed through the ranks at Caen where he played alongside N’Golo Kante. He made his Ligue Two debut at the age of 17 in August 2013 against Dijon FCO and featured more regularly the following campaign.
His performances attracted interest from bigger clubs and after 36 appearances for Caen he moved to Monaco for a fee of around £3.5million in 2015.
Lemar sought advice from Anthony Martial, who was heading from Monaco to Manchester United. The pair had been friends since their days together in the France youth squads.
“He told me some good things about the club,” Lemar said. “He explained how it was a good club for young players as they always give youth a chance.”
(Image: FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images)
Lemar, who scored on his debut against Toulouse, has gone from strength to strength over the past two seasons. He netted nine goals in 34 league outings last season as Leonardo Jardim’s men ended the club’s 17-year wait for the Ligue One title.
The 21-year-old also played his part as Monaco reached the semi-finals of the Champions League. He scored both home and away as they did the double over Tottenham in the group stage.
In all competitions last season he contributed 14 goals and 17 assists in 55 appearances, He played more key passes per game and provided more crosses than any of his team-mates.
Lemar is a left-footer who can play out wide or through the middle. He’s also a free-kick specialist who has netted some spectacular long-range efforts.
(Image: JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP/Getty Images)
“In general I try to avoid tackles, that’s not my strong point,” he said. “My game is more about movement and quick passing.”
His form was recognised with a first cap for France against the Ivory Coast last November and he has been part of Didier Deschamps’ plans ever since.
Arsenal tried to sign Lemar earlier this summer but Monaco turned down around £45million and Arsene Wenger said last week their pursuit of him was “dead”. Juventus, Manchester City and Chelsea have also been linked.
Having already sold Bernardo Silva and Benjamin Mendy to Manchester City, Tiemoue Bakayoko to Chelsea and Kylian Mbappe expected to join PSG, Monaco are reluctant to lose another key asset.
But Liverpool hope their offer which is in excess of £60million will tempt them to do business.6 years ago
(CNN) - With four days to go until the presidential election, a new poll indicates the race for arguably the most important battleground state remains very close.
According to a CNN/ORC International survey released Friday, President Barack Obama holds a three point advantage over Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the contest for Ohio's much fought over 18 electoral votes.
- Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker
- Check out the CNN Electoral Map and Calculator and game out your own strategy for November.
Fifty-percent of likely voters questioned in the poll say they are backing the president, with 47% supporting the former Massachusetts governor. Obama's three-point edge is within the survey's sampling error. The survey was conducted Tuesday through Thursday. The poll's release comes on the same day that the president holds three campaign events and Romney holds two events in Ohio.
"The race in the Buckeye State has remained essentially the same throughout October, with all three CNN/ORC polls taken in October showing President Obama at 50%-51% and all three showing Governor Romney at 46%-47%," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
The CNN poll is in the range of the three other non-partisan, live operator surveys of Ohio likely voters also conducted entirely after last week's final presidential debate. The University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll and an American Research Group survey both indicated Obama with two-point edges and a CBS News/New York Times/Quinnipiac University poll indicated Obama with a five-point advantage. All of those margins were within the sampling errors of those polls.
The gender, generation and income gaps that CNN polls have indicated in other states are readily apparent in Ohio as well, with Obama winning women by 16 points, lower-income voters by 30 points and those under age 50 by 15 points, while Romney leads among men by 13 points, and holds the advantage with older voters by 6 points and those making more than $50,000 per year.
"The president's prospects are boosted by a strong showing among white women, support in the northern parts of the state as well as the Columbus area, and a big margin among early voters," added Holland. "Romney's chances in the state rest on white men and a good showing in the central part of the state as well as the southwest corner, home to Cincinnati and Dayton."
"It's so close the president will need to run up the margins in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland and its suburbs) and in Columbus, and Governor Romney needs to win Hamilton County (Cincinnati and its suburbs) and elsewhere in southwestern Ohio. It's not an accident he is in that part of the state tonight," said CNN Chief National Correspondent John King.
"Base versus base, in a fairly even divided state," added King, who is reporting Friday from Ohio.
According to the poll, 63% of those who say they have already voted early or who plan to cast a ballot before next Tuesday say they support the president, with 35% backing Romney. But Romney has the 55%-42% advantage among those who plan to vote on Election Day.
Ohio was the state that put President George W. Bush over the top in his 2004 re-election. Four years later Obama carried the state by five points over Sen. John McCain. But the Republicans performed well in the Buckeye State in the 2010 midterm elections, winning back the governor's office and five House seats from the Democrats.
This cycle Ohio is seeing an outsized amount of campaign traffic from the presidential candidates and ad spending that has flooded the airwaves. The two presidential campaigns, the party committees, and the super PACs and other independent groups backing the two candidates combined have spent over $134 million to run ads on broadcast TV in Ohio since the start of the general election in early April, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), which tracks ad spending for its clients. Just in the past week, nearly $14 million has been shelled out to run spots.
"Ohio is a very different place than four years ago. Our numbers show that and you feel it and see it when you visit here," adds King. "The GOP offices have much more energy than late 2008."
The question is, is it enough?
"There is no question the auto bailout helps the president here, but also no question Governor Romney has a more motivated base than John McCain did," says King.
For months the Obama campaign has touted the bailouts and they were giving prominent prime time placement during the Democratic National Convention in early September. It's a strategy that the Obama campaign thinks could be the difference in Ohio, a major base for the auto industry.
"The American auto industry is back on top," said Obama early Friday at a rally in Hilliard, Ohio.
The bailouts were started under President George W. Bush in 2008, but the next year Obama grabbed the keys to the program, managing and funding the bailouts.
Romney opposed the government bailout and pushed for a privately financed, managed bankruptcy of the two automakers. The Obama campaign and other Democrats have attacked Romney over his opposition to the federal assistance.
And they've highlighted pushback by General Motors and Chrysler to a Romney TV ad and a radio spot this past week that claimed that both domestic auto makers were sending U.S. jobs to China.
With four days until the election, the poll indicates that more than nine in ten have made up their minds, with 7% saying they could still change their mind on their choice for president.
Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode are also on the presidential ballot in Ohio. When their names were added to the poll, Obama is at 47%, Romney 44%, with Johnson at 5%, Stein at 1% and Goode registering less than one-half of one percent.
"As always, keep in mind that the poll does not, and cannot, predict the outcome of the election," cautions Holland. "Close elections are inherently unpredictable."
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from Oct. 30-Nov. 1, with 1,000 adults, including 919 registered voters and 796 likely voters questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error for likely voters is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.Great Collapse happens, that's what.
Current and ex-members of Set Your Goals, Strike Anywhere, Rise Against, Comeback Kid and more, you say? INTERESTING.
Great Collapse's album 'Holy War' is out on October 02 via End Hits, but you can hear it right below.
The band play London's Islington Academy on Saturday (October 03), too!
What's more, allow frontman Thomas Barnett to talk you through the whole album...
01 - 'New Abolition'
"When we look at history, we look at war. We think we see progress in martial victory, progress in every arms race, we let economies choose who lives and dies, by laws and conflicts governed by money, the religion of the elites, and beyond our power. The industries of revision and media transmission are a rising, and they function only to play us against each other until we are played out, until we extinguish ourselves as pawns of war culture, and gender conditioning, open wounds of arrested adulthood, starving stewards of the race to the fire.
This song pushes fast past the myths we are poisoned with about the inevitability of violence, the schadenfreude and realpolitik of hollow leaders, whispers and documents giving away love and life on this blue planet. This is our contribution, our small...the belly of this monster that the stories of powerless history builds on the backs of our lives. These humans, animals, and breathing landscapes are not our enemy. We build this road by walking on it. No matter how many steps or lifetimes it may take. 'New Abolition' is only the beginning."
02 - 'Human Target'
"This song is about the ecological harm done by industry and the efforts to cover up industrial accident and toxic contamination. We export our dirty industries, to lands and nations we think we cannot feel because we choose not to see: mineral mining for our digital tethers, oil extraction with poison water and earthquakes, and the guilt and accountability we reward corporate shareholders and lobbyists to bury for us. As the planet's fevers expose these crimes, our fragile humanity will reap all the poison we sow."
03 - 'Break In Case Of Emergency'
"To draw out the idea that there are cornerstones of conflict, flashpoints of each decade - little historical moments that spoke truth to power and the whirlwinds that came after. In the face of relentless culture engineering, capitalism's colonisation of representation, weaponized imagery, and even how we relate with history itself. It's kind of an attempt at a lyrical collage of breaking moments in history or culture. '1970's were made in Hong Kong' is a song by Flux Of Pink Indians, a Crass records band. Starting there, with gratitude and a mission, this song tracks the subtle and spectacular moments that either subverted or fueled the dominant agenda of isolation and passivity. It's our choice to break the glass and resist."
04 - 'Waves'
"Occupy, Arab Springs, Kurds In Kobani. The heart of the world hinges on these person to person acts of bravery and hope. Inspired by mayday marches in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, the Civil Rights Movement in the American South, and the echo of our footsteps harmonic with people worldwide in mutual aid and resistance."
05 - 'The World Between'
"To me, one of the first Great Ideas of Hardcore Punk was to question identity itself, to resist the passive drift into boredom, isolation, consumption, banal and defeated 'grown up' personalities and deep conformity in what Ian Mackaye efficiently termed The Adult Crash. This is about lost time, and holding friends and inspiration close and precious especially as we get older. Dedicated to everyone staring out the window on the train, at the bar, above the kitchen sink, or at the office cubicle, daring to reconnect with your courage and creative heart on that knife edge of loss and remembrance."
06 - 'Dawn Stations'
"In the United States, there are great efforts to keep the white working class weaponized against itself, and against the promise of real solidarity and justice; media barons polish the news cycle mirror to bright distortion. Information has become the selling of a psyche: fear and anxiety to generations. Along with a harvest of shallow outrage and an inauthentic white wash of opportunity, this has become a new subculture for the foot soldiers of racial suspicion, xenophobia, and the border-keepers of upper class information domination. All of this crowing entitlement, wrapped in an infantile projection of brittle patriotism, is the hypnotic transmission of an American Dream passion play that silences compassion, reasoning, or dissent. In the end, the passive suburban mentality of unquestioning allegiance and the worship of a uniform is making a modern religion out of giving away power, connection, and integrity. Another thread running through the bad ass tapestry of hardcore is its emphasis on direct experience and critical thinking. And that can save us from all of this mind control and culture engineering. We must stand for truth and unity. We must stand with the lightning striking outside."
07 - 'Beyond Authority'
"This song 'looks' at Images and fashion, sold to us before we learned to speak, shaping our lives based on outside ideas of what is male and what is female. This is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to our transgender and gay brothers, sisters and others, resisting the factory of models and conditions and rising. With this courage to seek truth in yourself and fight for it in the world, we are each made a little |
country where his father was born, to Kenya, and to Ethiopia? He also addressed the African Union.
NICK TURSE: Well, you know, I think this has been a focus area for President Obama. I think Africa was a place where he wanted to try and make inroads. You know, another country that he didn’t visit—for good reason—was South Sudan. This was a nation-building project for the United States, its one nation-building effort in Africa. The Obama administration was—followed up on the Bush administration in pushing this breakaway portion of Sudan to become its own independent country, and put a lot of money, time and effort into South Sudan. And then it, you know, exploded into civil war in 2013. This was supposed to be a great American success story, something the Obama administration had pushed as a model for what the United States can do. Now, I think the U.S. has really lost out to China there, in many ways. Somehow, the Chinese have enabled, through the U.N., an infantry battalion of their own to be put into South Sudan to guard the oil fields there. The Chinese have great oil interests in South Sudan. And the United States, because it pays for U.N. troops, peacekeepers around the world, is in effect paying Chinese troops to guard Chinese oil interests in South Sudan.
AMY GOODMAN: Your afterword is “Finding Barack Obama in South Sudan.” You went there.
NICK TURSE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Describe this afterword.
NICK TURSE: Yes, you know, I happened to be in a camp, a U.N. camp for internally displaced people in South Sudan. And, you know, I came across a young boy there who was wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt, and it said “Obama, my dream.” And I asked him about his dream. And at one time he had dreams of maybe being a president, like Barack Obama, about getting a good education. Now he was stranded at a U.N. base, unable to go back home because the military that we had funded and trained in South Sudan had attacked his people, had killed his uncle, had driven tens of thousands of people in South Sudan into what at the time and even today are, in effect, open-air prisons. People are too afraid to go back home. And this is because of the government that we supported for years.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, you reveal so much in Tomorrow’s Battlefield and your writing on Africa. What does the U.S. government actually admit? And what is it that you exposed, both in the book and also, for example, in your piece as part of the big “Drone Paper” project at The Intercept?
NICK TURSE: Well, U.S. Africa Command admits very little. You know, that was the reason why I wrote this book. I wasn’t intending on spending years covering the U.S. in Africa. Basically, I noticed that there were some things going on that told me there was an expansion underway. I saw that the U.S. was putting in a logistics network in Africa a few years ago. And I knew that there’s only one reason for this. You don’t create a network of sea and land routes to transport goods, unless you plan on building bases and putting people there. But when I asked Africa Command what was going on, all they told me was about a very light footprint, almost nothing was happening. And I knew it wasn’t the case. You know, if they had told me anything resembling reality, I think I would have written one piece and moved on. But I knew they were trying to spin me, I knew they weren’t being upfront and honest, so I decided to dig into it. And what I found is something far beyond anything you would find on AFRICOM’s website. They talk about a few humanitarian projects, building schools, donating shoes to orphans, this type of thing. But really, we’re seeing a massive expansion in the form of bases, drone warfare, special ops.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about that? I know you have a forthcoming piece at TomDispatch on this.
NICK TURSE: Yes. You know, Africa Command claims, again, they only have one base on the continent, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. Within a 10-mile radius of Camp Lemonnier, there’s actually another base, Chabelley Airfield, where they run all drone operations out of. So, it’s not even true for that one country. I don’t want to steal all my thunder from the piece; it’ll be out at TomDispatch this week, but I can tell you that there are scores of bases on the continent. It’s upwards of 50 U.S. outposts, bases, access sites, spread all across Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you even explain the history of AFRICOM, the fact—how difficult it was to get AFRICOM actually based in Africa?
NICK TURSE: Yeah, you know, for a few years after 9/11, there was a push to have a greater U.S. presence in Africa, and the U.S. looked around for a country that would host its base. And eventually, you know, it looked from top to bottom, east to west in Africa, and decided on Germany. It was because there were no African countries that wanted to own up to having a major U.S. command there. And I think this is one of the reasons why they keep things under wrap. Once in a while, speaking off the cuff, a commander will note that there’s a great resistance to colonialism in Africa, that there is this history of colonialism, so the U.S. wants to maintain the appearances of being lightly engaged on the continent. And I think that if African people knew the extent to which the United States operated there, it might cause real problems.
AMY GOODMAN: You have a piece, “American Monuments to Failure in Africa? How Not to Win Hearts and Minds.”
NICK TURSE: I got a hold of a classified report that was done by a inspector general, taking a look at these humanitarian projects, the only things that Africa Command will really talk about. They say that they’re great successes. The inspector general said otherwise. They looked around and saw, you know, projects that—where the U.S. hadn’t done follow-ups. They hadn’t checked with the community beforehand to see what people needed. They built water well projects that weren’t suited to the community. People didn’t know how to maintain them in any way. They weren’t given any guidance. And within a couple years, these were crumbling. And that quote there, “monuments to failure,” was one of—a U.S. official on the continent saying that he was very afraid that all these projects would, within a couple years, become failures, and they would stand as monuments to U.S. failure on the continent.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Turse is a fellow at The Nation Institute, managing editor of TomDispatch.com. His most recent book, Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa. And we’ll link to his articles right here at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.Final Fantasy VII Remake shifts toward internal development
Square Enix is shifting development of Final Fantasy VII Remake in-house. According to several comments made during a special broadcast, it was revealed Naoki Hamaguchi, who was previously in charge of the development for Mobius Final Fantasy, will be taking on the top developmental role for the highly-anticipated remake. He made the following comments during the show:
“So far, development (for FFVIIR) has been carried out mainly with the support of external partners. However, in view of factors such as improving quality when the product goes into mass production in the future, the company has decided to shift the developmental system back to within the company, so as to maintain a stable schedule and have control over factors such as quality. We will be forming a robust system within the company to properly carry out the development.”
It seems Naoki Hamaguchi will be focusing his attention on Final Fantasy VII Remake in light of recent recruitment listings looking for various staff positions. It’s currently unknown what this means for Square Enix’s previous collaboration with outsourcing companies such as CyberConnect2.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is currently in development for PlayStation 4.OEMs have tried a few times to make Android work in the notebook form factor, but the closest anyone has gotten is the Transformer line from Asus. Those are tablets first, though. The HP Slatebook 14 is a straight-up laptop running Android, and it's starring in a video demo posted by HP. Update: It looks like HP wasn't ready to spill the beans quite yet. It pulled the video from its site for the time being.
There's no way to know when this device will be announced, but the video has been posted on HP's video page – so it's a real thing. Full specs aren't available as of yet, but the video lays out the main points. We're looking at a 14-inch full HD touchscreen (probably 1080p, then) with a microSD card slot, HDMI port, 3 USB ports, and audio jack. The keyboard is the same you'd find on HP's Windows offerings, but with some keys repurposed for Android functions. The exact Tegra chip inside isn't specified, so it's either Tegra 4 or Tegra K1. The latter would obviously be more exciting, but I feel like the video would make a bigger deal of that.
This appears to be a full Googley version of Android with all the Play services built-in. The underlying version is not apparent, but the app drawer still has a widget tab and the status icons are blue. That indicates we're looking at some version of Jelly Bean, not KitKat. Design-wise, the SlateBook 14 actually looks pretty nice with a snazzy yellow frame and large trackpad. We'll have to see what HP has to say about this device when the time comes.
[Notebook Italia, HP – Thanks, Marco]By: WCTV Eywitness News
December 23, 2014
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A woman was arrested for damaging the Satanic Temple holiday display at the Florida Capitol Tuesday.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed they arrested a female for damaging the display in the Capitol Rotunda.
John Porgal, a spokesman for the Satanic Temple also confirmed that the display has been damaged.
Susan Marie Hemeryck was charged with Damage of Property- Criminal Mischief - 200 Dollars and Under.
The display was erected at the Capitol on Monday.
News Release: Associated Press
December 23, 2014
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The Satanic Temple has set up a holiday display in the Florida Capitol's rotunda.
The diorama showing an angel falling into a pit of fire went on public display Monday. Writing across the top says, "Happy Holidays from the Satanic Temple."
Groups in recent years have been allowed to put up displays -- initially religious in nature -- in the Statehouse rotunda because the area is considered to be a public forum. Non-religious groups responded with displays that included a Festivus pole -- based on the TV series "Seinfeld" -- made of beer cans and a depiction of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The Department of Management Services rejected the Satanic Temple's display last year, saying it was "grossly offensive."
The state allowed the display this year, following threats of legal action from the non-partisan group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.By MetroNews Staff in News | May 04, 2017 at 9:13PM
MetroNews staff photo
ROANOKE, Va. — Prices at most West Virginia Kroger locations will be cut, the grocery store company announced this week. Another change will also be coming: ending the senior discount program.
Company spokeswoman Allison McGee told The Charleston Gazette-Mail said prices on about 3,000 items will be reduced, including on meat and natural foods. The items selected were bought more often by customers.
She also said it will work to inform affected seniors about the program’s end, which is May 23. Customers 59 years or older currently receive a 5 percent discount on Tuesdays at most locations in the state.
It is not clear why the program is ending.
The change affects stores in the chain’s Mid-Atlantic division, which includes stores in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.
Stores in the Wheeling area will not be affected by the change as those locations are part of a different division.The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
The Way Home is an arcade casual game with a time traveling story on top developed by moWOW. The story is inspired by the Quantum Leap TV series. The game was released on December 18, 2013 for iOS(iPhone, iPad, iPod).
This is a “short” postmortem of the game's light launch. We set out to make the game in one month. Yeah, that never happened. But that is a different kind of post mortem and we are not there yet.
By “light” we mean not all the content and some features and effects were not yet integrated. What we did have was a finished and (to a certain level) polished game.
Right, the launch. We wanted to publish exactly before the Christmas freeze. Crazy right? Chances of gaining visibility close to zero for small indie devs with no budget for advertising. It’s the time when all the big publishers pump money in install campaigns to keep their ranks or even climb up the charts. CPI’s go from $1-2 to $6 or more. So why Christmas?
Well, we did not want to do a main marketing launch for the first version of the game. However, we did want people to install and play the game so that we found out what our players like, what works and what not. So we thought Christmas would be as good a time as any other.
1. What went right:
We got approved on time. We were actually lucky. We submitted in the first week of December. We did do a fair amount of testing but as we found out after launch, not enough. However, the game passed review and the game went live on the 18th Dec.
As you know, a new game gets into the new game lists, either the simple ones or the featured ones. We did not get into the main page featured lists, but we did make it on the category ones. Now, here’s the bonus. Since the Apple App Store was locked during 20-27 December, we stayed in those lists the whole week.
The Story and Theme. While the gameplay is fun, it is nothing that will keep you up at night (...yet :P). However, the theme and time traveling story gives us a lot of possibilities to extend the game and most importantly, gave us something to talk about with anyone interested. Also, it helps if the game is original and players don’t start describing or comparing your game as a clone of X or Y.
Good keywords and title? We focused on theme keywords versus game genre keywords. So, we’re not the first for casual/arcade/adventure, but we do show up pretty high on time travel and we are the first for Quantum Leap[link]. We’ll see how that will help with discoverability.
Lovely icon. Just look at it. Ain’t she a beauty? That is the first thing next to the title that players see. And we are happy with ours.
The game is free. Free to play actually. That removes the price barrier for players who want to download, and through IAPs players can have the full experience and bonus elements. In The Way Home, the first few levels are there for learning, retention and increasing engagement, not necessarily earning money.
TouchArcade Forums. We started talking relatively early about the game. However, the strongest and best response was from the TouchArcade forum members. Not only did we have a lot of people interested about the game, we also received suggestions and feedback. This also helped us get on the first page of the Hot Apps list on TouchArcade.com. We were also lucky to have a few senior members recommend and say nice things about the game.
Review contest on Touch Arcade Forums. We really wanted to know what players thought about the game but also get some reviews and ratings for the game in the US. Trust me when I say that any review is better than no review and it also adds to discoverability. In total, we got about 25 reviews. We asked for honest reviews and we were happy that we got them(some helped us spot out bugs or glitches).
AppHookup subreddit. Once the game was live, we mentioned it on AppHookup. We are pretty sure that helped with the downloads.
2. What went wrong:
Not thoroughly tested. We wanted to submit in time for the “frozen iTunes week”. So some tiny details did not get teste. Like, for example, the fact that Game Center using APIs for iOS 7 crashes on anything not iOS 7. Needless to say, a lot of people gave their ratings and reviews accordingly.
No splash image screenshot. It helps for the first screenshot to be sexy, fun, attractive. That is why most games now don’t show you a screenshot but a sort of... wallpaper. Well, we did not have time to make the wallpaper.
Theme not so helpful for marketing... yet. Me and Tudor loved to watch Quantum Leap and we thought that making a game with a similar time traveling story would give us a more accessible audience. Well, the niche is a lot smaller than we expected. However, we see a growing interest from people passionate about history and great moments and people from the past. We also saw this from the suggestions for stories received.
Players are not inviting their friends. We built the game with a “friendly to pay” concept in mind. What that means is that certain things in the game you can only obtain by inviting others. This was meant to compensate for us not having advertising + it was meant to ensure the game a longer life in terms of player base. However, the game is not generating enough interest and need to get the player to the point of inviting.
3. The results:
We got listed under the selected categories in the free games list for one week
We managed to get a little over 1400 downloads in the first 2 weeks after launch with no budget and in full Christmas Holiday craze. Probably would have been higher had we launched in any other week.
We managed to get 25 reviews on the US Appstore.
We were looking to find out what players liked and what not. We think we got our answer and we’ll know for sure when we roll out the next updates.
4. What next?
Right now, we have new content ready. However, few people have reached the last levels (12 out of 1425 downloads). Also, the power-ups don’t seem to be attractive enough and useful for the players. So we have our work cut out for us.
The initial plan was to have the light launch and if everything is up to our expectations, have the main launch with all the content and extra levels. However, the data changes things a bit. In short, no main launch for now.
We hope this information is useful or at least offers a bit of insight. Any questions and feedback is welcome and we invite you to try out the game and tell us what you think!
P.S. If you fancy time traveling, play the game.White Liberal Dude Privilege Syndrome: An apology
So, I said something horrible on Twitter. Since I can’t go back in time and take it back, I thought I’d try to make something worthwhile out of it. Here goes.
Tonight I read this unbelievable story on Talking Points Memo about Anthony Weiner’s communications director, Barbara Morgan, losing her sh*t on the phone with a reporter, on the record. It seems an intern that worked briefly for the campaign, Olivia Nuzzi, wrote a tell-all about the campaign which appeared on the cover of the Daily News. In it, Nuzzi said that the only reason anyone worked for Weiner is to get close to Huma, and noted that Morgan “last worked as the press secretary for the New Jersey state education commissioner.”
Unprompted, on the phone with the reporter, Morgan lost it:
“Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan. “It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.” Based on her colorful description of Nuzzi’s cover story, TPM asked Morgan whether she thought Nuzzi joined the campaign with the express purpose of penning a tell-all story. “I have no idea, but I can tell you she … like accosted me at like our petitioning thing to be able to become my intern, begged me to be my intern, sent me something within like 20 minutes of meeting her and then proceeded to — she came in the next day and was like, basically, ‘I want to be your bitch all summer long, that’s all I want to do is be your righthand person,'” Morgan said of Nuzzi. “I was like, ‘OK, well, it’s not really glamorous, like, you’re going to do clips, and you’re going to do media catching, and you’re going to do x, y, and z and maybe I’ll get you to the point where you’re like doing some other stuff.” Despite what Morgan described as Nuzzi’s initial enthusiasm, Morgan claimed her job performance left much to be desired. “She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like — she would like, she would just not show up for work,” said Morgan. “For the four weeks she worked there — she didn’t work weekends, so twenty days total. Of those twenty days, she missed probably five because she would just like not show up and not tell me she wasn’t going to be there. So, yeah, so there’s that.” Morgan also expressed disbelief that Nuzzi criticized her credentials. “And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey,” Morgan said. “You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”
Aw, man. My first reaction reading this, weirdly, was sympathy. I pictured a frazzled middle-aged woman in her office, out of her depth, in a campaign that’s very publicly falling apart, now being dished on by some pretty young intern on the front page, just running her hands through her hair and dragging on cigarettes and taking a shot of the vodka in her bottom drawer and coming unraveled. It’s like something out of a Coen Brothers movie. I felt like TPM was being a little mean in transcribing her so literally, with all her “like this, like that.” Oh, the humanity.
And then I said this:
I dunno, and I also kinda think the intern sounds like a social-climbing mercenary hobag. I’m oddly #teamweiner on this one. — David Roberts (@drgrist) July 31, 2013
Yeeeah.
Looking back on it with a few hours’ perspective, this is a classic outbreak of White Dude Privilege Syndrome. Let’s walk through it and see what we can learn from it.
First, the personality archetype I was going for was Kurt Bardella, the hungry young intern so ably profiled by Mark Leibovich in his new book This Town, about the dysfunction of D.C. political culture. Bardella seems like a pure creature of D.C.: in the game for the game’s sake, angling for the next status upgrade, loyal to no person or ideology but his own advancement. A courtier. “When he talks with you,” Leibovich writes, “you suspect you are being worked.”
That’s sort of how I was picturing Nuzzi. She hit the Weiner campaign briefly, looking to get in with Huma, didn’t work much, and quit when there was no opportunity for glory. Now she’s drafting off Weiner’s notoriety, getting noticed. And she’s ruined this poor middle-aged comm manager’s life. Such a quintessentially D.C. story.
That’s what I had in my head: nothing gendered, just a certain young Beltway type that I find both familiar and distasteful.
This is the key first step in a bout of White Dude Privilege Syndrome, especially the specific variant of White Liberal Dude Privilege Syndrome (WLDPS). Very few bouts begin with deliberate sexism or racism or heteronormativity. We are not thinking sexist thoughts! Our intentions are pure! We love women! Some of our best friends are black! We are good people, dammit!
Thus, the first instinct of the WLDPS sufferer, when confronted, is to be dismissive or cavalier.
Get Grist in your inbox Always free, always fresh. The DailyThe BeaconThe Weekly Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy
When that doesn’t work, the second instinct is to mansplain that there was no sexist intent and thus no crime. “That’s not what I meant!”
When that doesn’t work, the third instinct is umbrage and aggrievement, perhaps a blog post about how the WLDPS sufferer is the victim of a “witch hunt” by the “politically correct.”
Luckily, my case is not that bad. By the time I reached that second instinct I was able to do what I have encouraged so many other WLDPS sufferers to do during similar episodes: take a step back, get out of the defensive crouch, and think about what people are saying. Would I stand by and let my 9-year-old use the word “hobag,” even if he meant nothing by it? Hell no! I would lose my sh*t. So.
The first step in WLDPS therapy is for the sufferer to acknowledge that it does not matter what was or was not in his head, or what he “really” meant. Part of privilege is the deep conviction that one is the absolute authority on one’s own mental states and thus the dictator of one’s own meanings — no one can tell you what they are, what you think, who you are, man. You don’t know me! We privileged dudes have trouble accepting that language is a social phenomenon, a social act, and meaning is created collectively, in the spaces between and among people. When you use language that is freighted with social meaning, you are responsible for that meaning, even if you did not “intend” it.
In my case, it doesn’t matter that there was a time in my life when “hobag” was a favorite insult among my peer group, used, irrespective of gender, for social climbers. In the broader culture, “hobag” carries a set connotations that serve to sexualize and objectify women. When you use the word, you invoke (and reinforce) those connotations, no matter what you may or may not “mean.” Women, people of color, LGBT folk, they have meanings and identities imposed on them every day. It is no great imposition on your White Dude autonomy just to be f’ing respectful.
As for the “political correctness police,” well, I’m happy they got me. It sucks to think I may have lost a small measure of the respect and reputation I’ve spent years building over a stupid slip, that the stupid slip will always be with me, that at least for some subset of people it will define my social presence, however unfair that seems to me. That’s all fine. It shouldn’t be fair. There should be a high cost to it. That kind of social censure reinforces norms that badly need reinforcement in social media. God knows I have scolded many WLDPS sufferers in my day. If I’m briefly being made an example of, that’s as it should be — learn from the example!
So, that’s that. In a moment of unthinking Twitter smack talking, I said something ugly and sexist and I’m sorry about it — sorry, in particular, to Olivia Nuzzi, who I don’t know from Adam.With the IDE Fix Pack 5.5 release the end of 2010, XE2, XE3 and XE4 support is reached. This will be the last IDE Fix Pack for those four versions.
This version fixes a long standing bug that was introduced with version 4.6 (2011-12-15) and that affected the debugger when it searched for the correct debug info for a unit in a package. Without the debug info, the debugger didn’t stop at breakpoints in the unit and the editor didn’t show the “blue dots”.
For C++Builder this version applies a patch on the 64bit CLANG IDE compiler that reduces the memory consumption, the CPU load and the resulting file size of debug builds with deeply nested templates.
The 32bit fastdcc.exe command line compiler loader is now named fastdcc32.exe.
IDE Fix Pack download:
fastdcc download:
Change log:In his first major address to Congress, President Trump will deliver a prime-time “message to the world” Tuesday night by proposing a robust military buildup and corresponding cuts in foreign aid, State Department operations and domestic programs.
The president will ask a joint session of Congress to boost national security spending by $54 billion, an increase of about 10 percent, to rebuild what Mr. Trump calls the “depleted” military, and to hire more Border Patrol agents and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“This budget will be a public safety and national security budget,” Mr. Trump said Monday, giving a preview to the nation’s governors during a White House meeting. “This is a landmark event, a message to the world in these dangerous times, of American strength, security and resolve.”
By proposing a corresponding $54 billion cut in non-defense programs, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, Mr. Trump is calling for “the largest proposed reduction since the early years of the Reagan administration.”
“It is a true ‘America First’ budget,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “It prioritizes rebuilding the military, including restoring our nuclear capabilities, protecting the nation and securing the border, enforcing the laws currently on the books, taking care of vets and increasing school choice.”
A senior White House official said Mr. Trump’s speech will be about “economic opportunity and protecting the American people.”
SEE ALSO: Trump invites victims of illegal immigrant crime as guests for speech to Congress
The official said much of the speech, which was still being written Monday night, was influenced by the president’s listening sessions in the past month with health care industry leaders, law enforcement officials, coal miners and other workers.
Mr. Trump will devote the first part of his speech to “promises made and promises kept,” the official said.
Coming on the 40th day of his presidency, Mr. Trump’s speech also presents an opportunity for him to clarify and give momentum to his plans for repealing and replacing Obamacare, cutting taxes and spurring economic growth.
In other years, the presidential speech to lawmakers is known as the State of the Union address. Although Mr. Trump had an abbreviated time frame to prepare the speech this year, he will confront many features of the traditionally partisan spectacle, including an openly hostile Democratic caucus, some 60 members of which who boycotted his inauguration.
Rep. Judy Chu, California Democrat, announced that her guest in the visitor’s gallery Tuesday night will be Sara Yarjani, an Iranian graduate student who was temporarily barred from entering the U.S. last month after Mr. Trump issued an executive order on extreme vetting of travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Progressive groups also geared up their opposition to Mr. Trump’s proposed budget cuts, after eight years of working with a Democratic White House that offered a mostly sympathetic ear at budget time.
“A budget is a statement of priorities, and with this proposal, Trump is telling America he doesn’t care about what happens to children who are forced to drink toxic water and breathe polluted air,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. “Trump’s budget guts the Environmental Protection Agency — the only federal agency charged with keeping our air and water clean — starves our cherished parks and threatens our wildlife.”
The advocacy group ONE, which focuses on combating poverty and diseases, said Mr. Trump’s proposed cuts to foreign aid are alarming.
“It’s also especially ironic,” said Tom Hart, the group’s executive director for North America. “If your goal is to increase our national security, cutting our foreign assistance budget is one of the last things you should do.”
Congressional Democrats for years have said that any increase in defense spending must be accompanied by hikes in domestic priorities — and with President Obama in office, they were able to prevail.
Now, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, warned of massive cuts to health research, while other Democrats said the administration would have to slash regulators like the agencies that monitor Wall Street.
On the other side of the aisle, Mr. Trump’s defense plans split conservatives.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, said the $54 billion boost would bring defense spending next year to $603 billion. He said that was just 3 percent more than President Obama had envisioned.
Mr. McCain said the department needs $37 billion more than even Mr. Trump is calling for.
“With a world on fire, America cannot secure peace through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obama’s budget. We can and must do better,” Mr. McCain said.
Budget analysts, though, said the problem isn’t too little money, but bad spending decisions.
“The defense budget is blotted with massive amounts of waste and spending that respond to the military needs of a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” said Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
“Any additional increase in defense spending without addressing these issues raises a serious risk that the new injection of funds will once again be allocated based on politics or outdated priorities rather than national security concerns,” she said.
The president met at the White House on Monday afternoon with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, to discuss his agenda and the speech.
“We’re looking forward to a positive, upbeat presentation,” Mr. McConnell said.
Asked by reporters whether he was comfortable with the president’s budget failing to address entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, Mr. Ryan replied, “Repealing and replacing Obamacare is fundamental entitlement reform.”
White House officials didn’t specify cuts in discretional spending programs, but they did single out foreign aid, saying it would see “large reductions” in spending.
The full budget negotiations between Mr. Trump and Congress will not be complete soon. The administration is expected to submit a more detailed spending plan to lawmakers in May.
Mr. Trump also said his spending plan will contain more spending for infrastructure. He lamented that the U.S. has spent trillions of dollars on military operations in the Middle East over the past two decades without winning wars.
“We’re nowhere,” the president said in a meeting with the nation’s governors. “We don’t fight to win. We spend $6 trillion in the Middle East, and we have potholes all over our roads.”
The outlines of his beefed-up military spending received an early endorsement Monday from former President George W. Bush.
“I think it’s very hard to fight the war on terrorism if we’re in retreat,” Mr. Bush said on NBC’s “Today” program. “I think we learned that lesson that if the United States decides to pull out before a free society emerges, it’s going to be hard to defeat them.”
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who chairs the National Governors Association, said Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were promoting their plans for increased defense spending in conversations with him, knowing that Virginia has 27 U.S. military installations.
“I’m all for defense spending,” Mr. McAuliffe said on MSNBC. “A good question is, ‘How will we possibly pay for it?’ I didn’t get any details on the other side.”
The administration’s budget envisions economic growth in fiscal 2018 of 2.4 percent. Gross domestic product grew at a tepid 1.6 percent in 2016; it was 2.6 percent in 2015.
Mr. Mulvaney said the administration’s spending plan would not add to the deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office is projecting at $487 billion for fiscal 2018.
Mr. Trump’s budget envisions defense spending rising to $603 billion. Non-defense programs, including foreign aid, would fall by $54 billion to $462 billion.
Mr. Trump said he wants to provide soldiers with the tools to deter war and, when called upon, “to start winning wars again.”
“When I was young, in high school and in college, everybody used to say we never lost a war. America never lost,” Mr. Trump said. “Now, we never win a war.”
He cited the example of the Middle East, where the U.S. has conducted wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan since 2001. Since 2003, 4,516 U.S. service members have been killed in Iraq, and another 2,392 in Afghanistan, according to the website icasualties.org.
Mr. Trump said the U.S. has nothing to show for the money spent in the Middle East, with Islamist groups still posing a constant threat.
“We’re nowhere. We’re less than nowhere,” Mr. Trump said. “The Middle East is far worse than it was 16, 17 years ago. It’s not even a contest. So we’ve spent $6 trillion, we have a hornet’s nest, it’s a mess. We’re nowhere.”
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.A CONDUCTOR was rushed to hospital after an alleged double stabbing on board a Glasgow-bound train.
Two men and a woman have been arrested by police in connection with the incident.
Paramedics and the British Transport Police were called to the train, which was travelling between Largs and Glasgow, yesterday afternoon.
It is thought the second victim - a 40-year-old man - was a passenger.
The 43-year-old train guard was rushed to Crosshouse Hospital, where he received treatment, and medical staff described his condition as "stable".
The alarm was raised shortly after 3pm and the 2.54pm Largs to Glasgow Central service was stopped at West Kilbride.
A ScotRail spokeswoman said: “We do not tolerate crime on the railway, and we are fully co-operating with British Transport Police in their investigation.”
|
they should fight to serve anyone who needs them.
Given that Just War Theory regards individuals, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the ends of others, what is its view of the right to self-defense, that is, the right of a people to defend its own lives and freedom, not for the sake of a “humanitarian” cause, but for its own sake?
While in name Just War Theory claims to uphold a right to self-defense, in substance it denies this right. Self-defense, the theory holds, is a “just cause” for war. This means that if the people of a nation are suffering aggression, oppression, or genocide, and are themselves capable of stopping it, they are morally entitled to respond militarily. But—and this is the crucial part—only under strict conditions. Aggression from another nation is a “just cause,” according to Just War Theory, but only as a “last resort”—and only if the decision to go to war is motivated by “good intentions.” (These qualifications apply to “humanitarian” “just causes” as well, but we will focus on their application to alleged wars of self-defense.)
Let us first examine the requirement that war must be a “last resort.” This restriction is often portrayed as a sensible policy that simply entails taking the act of going to war seriously, rather than going to war willy-nilly. But, in fact, war as a “last resort” goes far beyond forbidding wars of whim or aggression; it means that a nation cannot go to war immediately even when there is an objective threat—that is, when another nation has shown the willingness to initiate aggression against it. Because the use of military force involves the harming of others, Just War Theory holds, every other conceivable avenue short of using military force must be tried: appeasement, U.N. resolutions, being persuaded by the crocodile tears of enemy leaders, and anything else that pacifists (or U.N. ambassadors) can muster.
What is an innocent nation to do when it knows of a threat that, if left unaddressed, could result in a catastrophic attack on it at some point in the future—such as the knowledge possessed by the U.S. of Iran, a nation that sponsors terrorism, spreads Islamic Totalitarianism, develops nuclear weapons, has attacked U.S. interests in the past, and promises the eventual destruction of America? Such projections are dismissed by Just War theorists as merely hypothetical (“How can we know what the future will hold?”). Projections of future attacks, they hold, are tainted by self-serving motives—that is, too much concern for one’s own life and liberty, too little concern with the consequences of war on others (such as the Iranians)—and thus morally out of the question as a cause for action. For example, in 2002, Walzer told the New York Times: “we don’t have to wait to be attacked; that’s true. But you do have to wait until you are about to be attacked.”8
The requirement that war be a “last resort” is inimical to the requirements of self-defense, which demand that serious threats be stopped as soon as possible. Observe that evil nations and movements do not commit major atrocities out of the blue; they need time to build their forces, gain converts, extract concessions, and win small victories; they need to convince themselves and their followers that they have a chance of success. The earlier their intended victims retaliate, the less damage the thugs can do, and the easier it is to dispose of them.
Consider Germany in the 1930s. Hitler, who had stated publicly his intentions for domination of Europe and the world, was an objective threat to his neighbors. He was a threat as soon as he came to power, and then increasingly so as he built up a military, explicitly rejecting existing treaties with England and France. Yet these nations took no military action against his regime. Then Germany annexed Austria, and was met with no military response. When Nazi troops occupied the Rhineland (a disputed area on the border with France), they were given a pass. When Hitler asked the European leaders to hand him the free state of Czechoslovakia, they did. It took the invasion of Poland to prompt the European nations to take military action against the Nazis. They practiced war as a “last resort”; and we know the result.
Or consider the rise of Islamic Totalitarianism. In 1979, a new Iranian regime founded on Islamic Totalitarian principles held fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days, while America helplessly begged for their return and Iranian leaders had a world stage to proclaim their superiority to the nation they call the “Great Satan.” Not one American died during the hostage-taking—but, with America on her knees, the burgeoning anti-American movement achieved a crucial victory.
What would Just War Theory say about whether this situation warranted a military response? Did it rise to the level of a direct attack sufficient to place us at the point of “last resort” with Iran and other nations that sponsor Islamic terrorism? Not according to Jimmy Carter. What about after two hundred and forty-three marines were killed in Lebanon in 1983? Not according to Ronald Reagan. Or after Khomeini’s fatwa offered terrorists a bounty to destroy writer Salman Rushdie and his American publisher for expressing an “un-Islamic” viewpoint in 1989? Not according to George Bush, Sr. Or after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993? Not according to Bill Clinton. The pattern is telling.
Since there is no definable threshold at which to declare something a “last resort,” the threshold tends to default to some kind of a range-of-the-moment, perceptual-level event, such as a massive, direct attack by an enemy nation (e.g., 9/11). Until then, Just War theorists and their pacifist spiritual brothers can always concoct new schemes for appeasement, or new fantasies that the enemy has reformed, or new rationalizations that their aggression is our fault—and thus claim that to wage war would be immoral. By the time war becomes a “last resort,” an innocent nation has endured far more risk, fear, and destruction than was necessary—and will have to endure far more in order to defeat a long-appeased and thus more powerful enemy. “Self-defense” as a “last resort” is not self-defense.
Further undermining the self-defense of an innocent nation is the requirement of Just War Theory that the decision to go to war be motivated by “good intentions”— that is, seeking a “good outcome.” This requirement, by naming the motive and purpose of war, goes to the heart of what Just War Theory means and demands.
What does “good” mean here? It means “altruistic.”
According to Just War Theory, it is wrong for a nation to be exclusively concerned with its own well-being in deciding whether to go to war; it must demonstrate concern for the well-being of the world as a whole—including the well-being of the nation it is attacking. Only such a concern will yield a “good outcome”—that is, an altruistic outcome.
Insofar as it constitutes “good intentions” for any part of a mission to be devoted to a nation’s own defense, it is justified as altruistic: by the “sacrifices” that leaders and especially soldiers make to “serve their country”—a country that is defended as an altruistic one. For example, when President Bush discusses why America is a country worth defending, he emphasizes our charity, our service to other nations, the religiosity of many Americans, and so on. He does not emphasize the fact that we devote our lives to making money and pursuing happiness.
In implementing Just War Theory, the less a nation is concerned with the well-being of its own citizens, and the more it is concerned with that of others, the more it proves its “good intentions.” The more it seems to be going to war for the sake of its own citizens, the more suspect its motives. Observe this at work in the two wars our government has entered since 9/11: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The impetus for both wars, especially in Afghanistan, was clearly the events of September 11 and the realization of the extent of the terrorist threat to America. But observe that while President Bush said that America has a right to defend itself, he did not consider the elimination of the threat posed by these countries to be a sufficient justification for war in either case. In both wars, he defended his actions, not just as a response to the threat of terrorists to America, but as a response to their threat to the “world.” Bush supplemented the alleged self-defense portions of each mission with massive campaigns to relieve Afghan and Iraqi suffering—suffering that constituted uncontroversially “just causes.” And in the case of the war in Iraq, he made a crucial component of his justification the goal of preserving the “integrity” of the U.N. (an organization whose myriad dictators are committed opponents of American interests), whose resolutions Saddam had violated.
In the buildup to the war in Iraq, President Bush was especially concerned with giving the mission an altruistic purpose. He sought to justify the self-defense aspect of the war on the grounds of preemption, an idea controversial among commentators, politicians, and Just War theorists. Thus, President Bush made sure to focus, above all, on the goal of freeing the Iraqi people of a tyrant and showering them with food, collectively owned oil, and “democracy.” The name of the war, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” perfectly reflects Bush’s moral priorities.
As an expert who is sympathetic to Just War Theory wrote in the Claremont Review of Books:
In the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, to have listened to President Bush, or to his principal civilian and military advisors, was to learn how profoundly just-war thinking has influenced the leadership of the world’s most powerful nation. One may of course disagree with their conclusions, but one has to be impressed by the evident care they took to provide moral justification for their actions. Measured by any objective standard, Operation Iraqi Freedom plausibly met all the criteria for just war... a serious, good faith effort was made to subject American policy to rigorous moral scrutiny.9
Whenever President Bush wants to defend the morality of the wars we have fought, he insists that we fight for reasons “larger than our nation’s defense.” When Bush refers to our “good intentions” in Iraq, as he frequently does, he speaks not of our intention to defend ourselves, but of the intentions of American citizens to pay and of American soldiers to die so that Iraqis can hold a mob vote.
An injunction to go to war with altruistic intentions, seeking an altruistic outcome, is in direct contradiction to the requirements of self-defense; it forbids the very essence of self-defense in the context of war: identifying and defeating enemy nations.
To identify a nation as an enemy is to recognize it as a committed initiator of force that threatens one’s own life, that forfeits its right to exist, and that in justice deserves whatever is necessary to end the threat it poses. By Just War Theory’s moral standards, however, there is no such thing as an enemy nation. Even when a nation initiates aggression, it is not regarded as the proper object of retaliation, but as a haven of “others” to be served. (This notion is, unsurprisingly, rooted in Augustine’s religion, Christianity, which countenances us to love everyone—especially, as proof of extreme virtue, to “love thine enemy.”)
Observe that America has not gone to war with one nation since September 11. In each war, President Bush has made clear that we are in Afghanistan or Iraq to aid the “Afghan people” or the “Iraqi people,” and that we oppose only their current leaders. In the case of Iraq, he has made the well-being of the Iraqis, including the satisfaction of their religious and political desires, the overriding purpose of the war.
Given that the purpose of war, according to Just War Theory, is the well-being of others (including those who are, in fact, one’s enemies), it is logical that Just War Theory also precludes a nation from waging war in a manner that will destroy its enemies. It is imperative, according to Just War Theory, that war be fought by unselfish, sacrificial means, in which great value is accorded to the citizens of enemy nations. This is the meaning of the requirements of “proportionality” and “discrimination.” Proportionality is the idea that the value gained by the ends a war seeks must be “proportional” to the damage incurred during the war. To advocate that ends and damage be “proportional” presupposes a standard of value by which these are to be weighed. What is the relative weight, for example, that the U.S. government should accord an American civilian and an Iraqi civilian? Since Just War Theory holds that a government’s intentions are “good” to the extent that it places value on other peoples, including enemies, by its standard of value a government of an innocent nation should place equal value on the lives of its citizens and those of enemy nations. On this view, in America’s “War on Terrorism,” we have to “balance” the lives of American soldiers and civilians with the lives of the enemy nation’s soldiers and civilians. According to Walzer, “In our judgments of the fighting, we abstract from all consideration of the justice of the cause.†We do this because the moral status of individual soldiers on both sides is very much the same: they face one another as moral equals.”10
This is what our present and future military leaders are learning at West Point. They are being taught that no matter the cause of war, they are risking their lives to fight and kill their moral equals—that they must regard protecting the life of a fellow soldier as morally equivalent with saving the life of the enemy.
The requirement of “proportionality” is one reason why we did not do any damage to the infrastructure of Iraq or Afghanistan, so as not to inflict “disproportionate” suffering on the people. And it is probably the reason that the promised “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq never materialized. Proportionality means that in fighting a war we cannot conduct ourselves in a way that hastens victory or that minimizes our casualties.
The requirement of “proportionality,” as bad as it is, is made even worse by the requirement of “discrimination,” which is a clarification on the value a government is to accord various types of people under “proportionality.” The requirement of “discrimination” holds that a nation defending itself must differentiate between combatants and noncombatants, valuing noncombatants more highly by providing them with “immunity.” Just War Theory regards all noncombatants as “innocents” with “rights” to be respected. We must, according to Elshtain, “make every effort to avoid killing noncombatants... women, children, the aged and infirm, all unarmed persons going about daily lives, and prisoners of war....”11 To those who would reject such imperatives in order to defend one’s own people, Elshtain replies: “The demands of proportionality and discrimination are strenuous and cannot be alternatively satisfied or ignored, depending on whether they serve one’s war aims.”12
Observe the inversion of justice here. Benevolent, individualistic, life-loving Americans, and death-worshipping, collectivist, nihilistic Arabs—such as the dancing Arabs who celebrated 9/11—are regarded as equally worthy of protection by the American military. The exception is if the American is a soldier and the Arab is a civilian, in which case the Arab’s life is of greater value.
The requirements of “proportionality” and “discrimination” are deadly to the nation that takes them seriously. A nation fully committed to defending itself must value the lives of its citizens more than the lives of its enemy’s citizens; it must be morally confident in its goodness, in its right to exist, and of the rightness of killing whomever in enemy nations it must to preserve the lives and liberty of its citizens. Self-defense may well require killing more of the enemy’s citizens than the enemy has killed of ours. It is commonly necessary in war to break the spirit of a foreign people whose nation has initiated aggression in which they are complicit. This often requires killing civilians, and in some cases even targeting them, as America did in World War II. These actions were regarded as just by leaders who viewed civilians of enemy nations as part of the national war machine and rarely truly innocent—and who viewed any deaths of actual innocents, including children, as wholly the moral responsibility of the nation that initiated war.
Just War Theory forbids such tactics. A nation with “good intentions,” practicing “proportionality” and “discrimination,” cannot possibly raze a city as Sherman did. This is why, although Sherman’s actions helped to end the Civil War, he is a reviled figure among Just War theorists: His goal was to preserve his side by inflicting unbearable misery on its enemy’s civilian population—the opposite of “good intentions.” Many Just War theorists hold—as by their standard they are obliged to hold—that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was immoral. America, they claim, should have valued Japanese civilians over the hundreds of thousands of GIs who would have died invading Japan.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, we see the consequences of not being led by a Sherman-like policy. Our policy of dropping food packages in Afghanistan gained us the scorn of our enemy, who was often the beneficiary of these gifts. Our declared purpose of helping the Afghan people provided security for Osama Bin Laden, his deputies, and his Taliban supporters; they knew that we would be reluctant to bomb them out of their hideouts for fear of killing the Afghans we were there to serve.
In Iraq, since our declared purpose is the well-being and happiness of Iraqi citizens, the countless hostile Iraqis feel free to condemn our troops, to incite violence against them, and to provide refuge to insurgents. President Bush has stressed that we did not go to war against Iraq (only against Saddam), but for the Iraqi people. Thus, we did not make it a priority to defeat them. Almost daily in Iraq, our troops risk their lives because of rules of engagement that place the lives of Iraqi civilians above their own. This was evident in our withdrawal from Fallujah in 2004 when we feared civilian casualties, and in the fact that when we returned to Fallujah in 2005 we allowed tens of thousands of people, including thousands of insurgents, to leave the town before the battle began. Indeed, from the first bombing, the war has been conducted in a way so as to minimize Iraqi casualties, and at almost any cost. Is it any wonder that an insurgency arose? Is it any wonder that leaders and citizens of other terrorist nations feel no real pressure to stop threatening America?
In the “War on Terrorism,” the U.S. is following the pronouncements of Just War Theory in regard to civilians with incredible dedication, and has received much acclaim among Just War theorists for doing so. In Elshtain’s evaluation of the war in Afghanistan, she writes:
The United States must do everything to minimize civilian deaths—and it is doing so.... The United States must investigate every incident in which civilians are killed—and it is doing so. The United States must make some sort of recompense for unintended civilian casualties, and it may be making plans to do so—an unusual, even unheard of, act in wartime.13
She adds:
It is fair to say that in Afghanistan the U.S. military is doing its best to respond proportionally. If it were not, the infrastructure of civilian life in that country would have been devastated completely, and it is not. Instead, schools are opening, women are returning to work, movie theaters are filled to capacity, and people can once again listen to music and dance at weddings.14
What she does not mention—but what must never be forgotten—is the price that has been paid for such supposedly “just” conduct. That price is the hundreds of heroic American men and women who have been killed so that Afghans and Iraqis may live and their mosques may stand (to say nothing of whatever unknown price the rest of us will pay when the undefeated enemy next attacks America).
The final Just War requirement that we will discuss is the mandate that the decision-maker who chooses both when and how to go to war must be a “legitimate authority.” Historically, this has been a minor restriction, meaning simply that a government (not a private militia or gang) should declare war. In recent decades, however, it has become a major restriction, because Just War theorists regard a “legitimate” authority as one who will ensure that force is used with “good intentions,” that is, unselfishly. For example, many Just War theorists have come to hold that a war is invalid unless authorized and supervised by the U.N. And even those who do not regard U.N. approval as strictly necessary, such as President Bush, value the approval of other nations as evidence of lack of selfishness. Observe Bush’s frantic desire to make an Iraq mission that was suitable to the U.N. and then, failing that, to assemble any and every insignificant nation into a “coalition of the willing.”
Self-defense requires that a nation assess, independently and objectively, by the standard of the lives of its own citizens, what to do. To subordinate that to a coalition or to Kofi Annan—for the reason that they are not concerned with our interests—is unjust and suicidal.
In the “War on Terrorism,” America has taken self-destructive action after self-destructive action in the name of winning over the U.N. and “coalition partners.” America’s missions in Afghanistan and Iraq were stymied by the vetoes of such so-called allies as the Saudis (who denied us use of aircraft landing strips) and of other nations (who urged us to limit the number of ground troops in Afghanistan), forcing us to rely on duplicitous warlords who connived in the escape of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. As a result of Bush’s submission to “legitimate authorities,” we have sacrificed victory.
All of the requirements of Just War Theory help to explain why the Bush Administration has felt justified in going to war only in Afghanistan and Iraq—and only then with major “humanitarian” purposes in each mission, which failed to eliminate the threats posed by the nations.
Just War Theory has also had a major influence in determining the wars our government does not think it is justified to fight. President Bush has taken no military action whatsoever against Iran, none against Saudi Arabia, none against Syria. President Bush is not ignorant of these threats—he is well aware of the fact that these countries sponsor terrorism; in the case of Iran and Syria, he has said so repeatedly. But he has done nothing militarily to stop the threats these countries pose, nor is there any indication he will do so in the future. Instead, he continues to engage in “diplomatic” bribery, nudging the U.N., inviting terrorist nations into “anti-terrorism” coalitions, and other completely ineffective—indeed, self-destructive—moves.
As discussed earlier, our improper identification of the enemy, motivated by multiculturalism and religion, has played a major part in our mis-selection of targets. Additionally, the altruistic war in Iraq has so discredited the idea of military action, by fatally engaging our troops for no clear purpose and with no clear standard of victory, that few Americans want to go to war again. But another major reason why we are reluctant to target our major enemies today—and why we did not target them from the outset—is that they do not meet Just War Theory’s qualifications for military action.
Of course, from a self-defense standpoint, Iran was and is the most important regime to defeat—much more so than Iraq. But under Just War criteria, the case for war with Iran would be almost impossible to make, whereas the case for war with Iraq was relatively simple. Iran was not ruled by a universally accepted “monster”; Iraq was. The “will of the Iranian people” had not been obviously thwarted; the “will of the Iraqis” had been. Iran had not violated nearly two dozen U.N. resolutions; Iraq had. The Iranian people had not been subject to mass slaughter; the Iraqis had. These considerations, while nearly irrelevant in terms of self-defense, are decisive by the criteria of Just War Theory.
What about the fact that Iran is the spiritual fatherland of the ideology driving Islamic terrorists? Or the fact that the “will of the Iranian people” largely supports the deadly ideology that seeks the extermination of the West? Or the fact that Iran is developing a nuclear arsenal? Or the fact that Iran has sponsored terrorist attacks on Americans abroad on numerous occasions in the past? According to Just War Theory, so long as Iran has not yet unleashed a devastating, direct attack against us, and so long as there is no altruistic emergency, these facts do not justify military action or the threat of military action; at most, they are justification for endless “diplomacy” or a request for a U.N. resolution. In an interview in 2004, Bush said: “We will continue pressing [Iran] diplomatically.... Diplomacy failed for 11 years in Iraq... and this new diplomatic effort [in Iran started] barely a year ago.”15 Could anything be more encouraging for the nations and groups seeking to wage a long-term battle against the West?
In the case of our refusal to take or threaten military action against the leading sponsors of Islamic terrorism, we see the true meaning of the restrictions of Just War Theory regarding when a nation can go to war, and how it must fight. A nation that will go to war only as a “last resort,” in response to a “just cause,” with “good intentions”—and once it goes, employ “proportionality” and “discrimination”—is a nation that will endure unnecessary risks and even mass death before going to war. And even if it goes to war, it will fight with both hands tied behind its back.
Just War Theory, to summarize, is the application of the morality of altruism to war. It holds that the citizens of an innocent nation are not ends in themselves, but means to some “higher” end. In today’s version, it claims that the citizens of an innocent nation can “defend” themselves—as a means to realizing the goal of sacrificing themselves to the needs of others (including those who are in fact their enemies). This is not a right to self-defense, but a “duty” to practice altruism.
To the extent that Just War Theory is practiced, it leads to unnecessary fear, suffering, and death visited on innocent nations—and to the rise of evil movements and regimes—all while it claims to be virtuous and practical.
Because it purports to support self-defense while actually forbidding its preconditions, Just War Theory is uniquely dangerous. Unlike pacifism, it is eminently plausible to today’s Americans. Americans will not accept en masse a theory that explicitly forbids them self-defense against their evil enemies. But they will accept a theory that claims to endorse both self-defense and the altruistic morality that they have grown up believing is the ideal. They do not realize that it is either–or.
What, in fact, happens to policies that could potentially lead to self-defense, such as giving every state sponsor of Islamic terrorism an ultimatum to cease and desist, or else? The altruism underlying Just War Theory makes our leaders morally rule out such policies without consideration. And then, whatever course of action they do consider and pursue, they portray as in America’s self-defense and self-interest.
The ultimate embodiment of Just War Theory and its embrace of self-destructive policies under the partial cloak of self-defense is the present overall foreign policy of President Bush: the “Forward Strategy of Freedom.” This strategy is the Bush Administration’s policy of spreading “democracy” throughout the Middle East and other backward areas. The first major step of this strategy is the establishment of a “free Iraq,” which allegedly will be an inspirational “beacon of freedom” for the rest of the Middle East and inspire them toward “democratic reform.”
These are goals that Just War Theory would applaud; they embody “good intentions” (i.e., altruistic intentions) in our foreign policy and in our choice of wars. True to the popular advocacy of Just War Theory, however, President Bush does not frame the Forward Strategy of Freedom as good only on altruistic grounds; if he did, the American people would not tolerate it (nor would he). He argues that this strategy is the one that will best serve America, that by encouraging the “liberation” of oppressed nations we promote our own security. For example, in his State of the Union Address in 2005, Bush proclaimed: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
Why is the Forward Strategy of Freedom our “best hope”? Because, as Bush and others point out, free nations do not initiate aggression (including terrorism), whereas unfree ones do. So a “free,” “democratic” Middle East promotes our self-defense.
In analyzing whether this policy is in fact in America’s self-defense, let us leave aside for a moment its massive evasions about what freedom is and requires—the fact that freedom (i.e., individual liberty) and democracy (i.e., unlimited majority rule over the individual) are entirely different and incompatible things, the second being an enemy of the first. Even assuming that our leaders had any idea what freedom is, and how to most efficiently establish it, would this be a policy in America’s self-defense?
Absolutely not. The one half-truth in the argument for the Forward Strategy of Freedom is that truly free nations do not initiate aggression against other nations. But so what? There are dozens of statist nations that do not threaten America, either, because they fear us or have no ideological interest in fighting us.
The question of what is in America’s self-defense comes down to: What is the best way to make other nations non-threatening as quickly as possible? To consider this question objectively, one must be willing to consider all our options, including: quickly deposing terrorist and especially Islamic Totalitarian regimes, threatening the inhabitants with retribution if they threaten America again, and then moving on to ending support of terrorism by other regimes. Given the options available to us, it is inconceivable that the best strategy is to spend endless military resources to set up a “democracy” in Iraq, and then pray that every terrorist nation decides to adopt a free, constitutional government. To make the Middle East even semi-free would cost a tremendous amount of time, money, and American lives. Given the options available to us, the Forward Strategy of Freedom is entirely self-sacrificial. But because the Bush Administration has morally ruled out a true strategy of self-defense, it can delude itself into believing that, as its members repeatedly tell us, it is doing “everything possible” to protect us.
Because Just War Theory removes from the table the possibility of forthrightly defeating our enemies, its advocates must concoct bizarrely indirect means of stopping them (bizarre is the only adjective that does justice to a policy of hinging American security on the similarities between today’s Iraqis and Jefferson-era Americans). Observe that in Bush’s policy the “liberation” of Iraq is not seen as part of defeating that country, but as replacing the necessity of defeating it. And the magical inspiration it is supposed to provide to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and so on, will allegedly replace the necessity of militarily confronting those nations. Since Bush feels morally unwilling to defeat our enemies, he regards it as necessary to delegate that task to their subservient and sympathetic populations. Instead of making us more secure, this policy has inspired the Iraqi insurgency, made Iran and Saudi Arabia feel more confident than ever, and may well allow the Iraqi people to eventually vote their country into an Islamic dictatorship akin to Iran. (Given the big victories by religious Shiite politicians in Iraqi elections so far, they are well on their way.) And because our failure to defeat our enemies only contributes to the success of Islamic Totalitarianism, our support for elections in the Middle East foretells that Islamic Totalitarians will “democratically” be given greater influence; we have already seen increases in the political influence of even more committed supporters of Islamic Totalitarians in Saudi Arabia, of Hezbollah in Lebanon, of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.
To call this a policy of American self-interest or American self-defense is to invert the meaning of these concepts. This is a policy of American self-destruction, and it is made possible by a theory that morally rules out self-defense while claiming to support it.
The President’s version of Just War Theory is not the only one; there are many different varieties of the theory, and their various advocates emphasize and interpret the rules differently. Some, such as the Pope, are borderline pacifists and emphasize the “last resort” rule. Others, under the influence of multiculturalism, believe that most “peacekeeping” missions are wrong, not because they are sacrificial, but because one should not “impose” one’s definition of a better life on a foreign people.
But such disagreements are ultimately insignificant as far as America’s self-defense is concerned, because none challenges the theory’s basic altruist premises. Observe that the media, Democrats, and intellectuals do not criticize the Bush Administration for its failure to smash the insurgency in Iraq or for doing nothing to fight the threat posed by Iran. Most criticisms of Bush amount to him not being altruistic enough. They accuse him of “rushing” to war despite the desires of other nations; they tally civilian casualties; they fixate on humiliated prisoners of war; they treat any deficiency in Afghan or Iraqi standards of living as a moral travesty on the part of America. Thus, the competing proponents of Just War Theory differ with the Bush Administration not on whether America’s security should be sacrificed for the sake of others, but only on how.
Just War Theory, in the final analysis, is anti-self-defense and anti-justice. By preaching self-sacrifice to the needs of others, Just War Theory has led to the sacrifice of the civilized for the sake of the barbarous, the sacrifice of victims of aggression for the sake of its perpetrators, the sacrifice of noble Americans for the sake of ignoble Iraqis—the sacrifice of the greatest nation in history for the sake of the worst nations today.
The Morality of Victory
In terms of fundamentals, Just War Theory is completely unopposed by any other theory of war today.
For those concerned about self-defense, the alleged alternative to Just War Theory is “realism”: the idea that there is no connection between morality and war. “Realists” hold that war should be entered into and fought according to strictly “practical” considerations. But this position is not a viable alternative to Just War Theory. First, as Just War theorists rightly point out, “realism” evades the fact that war is an act of monumental moral significance, and by treating it otherwise one sanctions truly horrific things, such as wars of aggression. Second, the dictum that one must evaluate war according to simply “practical” considerations is intellectually empty, since there is no such thing as practicality detached from morality.
Any claim that a course of action is “practical” presupposes some basic end that the course of action achieves. For example, any claim that “diplomacy” with Iran is practical, or that an ultimatum against Iran is practical, or that sending a nuclear warhead to Iran is practical, presupposes some basic goal that it will achieve—whether that goal be the approval of others, or the “stability” of the Middle East, or winning “hearts and minds,” or eliminating the Iranian threat. The question of what basic ends one should pursue in war is inescapable to the issue of practicality—and it is a moral question.
Because “realism” rejects the need for moral evaluation, and because the need for moral evaluation cannot be escaped, its advocates necessarily take certain goals for granted as “obviously” practical. Which goals? Those widely seen as valid—that is, the goals of altruism.
Consider the case of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a prominent “realist.” Does he call for America’s unequivocal, uncompromising self-defense using its full military might, since that would be eminently practical in achieving America’s self-interest? No. Instead, when he ran the State Department, he sought to avoid war, to appease any and every enemy, to court “world opinion,” to build coalitions, to avoid civilian casualties—while at the same time somehow to protect America. In other words, he did everything that pacifism and Just War Theory would have him do. While Powell and his ilk may say that they eschew moral analysis in matters of foreign policy and war, altruism nevertheless shapes what they think and seek to do.
“Realism,” therefore, is no antidote to Just War Theory. It is not even a theory of war but an intellectual parasite that camouflages the destructive nature of altruism with a professed concern for “practicality.” To bury the moral issues involved in war for the sake of “practicality” does not erase them; rather, it serves to entrench the status quo, by offering covert altruism as the only alternative to overt altruism.
There is no escape from morality, and no reconciling self-defense with the morality of altruism. To escape from the destructiveness of Just War Theory, therefore, we must embrace a moral approach to war that rejects altruism and fully upholds self-defense, thus providing the moral foundation for free, innocent nations to secure the lives and liberty of their citizens in the face of aggression.
Such a moral foundation exists in the morality of rational self-interest (also known as rational egoism or rational selfishness), the code of ethics originated by philosopher Ayn Rand.
Rational self-interest holds that every individual ought to live his own life for his own sake, by his own independent effort—without sacrificing himself to others or others to himself. It holds that the individual’s self-interest is achieved, not by doing whatever he feels like doing, and not by placing his goals in opposition to his neighbors’ freedom, but by living a life of reason, productivity, and trade.
According to rational egoism, the greatest threat a rational man faces to the achievement of his goals—and the greatest threat to a harmonious, prosperous, free society—is the initiation of physical force by others. In justice, when someone initiates force against an innocent man—whether by violence, theft, or fraud—the initiator of force deserves to be met with retaliatory force.
In the egoistic approach, the need for individuals to be free from the initiation of force necessitates the existence of governments—and the option of war. A proper government places the retaliatory use of force under principled, objective control. A proper government is founded on the principle of individual rights—the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights sanction the individual’s freedom of action; they recognize the right of eve≠ry individual to pursue his own goals by his own judgment: to produce, trade, speak, write, love, and live as he chooses, free of |
top scorers? These countries undoubtedly deserve credit for high educational accomplishment. In some areas — the importance of carefully selected, high-quality teachers, for example — they might well provide useful lessons for the United States. But they have nothing like the steady influx of immigrants, mostly Latinos, whose children attend American public schools. And unfortunately, the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic demographics of the United States — none of which have analogues in Finland or South Korea — correlate closely with yawning achievement gaps in education. Non-Hispanic white and Asian pupils in the United States do about as well on these international tests as students from high-scoring countries like Canada and Japan, while Latino and black teens — collectively more than a third of the American students tested — score only about as well as those from Turkey and Bulgaria, respectively.
To explain is not to excuse, of course. The United States has an obligation to give all its citizens a high-quality education; tackling the U.S. achievement gap should be a moral imperative. But alarmist comparisons with other countries whose challenges are quite different from those of the United States don’t help. Americans should be less worried about how their own kids compare with kids in Helsinki than how students in the Bronx measure up to their peers in Westchester County.
"The U.S. No Longer Attracts the Best and Brightest."
Wrong. While Americans have worried about their elementary and high school performance for decades, they could reliably comfort themselves with the knowledge that at least their college education system was second to none. But today, American university leaders fret that other countries are catching up in, among other things, the market for international students, for whom the United States has long been the world’s largest magnet. The numbers seem to bear this out. According to the most recent statistics, the U.S. share of foreign students fell from 24 percent in 2000 to just below 19 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, countries like Australia, Canada, and Japan saw increased market shares from their 2000 levels, though they are still far below the American numbers.
The international distribution of mobile students is clearly changing, reflecting an ever more competitive global higher-education market. But there are many more foreign students in the United States than there were a decade ago — 149,000 more in 2008 than in 2000, a 31 percent increase. What has happened is that there are simply many more of them overall studying outside their home countries. Some 800,000 students ventured abroad in 1975; that number reached 2 million in 2000 and ballooned to 3.3 million in 2008. In other words, the United States has a smaller piece of the pie, but the pie has gotten much, much larger.
And even with its declining share, the United States still commands 9 percentage points more of the market than its nearest competitor, Britain. For international graduate study, American universities are a particularly powerful draw in fields that may directly affect the future competitiveness of a country’s economy: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In disciplines such as computer science and engineering, more than six in 10 doctoral students in American programs come from foreign countries.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Although applications from international students to American graduate schools have recovered from their steep post-9/11 decline, the number of foreigners earning science and engineering doctorates at U.S. universities recently dropped for the first time in five years. American schools face mounting competition from universities in other countries, and the United States’ less-than-welcoming visa policies may give students from overseas more incentive to go elsewhere. That’s a loss for the United States, given the benefits to both its universities and its economy of attracting the best and brightest from around the world.
"American Universities Are Being Overtaken."
Not so fast. There’s no question that the growing research aspirations of emerging countries have eroded the long-standing dominance of North America, the European Union, and Japan. Asia’s share of the world’s research and development spending grew from 27 to 32 percent from 2002 to 2007, led mostly by China, India, and South Korea, according to a 2010 UNESCO report. The traditional research leaders saw decreases during the same period. From 2002 to 2008, the U.S. proportion of articles in the Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index, the authoritative database of research publications, fell further than any other country’s, from 30.9 to 27.7 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese publications recorded in the same index more than doubled, as did the volume of scientific papers from Brazil, a country whose research institutions wouldn’t have been on anyone’s radar 20 years ago.
This shift in the geography of knowledge production is certainly noteworthy, but as with the international study market, the United States simply represents a proportionally smaller piece of a greatly expanded pie. R&D spending worldwide massively surged in the last decade, from $790 billion to $1.1 trillion, up 45 percent. And the declining U.S. share of global research spending still represented a healthy increase in constant dollars, from $277 billion in 2002 to $373 billion in 2007. U.S. research spending as a percentage of GDP over the same period was consistent and very high by global standards. The country’s R&D investments still totaled more than all Asian countries’ combined.
Similarly, a declining U.S. share of the world’s scientific publications may sound bad from an American point of view. But the total number of publications listed in the Thomson Reuters index surged by more than a third from 2002 to 2008. Even with a shrinking global lead, U.S. researchers published 46,000 more scientific articles in 2008 than they did six years earlier. And in any case, research discoveries don’t remain within the borders of the countries where they occur — knowledge is a public good, with little regard for national boundaries. Discoveries in one country’s research institutions can be capitalized on by innovators elsewhere. Countries shouldn’t be indifferent to the rise in their share of the research — big breakthroughs can have positive economic and academic spillover effects — but they also shouldn’t fear the increase of cutting-edge discoveries elsewhere.
"The World Will Catch Up."
Maybe, but don’t count on it anytime soon. And don’t count on it mattering. The global academic marketplace is without doubt growing more competitive than ever. Countries from China and South Korea to Saudi Arabia have made an urgent priority of creating world-class universities or restoring the lost luster of once great institutions. And they’re putting serious money into it: China is spending billions on expanding enrollment and improving its elite research institutions, while Saudi King Abdullah has funneled $10 billion into the brand-new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.
But the United States doesn’t have just a few elite schools, like most of its ostensible competitors; it has a deep bench of outstanding institutions. A 2008 Rand Corp. report found that nearly two-thirds of the most highly cited articles in science and technology come from the United States, and seven in 10 Nobel Prize winners are employed by American universities. And the United States spends about 2.9 percent of its GDP on postsecondary education, about twice the percentage spent by China, the European Union, and Japan in 2006.
But while the old U.S.-centric order of elite institutions is unlikely to be wholly overturned, it will gradually be shaken up in the coming decades. Asian countries in particular are making significant progress and may well produce some great universities within the next half-century, if not sooner. In China, for instance, institutions such as Tsinghua and Peking universities in Beijing and Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities in Shanghai could achieve real prominence on the world stage.
But over the long term, exactly where countries sit in the university hierarchy will be less and less relevant, as Americans’ understanding of who is "us" and who is "them" gradually changes. Already, a historically unprecedented level of student and faculty mobility has become a defining characteristic of global higher education. Cross-border scientific collaboration, as measured by the volume of publications by co-authors from different countries, has more than doubled in two decades. Countries like Singapore and Saudi Arabia are jump-starting a culture of academic excellence at their universities by forging partnerships with elite Western institutions such as Duke, MIT, Stanford, and Yale.
The notion of just how much a university really has to be connected to a particular location is being rethought, too. Western universities, from Texas A&M to the Sorbonne, have garnered much attention by creating, admittedly with mixed results, some 160 branch campuses in Asia and the Middle East, many launched in the last decade. New York University recently went one step further by opening a full-fledged liberal arts campus in Abu Dhabi, part of what NYU President John Sexton envisions as a "global network university." One day, as University of Warwick Vice Chancellor Nigel Thrift suggests, we may see outright mergers between institutions — and perhaps ultimately the university equivalent of multinational corporations.
In this coming era of globalized education, there is little place for the Sputnik alarms of the Cold War, the Shanghai panic of today, and the inevitable sequels lurking on the horizon. The international education race worth winning is the one to develop the intellectual capacity the United States and everyone else needs to meet the formidable challenges of the 21st century — and who gets there first won’t matter as much as we once feared.Where I complain that winning the World Series in five games isn’t good enough:
In 2009 Mike Rizzo inherited the #1 and #10 overall draft picks along with the Nationals GM position, he was also fortunate enough to take over a team that would go on to receive the #1 overall pick in 2010 and #6 in 2011. These picks led to significant building blocks in the Nats three division wins over the subsequent five years. While there is no doubt about the success of these top picks, I began wondering where are the rest of these draft classes. Why aren’t there more Nats draft picks in the line-up and rotation?
So I started looking at the draft results for the first three years under Rizzo. Long enough ago so that the better players have started having some success at the major league level to be used to rate the draft. Player value was assigned to the team making the selection regardless of any subsequent trades. For this exercise I selected the Baseball Reference version of WAR as the point of comparison. In my opinion WAR is an overly convoluted stat but it is ideal in this case. WAR is applied to starters, relievers, and hitters so I could rate the picks on as close to equal footing as is possible, and just as importantly WAR is “stackable”, it can be summed up for multiple players per team to compare the totals. So even though WAR is not the perfect stat for comparing individual players it works great for ranking draft classes.
The big problem I had was that I needed WAR per player based on draft year and position. I checked several sites that listed WAR and could not find the draft info. So I did the work the long way. I used Wikipedia to get the draft order of players who made it to MLB and then checked Baseball Reference one player at a time. This introduced several flaws 1) unknown accuracy of Wikipedia, 2) data copy errors by me, and most significantly 3) players drafted by one team who didn’t sign and were later drafted and produced for another team. I tried to make sure that I only credited the WAR to the team where the player actual signed, and I removed the few duplicates, but I’m sure I have a few mistakes mixed in. Hopefully the volume of data is high enough to keep the margin of error low.
The Results – Great Drafts but no Diamonds
Once I had a table of the Team, Draft Position, and WAR per player drafted from 2009-11 I began running different sub-totals to see where the numbers led. The results were that the Nats had the third best total WAR, a very good result, although based on draft position they would have been expected to be #1. Still, nothing to complain about. The more interesting result was how skewed the Nats results were to the top 10 overall picks. Which makes sense, if you have the #1 overall pick you are going to spend the bulk of your time scouting top picks at the expense of looking for late round guys.
In the table below I have ranked each team based on different queries:
All draft picks (Nats rank #3) : This includes all draft picks during those three years regardless of draft position and WAR. The Nats have a total WAR of 59.6, with 55 coming from those four top 10 picks. A very good result considering that the average was 31.8.
: This includes all draft picks during those three years regardless of draft position and WAR. The Nats have a total WAR of 59.6, with 55 coming from those four top 10 picks. A very good result considering that the average was 31.8. All “good” picks (#3) : For this query I filtered out players with WAR <= 0. The idea being that even if a player makes it to the major leagues, if they are worse than a replacement player they aren’t worth counting. Not much difference in the results though.
: For this query I filtered out players with WAR <= 0. The idea being that even if a player makes it to the major leagues, if they are worse than a replacement player they aren’t worth counting. Not much difference in the results though. Top 10 Picks (#1) : Looking at just top 10 picks eliminates a large number of teams who were fortunate enough to not have a top pick. The Nats towered over all other teams with a 55 WAR, far above the Os at 26.2 and Indians at 17.4. The Nats worst of four of these picks was Drew Storen, who has a career WAR of 5.2, exactly average for the top ten.
: Looking at just top 10 picks eliminates a large number of teams who were fortunate enough to not have a top pick. The Nats towered over all other teams with a 55 WAR, far above the Os at 26.2 and Indians at 17.4. The Nats worst of four of these picks was Drew Storen, who has a career WAR of 5.2, exactly average for the top ten. After the top 10 (#28) : This query was specifically selected to see how bad of a result could be attained by tweaking the numbers, I selected players with a >0 WAR chosen after pick #10. Not only because the Nats best players were in the top 10, but because the Nats didn’t have many draft picks in the first round after the top 10 (they did have two other round 1 picks that didn’t pan out). While this worked to get the desired result it really has no meaning.
: This query was specifically selected to see how bad of a result could be attained by tweaking the numbers, I selected players with a >0 WAR chosen after pick #10. Not only because the Nats best players were in the top 10, but because the Nats didn’t have many draft picks in the first round after the top 10 (they did have two other round 1 picks that didn’t pan out). While this worked to get the desired result it really has no meaning. After the top 100 (#24) : This is a much better representation of how the Nats compared with other teams for late round drafts, I picked 100 because it is a nice round number and because it is after the first three rounds plus comp picks (also filtering out players with negative WAR). Obviously 24th is not ideal, but that can be excused by the Nats focus on making sure that they didn’t whiff on those top picks. The Nats WAR was 5.9, the average was 14.4.
: This is a much better representation of how the Nats compared with other teams for late round drafts, I picked 100 because it is a nice round number and because it is after the first three rounds plus comp picks (also filtering out players with negative WAR). Obviously 24th is not ideal, but that can be excused by the Nats focus on making sure that they didn’t whiff on those top picks. The Nats WAR was 5.9, the average was 14.4. Nice Picks (#28) : This query was a way of looking for later round picks who were able to contribute to their team, selecting players drafted after #60 with a WAR >= 2. This query has the Nats looking terrible without me gaming the system. Only one player in three years, putting the Nats right near the bottom. Nate Karns was their one “nice pick” and with a WAR of 2 he barely qualified. Other teams had an average WAR of 17.1 in the category. (The Os and Padres were the only teams without a qualifying pick.)
: This query was a way of looking for later round picks who were able to contribute to their team, selecting players drafted after #60 with a WAR >= 2. This query has the Nats looking terrible without me gaming the system. Only one player in three years, putting the Nats right near the bottom. Nate Karns was their one “nice pick” and with a WAR of 2 he barely qualified. Other teams had an average WAR of 17.1 in the category. (The Os and Padres were the only teams without a qualifying pick.) Diamonds in the Rough (zilch): These are great finds in the later rounds. I limited this list to players drafted after position 100. For the WAR filter I used a variable rate, 3.5 for 2009, 3 for 2010, and 3.5 for 2011. The Nats were one of seven teams to get blanked in this category. With teams averaging 11.3.
So the big takeaway from these results is that while the Nats took advantage of losing 298 games in three years by making very good selections with their top picks they missed an opportunity to add to that haul by not even making mediocre picks after the third round. The difference in 8.5 WAR between the Nats picks and the league average in the late rounds is likely a big reason why the team is in constant need of bench and bullpen depth.
I’d really like to analyze the draft results for the Bowden years and track how these results change as players add to their total WAR. But I’m really going to need a better way to collect the data, more accurate and less time-consuming.
Nats Draft Results – Excel
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
GoogleIt's been said that appearance is everything, but is that true when it comes to the order in which political parties are listed on election ballots?
Connecticut Republicans appear to think so. This week GOP leaders asked the Secretary of State to reverse a 2011 decision in which the office determined that Democrats would take top billing on the ballot. They argued that decision was made in error, due to the fact that Governor Dannel P. Malloy was listed under two political parties on the 2010 ballot, but.
The order in which party candidates appear on the election ballot is determined by which party candidate gets the most votes in a gubernatorial election. Republicans have historically enjoyed being atop the ballot, but their run came to an end when Malloy was elected in 2010.
In a letter outlining the reasons for her decision, Merrill writes, "You correctly identify the candidates for Governor; however, you do not differentiate between the appearance of a candidate on the ballot by 'party' nomination and by nominating petition with a 'party designation'. Taking this crucial difference into account results in the conclusion reached by my offìce in 2011; the Democratic Party is listed on the first row on the ballot followed by the Republican Party listed on the second row."HYDERABAD: Having failed to bear a daughter for the third time, a shopkeeper's wife slit the throat of her 24-day-old son with a shaving blade and left him to die in a street on Tuesday night. Purnima's first child was a stillborn boy, followed by another boy born five years ago. This time, the 30-year-old had been confident of delivering a daughter but when a son was born to her about three weeks ago, she told her husband to give him away to a childless couple or relatives.She slipped into depression when the family opposed her, and started keeping away from the infant. Things took a tragic turn on Tuesday night when her husband Sridhar Raju, who runs a cosmetics store in Neredmet, received a call from her that robbers had attacked the child before snatching her gold'mangalsutra'.Sridhar rushed to the spot, a kilometre from their house, and found Purnima waiting on the roadside with the unconscious baby. “Two bike-borne thieves sprayed something on my face. I fell unconscious and when I regained my senses, my mangalsutra was missing and the boy lying on the street," said Alwal assistant commissioner of police Syed Rafeeq, quoting Purnima.Sridhar saw that the boy's throat was slit and rushed him to Suraksha Hospital in Tarnaka. Doctors advised the couple to shift him to Gandhi Hospital, where he was declared brought dead.Neredmet police were informed about the infant's death around midnight. They found discrepancies in Purnima's statements and her behaviour suspicious. “She did not cry at all. There was no blood on the road where she said the incident happened. After the post-mortem, the forensic expert said the injury on the boy's throat was caused by a sharp-edged weapon. So we grilled Purnima further on Wednesday afternoon,“ another officer from Neredmet police station said.Purnima has been charged with murder.3.8k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print
Grant Shields shared the content below, regarding a case in which Bob Zadan, of the Maury County Sheriff’s Dept. (TN) Drug Task Force and an unnamed member of the Tenn. Dept. of Children’s Services stole from them and later kidnapped their child after they were accused of “committing” a victimless crime, via the Cop Block Submissions page.
Mitchell Shields, Sarah Feron and their son Logan were a great family. Both were great parents. Worked hard and went to community college to better their lives that much more. That is until tragedy struck in their small town lives.
On Feb. 5, 2015, the Maury County Sheriff’s Dept. Drug Task Force, obtained a warrant to search Ms. Tonya Feron’s home, in which Mitchell shields and his family were living. That warrant was actually obtained based on false information. The information for the warrant came from a phone call between Mitchell Shields and his friend Bill, who is in prison near Memphis Tennessee. In the conversation, Bill spoke hypothetically about having Mitchell give somebody marijuana to sneak into the jail for him. Mitchell obviously said no. The cops must have been thinking they were talking in code. And took this information to Maury county so they could get a search warrant for the house, in which Mitchell and his family lived in, in hopes to find a large amount of marijuana. They tore the house up to find nothing but personal hallucinogenic mushrooms, personal dabs, and personal marijuana. No more than 20g of marijuana was found, which isn’t what the warrant was for.
This upset the DTF (Drug Task Force) agent in charge, Bob Zadan, and he filed charges against everybody for the mushrooms and marijuana, as well as made up charges like the manufacturing and distribution of BHO, even though only a small amount of BHO was found in the house. They based this off of Mitchell owning two very small bottles of unrefined butane for lighter refills and dab wizard containers. Logan, their son, went home with George Shields, his grandfather. Mitchell and his family thought this was the end of it and they would just fight it and have the charges dropped.
In reality, it was just the beginning. On Feb 20 2015, the Maury County Sheriff’s Dept. DTF showed up at Ms. Tonya Feron’s house again, but this time with no warrant. They showed up with Sarah’s probation officer for a “routine” home check. Agent Zadan orchestrated the entire ordeal intentionally in order to steal their son. They brought an agent with them from the Tennessee Dept. of Children’s Services. After they showed up, they destroyed Sarah and Mitchell’s room, and stole almost $6,000 from George Shields’ lock box that he had taken out of his jeep to keep with Sarah in her room, in case she needed it. They even stole George’s pistol that he let Sarah hold onto, which she is legally allowed to own, and illegally searched his truck that was in the yard without his permission.
They found nothing besides George’s money and pistol in the house, but they still re-arrested Sarah and her mother saying they had a warrant for Ms. Tonya and Sarah. While Sarah attempted to inform her mother of her rights another agent told her to shut up and stop playing lawyer. When Sarah went to call George so he could get Logan (protocol is to give the child to the next of kin), agent Zadan snatched her phone and not one officer or agent would call George for her. They took Ms. Tonya and Sarah to the jail. Ms. Tonya was interrogated for three hours and waited even longer to be booked, because there was no such arrest warrant for her. They had to get an arrest warrant while at the jail, so they could hold her. The initial arrest was illegal. They also stole both Sarah’s cell phones and Tonyas cell phone, neither of which are logged into evidence. They did this just so Ms. Tonya could not take Logan home. Logan is now in the hands of a foster family and his parents aren’t even allowed to see him.
Tennessee Cop Block Affiliates
Cop Block East Tennesee – Facebook
Cop Block Nashville – Facebook
Clarskville MSA Cop Block – Facebook / clarksvilletnkycopblock@gmail.com
Elizabethon Cop Block – Facebook
Knox Copblock – Facebook
Tennessee Peace Officer Accountability – Facebook
Tricities CopBlock – Facebook / TNCopBlock@gmail.com (read: Announcing Tricities Coplock)
If you live outside Tennessee, you can find the appropriate affiliate in your area by consulting the Cop Block Groups page or by Starting a Local Group.
3.8k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print
EPN
Ww I Uruguayan Police Officer Full Dress Kepi Hat Cap With Red Pom Pom Very Rare
$850.0
Russian Soviet Uniforms Of 1947 Police. Jacket, A Cap, Trousers, A Belt. НКВД
$770.0
Original Wwii Russian Police Militia Officer's Visor Hat Cap Ussr Ww2 Cap
$499.0
Serbia,yugoslavia A General Police Cap Rarely
$400.0
Uruguayan General Inspector Police Daily Uniform Embroidery Blue Hat Cap
$400.0A man who was arrested produces a small handgun and shoots out the window of the police vehicle to escape. He is then shot by police.On June 4th of last year, Highland Park police took down a man riding a motorcycle they said was reported as stolen.A driver gets video of the officers searching the suspect. He's identified as 32-year-old David Hartman.The dash camera video picks back up with an officer loading Hartman into a police SUV. He pats him down on the right side. He then takes a quick swipe along his left side.Austin Police Association President Wayne Vincent immediately spots the mistake."The officer was going to look in that direction, but chose not to so he did escalate anything. That could've gotten somebody killed," Vincent said.It nearly did. Hartman slips his handcuffs under his feet, he then reaches into his pants and brings out a small caliber handgun. He slides across the seat, shoots out the window, kicks out the glass and runs.Hartman died from his injuries.India is buying Sri Lanka's second-largest airport, despite it only handling a dozen passengers a day.
China recently took control of a nearby port that opens up significant trade routes, and India is worried about China's growing role in the Indian Ocean.
Experts say the $300 million investment by India is an attempt to limit China's ability to operate its port as a naval site.
India plans to buy the world's emptiest airport in an effort to limit China's influence in the Indian Ocean.
Designed to accommodate one million passengers per year, Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport - a vanity project by Sri Lanka's former President Mahinda Rajapaksa that opened in 2013 - is a complete dud and receives just a dozen passengers a day.
Yet India is set to pay $300 million for a joint venture granting it a 40-year lease over the nearly 2,000-acre space in southern Sri Lanka that was once so empty it was used to store rice
"India's future plans for the airport are hazy. Maybe a flight school? A new destination for Indian weddings? There seems little chance that it will turn a profit. That is not the point of the deal," David Brewster, an expert in Indian Ocean strategies at the Australian National University, recently wrote for The Interpreter.
Instead, the reason for the purchase appears to be the airport's proximity - just a half-hour drive away - from a shipping port in Hambantota, which is run by China.
As China seeks to spread its reach cross-continent via the One Belt, One Road initiative, India, the US, and Japan all hold concerns that China wants to use the Sri Lankan port as a naval base. But its ability to do so is severely hampered without access to an airport.
"A key element in any overseas naval base, and even a logistics facility, is easy access by air for people and supplies. A naval base also requires maritime air surveillance capabilities. Control over Hambantota airport will give India considerable control over how the port is used," wrote Brewster. "It is difficult to conceive of the Chinese navy developing a significant facility at Hambantota without also controlling the airport. In short, India is spending US$300 million buying an airport to block a Chinese naval base."
India's fear of China's rising influence in the Indian Ocean is not unfounded.
A 2015 US Defense Department report confirmed Chinese missile submarines were operating in the Indian Ocean.
The year prior, having cultivated a close relationship with Sri Lanka which has unnerved India, China began docking warships and submarines at a Colombo port
China bought the Sri Lankan port to access one of the world's busiest shipping lanes
Over the weekend Sri Lanka formally handed over control of Hambantota port to Beijing, as part of a $1.1 billion, 99-year lease by the state-owned China Merchants Group.
The deal effectively gives China an easier path to one of the world's busiest shipping lanes as well as greater access to the dozens of countries that are bordered by the Indian Ocean. These include much of Africa, where Beijing's influence is quickly growing, as well as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that have populations - and markets - set to explode.
According to the Financial Times, a China-run port should lead to "lower prices and improve supply chains across the entire region, and so drive enormous growth in trade volumes."
China's new port is part of its "string of pearls" around India
"The acquisition of the port by China has spurred particular alarm in India, which is concerned about Beijing's growing strategic and economic footprint in the Indian Ocean region," Ankit Panda, a security-focused editor at Asia-Pacific news magazine The Diplomat, wrote recently.
In India, the Hambantota port is seen as another acquisition in China's "string of pearls."
Each "pearl" is one of Beijing's military assets and alliances in the Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific that, put together, effectively encircle India. These include Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
Just earlier this year, China opened its first international military base. The location is in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, directly west of India.(Reuters) - In the years since people began conducting their lives via electronic devices, courts have forced prosecutors to develop a two-step process for collecting electronic evidence without violating the Fourth Amendment’s strictures against broad searches. In the first step, investigators obtain a search warrant demanding the disclosure of vast swaths of data, often from websites that host information. Obviously, not all of the information is evidence in the government’s criminal investigation. So prosecutors refer to the initial production of information as disclosure, not seizure.
Seizure is the second step. The government sifts through the disclosed data, determines what’s covered by the search warrant, and seizes that evidence. The American Civil Liberties Union, noting that process is codified in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and parallel state rules, calls it “disclose-then-seize.”
The ACLU is worried about what happens to the information that’s disclosed but not seized. In a new filing in the government’s investigation of looting during President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the ACLU has asked Chief Judge Robert Morin of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to quash a subpoena demanding that Facebook turn over 90 days of records on accounts belonging to three political activists.
The ACLU brief contends that the Facebook warrants would give the government unjustified access not only to irrelevant private information about the activists, such as their medical history and conversations with romantic partners, but also information protected by the First Amendment.
“Government agents would discover a detailed portrait of individuals’ political activities and associations, including their political views and commentary; the pictures and names of individuals who participated in or organized political demonstrations, rallies, dance parties, teach-ins, and other political events; messages reflecting a user’s involvement or affiliation with specific political organizations or groups; and political or organizational strategies for political activism – all regarding events unconnected to January 20,” the ACLU brief said.
The ACLU argues that without safeguards to limit what Facebook discloses or, in the alternative, what prosecutors are permitted to see, the search warrants are “manifestly overbroad,” in violation of the Fourth Amendment. It doesn’t matter, according to the ACLU, that prosecutors will only “seize” information they deem relevant to the investigation. The problem lies in the initial disclosure to the government of private and protected information.
“Permitting government officials to comb through 90 days’ worth of personal messages concerning political activity and associations — some of which are aimed at protesting the policies of the very administration on whose behalf the government officials would be acting in searching Intervenors’ records — is an unjustified invasion of privacy hearkening back to the ‘general warrants’ that the Fourth Amendment was enacted specifically to prohibit,” the brief said.
As you can imagine, this is not the first time that targets of a search warrant for electronic data have advanced the ACLU’s argument. The brief cites a string of cases in which judges have balked at subpoenas calling for broad disclosure of account information. In 2013, for example, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola of Washington, D.C., held that a warrant for information from the Facebook account of a suspect in a shooting at the Brooklyn Navy Yard was overly broad because it demanded disclosures about websites the suspect might have joined. (21 F.Supp.3d 1) That same year, a federal magistrate in Kansas denied search warrant applications that would have required Google, GoDaddy, Verizon, Yahoo and Skype to disclose account records, including emails and instant messages, of a robbery suspect. (2013 WL 4647554)
The Kansas judge, David Waxse, said the warrants were too broad under the Fourth Amendment. “Even if the court were to allow a warrant with a broad authorization for the content of all email communications without a nexus to the specific crimes being investigated, the warrants would still not pass Constitutional muster,” he wrote. “They fail to set out any limits on the government’s review of the potentially large amount of electronic communications and information obtained from the electronic communications service providers.”
Judge Morin, who is overseeing the government’s investigation of violence at the inauguration, has himself set limits on prosecutors in this very case. You may recall the flap earlier this month over a search warrant served on the website hosting service DreamHost, demanding a raft of information about DreamHost client www.disruptj20.org, which acted last January as a clearinghouse for inauguration protests. (One of the three activists the ACLU represents in the Facebook warrant challenge runs disruptJ20’s Facebook account.)
After DreamHost protested the breadth of the warrant, which appeared to require disclosure of information on every visitor to disruptJ20’s website, Judge Morin issued a Sept. 15 order requiring the government to specify a plan to minimize prosecutors’ exposure to extraneous information. (2017 WL 4169713) Though the judge did not specify the safeguards he wants the government to adopt, he emphasized the First Amendment rights of innocent website visitors.
In light of his own DreamHost decision, the ACLU said, Judge Morin should, at a minimum, set parameters in the Facebook account information subject to the search warrants or appoint a special master to review the data before it reaches prosecutors.
Those seem like reasonable protections to me, considering that without them, any of the 6,000 Facebook users who gave a thumbs-up to disruptJ20’s Facebook page will be exposed to prosecutors for the mere act of clicking a like button. Americans have a First Amendment right to associate with protest groups, in real life and on Facebook.Story highlights The feds accused Cartwright of providing and confirming classified information to two reporters
Cartwright became Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2007 and retired in 2011
Washington, D.C. (CNN) The former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff pled guilty in federal court Monday, admitting he lied to the FBI when questioned about whether he provided two journalists with top secret information in 2012.
Retired four-star Gen. James Cartwright sat quietly with his attorney, former White House Counsel Gregory Craig, as Assistant US Attorney Leo J. Wise described the facts underlying the single charge of making false statements to federal investigators.
Cartwright, who became vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2007, signed more than 36 non-disclosure agreements related to Department of Defense programs during his tenure, the government said. Cartwright retired in 2011, but kept his top secret security clearance.
After his retirement, Cartwright again signed a "Classified Information Non-Disclosure Agreement," which included warnings "that unauthorized disclosure... by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation," according to the government's court filing detailing the charge against him.
In 2012, investigators showed Cartwright classified information, including top-secret information, in a book by David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, but Cartwright denied |
Michigan officials, but had refused. He had served as the emergency manager in Flint from Sept. 2013 to Jan. 2015.
"On Jan. 29 the committee by choice issued a letter of invitation for him to appear," Bolden said. "He just retained council yesterday and today he declined because we simply didn’t have enough time to prepare for the hearing, especially since the committee indicated it wanted to get to the truth and get to the facts. We indicated to the committee that we could not appear but we would be willing to discuss alternative dates and they refused to discuss alternative dates."
Four other officials were invited to testify before the "Committee to Examine the Flint, Mich. Water Crisis." Included are:
Mr. Joel Beauvais, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mr. Miguel Del Toral, Researcher, Region 5 Water Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mr. Marc Edwards, Charles P. Lundsford Professor of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Insititute and State University
Mr. Keith Creagh, Director, Department of Environmental Quality, State of Michigan
"It would be impossible for him to honor that subpoena because of travel and because of preparation and because he just retained his council," Bolden said. "It is completely unreasonable to put that type of demand on him and that subpoena that was issued is completely unenforceable."
Tuesday morning, Earley announced that he would resign as the Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manger on Feb. 29.
READ: Detroit Public Schools EM Darnell Earley resigns from position
"Mr. Earley wants to tell his story," Bolden said. "He wants to assist the committee in finding the truth and getting the facts out on what happened in Flint in the water situation, but he can’t do that under these circumstances."
Copyright 2016 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved.Share On more Share On more
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
1. A tomato is technically an unripe banana.
2. You can tell if steak is grass-fed because it glows in the dark.
3. The Latin name for grapes is Teeny Sweetums.
4. In the U.K., berries are known as "ovary pops."
5. The nickname "pigs in a blanket" gained popularity after the creator's suggested name, "dongs in a dough shaft," failed to catch on.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
6. Brown lentils can hit a high E.
7. Kohlrabi was originally bred as a prank by drunk farmers.
8. Coffee beans had the idea for the selfie stick years ago but couldn't get past the patent paperwork.
9. Grilled cheese killed Laura Palmer.
10. If you look at a strawberry seed under a microscope, you'll see it's a small portal to another world where humans evolved from strawberries, and you'll have to defeat its evil king in order to keep him from infiltrating our dimension.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
11. Babka's favorite movie is The Birdcage.
12. Barbecue sauce was originally cast as Detective Marty Hart in True Detective but bowed out due to family obligations.
13. You can eat oysters only in months that contain the letter R because oysters get very self-conscious about their bodies in the summer and avoid the beach.
14. The nasty juice inside an oyster is called "liquor." Shake with gin and garnish with a pearl for the classic cocktail "Mermaid's labia."
15. Garlic was on Twitter for a while but is just like, over it, you know?
16. The only way to successfully poach an egg is by the light of a full moon, in a simmering bath of eel's blood aside the eye of a maiden's horse. Add vinegar to help it keep its shape.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
17. Lettuce is kept in the crisper drawer because Milk is a real mean girl.
18. Butter prefers to omit the Oxford comma.
19. The first time anyone made a kale chip was in Holland in 1359. They were thoroughly disappointed.
20. Lobster used to be known as the "poor man's food" because, until the New Deal, homeless people were forced to live underwater.
21. Ducks hate olives. Just hate 'em.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
22. In the famous armadillo cake scene in Steel Magnolias, the guests don't cut into a red velvet cake made to look like an armadillo, but rather an actual roadkill armadillo coated with cream cheese frosting.
23. Burrito is Spanish for "little donkey." Donkey is English for "intestinal discomfort."
24. Asparagus just doesn't get the whole tiny house trend.
25. Peas and carrots are traditionally paired together because they are the only two vegetables that claim to have been abducted by aliens.
26. Pomegranates are not, in fact, edible. That's just what Big Pomegranate wants you to believe.
27. The Swiss actively carve holes out of their cheese, hoarding the extra in caves below Zurich, to keep demand high.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
28. No one has ever successfully peeled an orange.
29. It's an urban legend that swallowing watermelon seeds means they'll grow in your stomach. They actually sprout in the lower intestine.
30. All spaghetti is cut from the "Master Noodle," which as of publication remains 59,234,203 miles long.
31. The ancient Aztecs used to put peas in guacamole.A daughter, Usha Narayane, now 27, studied hotel management and seemed destined to become a hotel manager. But one day in 2004 while she was on vacation back in the slum, Akku Yadav attacked the next-door neighbors. The gang warned Usha not to go to the police -- and that's when she went to the police.
Akku Yadav returned with 40 men and surrounded the Narayane shack. He waved a bottle of acid and threatened to disfigure Usha's face, and to rape and kill her. She barricaded the door, shouted insults at him and telephoned the police, who didn't immediately come.
Finally, Usha turned on the gas, grabbed a match and threatened to blow up everyone if the gang broke into the house. The gangsters backed off. (For video of Usha in her slum, go to nytimes.com/kristof.)
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
The neighbors, seeing somebody finally stand up to Akku Yadav, gathered in the street. Soon a mob burned down Akku Yadav's house, and he turned himself over to the police for protection.
A bail hearing for him was set for Aug. 13, 2004, and word spread through the slum that he would be released. Hundreds of women marched from the slum to the courthouse. When Akku Yadav showed up, he spotted a woman he had raped and shouted that he would rape her again. She began beating him with her slipper.
Other women pulled out chili powder from their clothes and threw it in the faces of Akku Yadav and the police. As the police fled, scores of women pulled out knives and apparently took turns stabbing Akku Yadav and cutting off his penis. He ended up as mincemeat, and the courtroom walls are still spattered with blood.
The police arrested a handful of women, including Usha, for the murder, but she conveniently could prove that she was not at the courtroom that day. And then the hundreds of women in the slum jointly declared that they had all joined in the killing, on the theory that if they all claimed responsibility, no single person could be punished.
"We all did it," affirms Rajashri Rangdale, a young mother. "We all take responsibility for what happened."
"I'm proud of what we did," agrees Jija More, a housewife. "We were all involved."
As for Usha, she is out on bail, but the police harass her and her career as a hotel manager seems over. She is sure that other members of Akku Yadav's gang will try to seek revenge by raping and killing her. But, undaunted, she is beginning a new life as a social activist, and she is now helping the slum dwellers make foods and clothing that they can sell together to raise their incomes.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
I don't want to condone a lynching. But in a land where police are utterly corrupt, and where so much misery arises from people passively accepting their lot, I'm proud to know Usha Narayane. She is a reminder of the difference that education makes, and I hope that she is a vision of the new Indian woman.The Food and Drug Administration reported recently that 80 percent of antibiotics in the United States go to livestock, not humans. And 90 percent of the livestock antibiotics are administered in their food or water, typically to healthy animals to keep them from getting sick when they are confined in squalid and crowded conditions.
The single state of North Carolina uses more antibiotics for livestock than the entire United States uses for humans.
This cavalier use of low-level antibiotics creates a perfect breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant pathogens. The upshot is that ailments can become pretty much untreatable.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America, a professional organization of doctors, cites the case of Josh Nahum, a 27-year-old skydiving instructor in Colorado. He developed a fever from bacteria that would not respond to medication. The infection spread and caused tremendous pressure in his skull.
Photo
Some of his brain was pushed into his spinal column, paralyzing him. He became a quadriplegic depending on a ventilator to breathe. Then, a couple of weeks later, he died.
There’s no reason to link Nahum’s case specifically to agricultural overuse, for antibiotic resistance has multiple causes that are difficult to unravel. Doctors overprescribe them. Patients misuse them. But looking at numbers, by far the biggest element of overuse is agriculture.
We would never think of trying to keep our children healthy by adding antibiotics to school water fountains, because we know this would breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It’s unconscionable that Big Ag does something similar for livestock.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in the United States House of Representatives, has been fighting a lonely battle to curb this practice — but industrial agricultural interests have always blocked her legislation.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“These statistics tell the tale of an industry that is rampantly misusing antibiotics in an attempt to cover up filthy, unsanitary living conditions among animals,” Slaughter said. “As they feed antibiotics to animals to keep them healthy, they are making our families sicker by spreading these deadly strains of bacteria.”
Vegetarians may think that they’re immune, but they’re not. E. coli originates in animals but can spill into water used to irrigate vegetables, contaminating them. The European E. coli outbreak apparently arose from bean sprouts grown on an organic farm in Germany.
One of the most common antibiotic-resistant pathogens is MRSA, which now kills more Americans annually than AIDS and adds hugely to America’s medical costs. MRSA has many variants, and one of the more benign forms now is widespread in hog barns and among people who deal with hogs. An article this year in a journal called Applied and Environmental Microbiology reported that MRSA was found in 70 percent of hogs on one farm.
Another scholarly journal reported that MRSA was found in 45 percent of employees working at hog farms. And the Centers for Disease Control reported this April that this strain of bacteria has now been found in a worker at a day care center in Iowa.
Other countries are moving to ban the feeding of antibiotics to livestock. But in the United States, the agribusiness lobby still has a hold on Congress.
The European outbreak should shake people up. “It points to the whole broken system,” notes Robert Martin of the Pew Environment Group.
We need more comprehensive inspections in the food system, more testing for additional strains of E. coli, and more public education (always wash your hands after touching raw meat, and don’t use the same cutting board for meat and vegetables). A great place to start reforms would be by banning the feeding of antibiotics to healthy livestock.(BIVN) – On Monday, the Hawaii Department of Health launched the first statewide media campaign on rat lungworm disease prevention.
A series of public service announcements are now airing on TV and radio.
And on the same day, a news release from the University of Hawai`i at Hilo said current research shows the risk of rat lungworm disease is greater than expected, and that state legislators vow to aid in the fight.
The findings of a study headed by the Rat Lungworm Working Group at the UH Hilo Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy show almost 94 percent of the rats in the Hilo area are infected with rat lungworm.
The roles of the University of Hawaii and the Department of Health in the greater fight against rat lungworm disease has been the subject of political dispute. The whole thing came to a head this year at the Hawaii state legislature, and researchers on Hawaii Island did not take the Oahu power-play lightly.
With the College of Pharmacy based in Hilo, and the greatest number of rat lungworm infections on the Big Island, the Hawaii County Council is stepping up efforts to find funding for the needed research on their own.
This week a number of councilmembers plan to grant contingency relief funds to the nonprofit Malama O Puna, in order to complete some of the important pieces of the research puzzle. Puna councilmember Jen Ruggles explained in an interview.Mesut Ozil is an Arsenal player!
The 24-year-old midfielder signed for the Club on Monday and he put on the famous red and white shirt for the first time at a photoshoot in Germany on Wednesday.
Take a look at our exclusive picture gallery of Mesut:
1 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 2 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 3 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 4 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 5 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 6 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 7 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 8 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 9 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 10 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 11 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 12 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 13 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 14 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 15 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 16 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 17 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 18 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 19 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 20 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 21 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 22 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 23 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 24 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 25 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 26 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 27 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 28 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 29 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 30 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 31 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 32 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 33 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics 34 of 34 To buy official Arsenal pictures visit Arsenal Pics
ADVERT(NaturalNews) Dissatisfaction is spreading rapidly throughout a very divided nation in the wake of the Nov. 6 elections, as citizens in nearly every state have begun petitioning the federal government to leave the union.The secession effort is being led by the independence-minded citizens of Texas, with more than 111,000 residents having signed an online petition requesting secession as of this writing.Lawmakers in Texas are set to respond to a growing wave of discontent with federal authority, as they look set to consider a pair of bills that will set the state on a collision course with Washington.According to the, "a national think tank that works to preserve and protect the principles of strictly limited government through information, education, and activism," the state legislature will consider a pair of bills aimed at protecting some basic civil liberties for citizens.Earlier this week, Rep. David Simpson, R-Longwood, pre-filed a measure called "The Texas Travel Freedom Act," or H.B. 80, which would make it a criminal act to intentionally touch "the anus, breast, buttocks, or sexual organ of the other person, including touching through clothing," without probable cause, in the process of allowing someone access to public transportation.In other words, the bill is aimed at ending pointless, embarrassing and invasive pat downs of travelers by the federal, among others.The measure also forbids removing a child under the age of 18 from the physical custody or control of a parent or guardian."If you walk up to somebody and grab their crotch out on the street, it will land you in jail. Blue uniforms and federal badges don't grant some goon the power to sexually assault you, or at least they shouldn't. A person doesn't forfeit her or his personal dignity or Fourth Amendment protections with the purchase of an airline ticket," saidcommunications director Mike Maharrey.In addition, state lawmakers will consider a separate measure that would block any attempt to indefinitely detain people in Texas under sections of the. That measure, known as H.B. 149, has been pre-filed by Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio. It states:The latter bill also provides for criminal penalties against any outside authority attempting to detain persons within the boundaries of Texas without due process under the NDAA. If passed, the bill would effectively nullify indefinite federal detention in the state of Texas, the center said, noting that the bills appear to be aimed at the Obama administration in particular."With four more years of the man who not only signed 'federal kidnapping' into law, but has vigorously defended it in court, there is absolutely zero chance for repeal in Washington D.C. Our last hope is to stand up and nullify," said the center's executive director, Michael Boldin. "While Representative Larson will likely be derided by the establishment, if you live in Texas, he deserves your praise. And other state legislators need to follow suit.""When enough states stand up and say, 'No!' to unconstitutional federal acts, there's not much that Obama and his gang can do about it. The Constitution and your liberty will win," Boldin continued.The center said both pieces of legislation appear to be modeled after examples set by Thomas Jefferson, when he drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, in response to the, arguing that nullification is "the rightful remedy" of federal government usurpation:Other states are engaging in nullification, of sorts, regarding Obamacare. Many are opting out of creating state health insurance exchanges, as called for by the law, while others have held referendums to simply opt out of participating in the law altogether."Because of how the policy is structured, the road to ObamaCare leads straight through the governors' desks. Based on the Supreme Court's decision, the federal government has to implement the President's program, but it cannot force states to run it," saidchief Tony Perkins.The epic amount of rain that led to deadly, catastrophic flooding across large parts of South Carolina and North Carolina is an example of exactly the type of supercharged storm system climate scientists have been warning about for years as a likely consequence of global warming.
This storm, like others that have come before it — from a massive deluge that flooded Oklahoma City to a flooding event in Houston, both of which occurred earlier this year — are examples of how the atmosphere is behaving in new ways now that there's more water vapor and heat for weather systems to work with.
See also: Photos show the crazy flooding in South Carolina
It's not that heavy downpours and floods didn't occur before manmade global warming became evident (for the record, they did). The issue now is that these events are even more severe than they otherwise would have been. And they are becoming more frequent in many areas.
Though there are significant limits on what climate scientists can say at this point about an event like the South Carolina floods, it's well-established that global warming has already led to a measurable increase in global atmospheric water vapor levels, and this moisture can be wrung out as heavier bursts of rain or snow.
It is also well-established in scientific literature that precipitation is increasingly falling in short, intense bursts rather than long-lasting, generally lighter events.
Percent changes in the annual amount of precipitation falling in very heavy events, defined as the heaviest 1% of all daily events from 1901 to 2012 for each region. Image: National Climate Assessment
The risk for extreme precipitation events is increasing in many parts of the world.
One study, for example, showed that a 1-in-100 year winter-rainfall event in parts of the United Kingdom is already occurring more frequently, becoming a 1-in-80 year event.
This means that an event with a 1% chance of occurring each year now has a 1.25% risk of occurring in any particular winter, which translates to a 25% increase in risk, according to Oxford University scientists.
Water vapor and the Carolina firehose
While it's too soon to say precisely how global warming may have affected the rare confluence of events that conspired to dump at least 26.88 inches of rain in less than four days on South Carolina, changes in extreme precipitation events are one of global warming's most well-documented climate change impacts.
First, consider how significant this rainfall event has been. Charleston and Columbia saw so much rain in four days that they both blew past their previous records for the all-time wettest October, along with setting numerous other milestones.
Across South Carolina, nearly 400 roads and 158 bridges were closed on Monday due to the flooding that killed nine. More than two dozen evacuation shelters are open, and 30,000 residents are still without power.
The record-shattering rains in Charleston and Columbia, as well as other parts of North and South Carolina, were rarer than a 1-in-1,000 year event, based on recurrence intervals from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This means that they'd have just a 0.1% chance or less of occurring in a given year.
JUST IN: Charleston Int'l Airport had 17.70" of #rain the past 5 days, breaking the all-time 5-day record for the state of South Carolina. — Nick Wiltgen (@WxNick) October 5, 2015
However, many other sites will vie for that 5-day S.C. rain record as the data come in. I doubt Charleston will ultimately keep it. #SCflood — Nick Wiltgen (@WxNick) October 5, 2015
As many climate scientists will say, though, we seem to be seeing more and more 500-year to 1,000-year events lately, to the point where the definition of such events and their return intervals may need to change.
How did this happen?
There were four main meteorological players in this extreme weather event, each of which raised the odds for a record rainfall event in the Carolinas and caused weather forecasters to sound the alarm for the Palmetto State as early as midweek last week.
These atmospheric players include an upper-level low-pressure area across the Southeast; a stationary front with an area of low pressure riding along it; Hurricane Joaquin, which passed off the East Coast and moved close to Bermuda; as well as a strong area of high pressure parked across southern Quebec.
These weather systems led to multiple moisture feeds directed at the Carolinas in firehose-like fashion for an unusually long time. Rainfall rates of 1-to-4 inches per hour or higher were recorded in the Charleston area and other locations for multiple hours at a time.
Hour after hour after hour after hour after hour after hour after hour... [7-hr loop; images from @CODMeteorology] pic.twitter.com/xvjRZxJGRb — Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) October 4, 2015
The creeping progress of the weather pattern, with the blocking high across Quebec playing a role in this, helped keep this firehose in place for days — from Thursday through Monday. Some studies have shown that stuck weather patterns have become more common in recent years, potentially tied to rapid Arctic warming, though this link is not accepted by all of the mainstream climate science community.
Think of some of these weather systems as pipelines directly connected to major moisture sources: the unusually mild waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean; milder-than-average waters of the western Atlantic; and a water-laden Hurricane Joaquin.
Climate change increases risk of extreme rainfall events
Across the U.S. as a whole, the frequency of 2-inch or greater rainstorms has increased in recent decades, and extreme precipitation events have been on the rise across the Northern Hemisphere as well.
A Climate Central analysis released in May found that 40 of the lower 48 states have seen an overall increase in heavy downpours (the days where total precipitation exceeded the top 1% of all rain and snow days) since 1950.
However, South Carolina was one of the few states that did not see an increase, based on that analysis. In fact, it saw a slight decrease in the frequency of heavy precipitation events. Neighboring states, including Georgia and North Carolina, did see increases, though.
Sea surface temperature departures from average in degrees C on October 4, 2015, with the area the heavy rain formed over circled in blue. Image: WeatherBell Analytics
In general, warm air holds more moisture and evaporates more moisture from the soils and the ocean, which is also milder than it used to be. Ocean temperatures off the Southeast are above average for this time of year, which may have added more water vapor to this event, thereby giving the storm more energy to work with.
Specific so-called "climate attribution" studies examining the role that global warming may have played in this event may take several weeks to months for scientists to complete.
Michael Mann, who directs Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State University, told Mashable in an email that this storm is "yet another example, like Sandy, or Irene, of weather on'steroids,' another case where climate change worsened the effects of an already extreme meteorological event."
"In this case, we’re seeing once-in-a-thousand year flooding along the South Carolina coastline as a consequence of the extreme supply of moisture streaming in from hurricane Joaquin," he said.
Image: Mic Smith/Associated Press
Joaquin intensified over record warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, which both allowed it to intensify rapidly despite adverse wind shear, and which provided it with unusually high levels of moisture — moisture which is now being turned into record rainfall.
Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, is a prominent climate scientist who has been outspoken about tying global warming to the characteristics of extreme weather events. He has pointed out, in scientific papers and public appearances, that because global warming has added heat and moisture to the atmosphere, every weather event that occurs now is different than it would have been had it occurred several decades ago.
Image: Chuck Burton/Associated Press
For example, this storm occurred during a year that has at least a 97% chance of being Earth's warmest on record, and at a time when the planet's oceans are the warmest they've been since such records began in the late 19th century.
The tricky part for scientists lies in figuring out exactly how those changes manifest themselves, and how significant they are relative to other factors, such as natural climate variability.
"Global warming means more ocean heat and abundant surface water vapor waiting to be gathered by a storm," Trenberth wrote in an email to Mashable. A slow-moving storm such as this one, he said, "dumps it all in one place."
"This is increasingly occurring in different places and times and is to be expected from climate change," Trenberth said.
He also cited the ongoing strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific, which has helped drive global ocean temperatures to their highest temperature on record, as a possible factor behind this storm system.
"El Niño means all action is in [the] Pacific," which suppresses tropical storm and hurricane activity in the Atlantic. "This means build up of heat that waits for an opportunity to escape in some sense."
Myles Allen, who leads the climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford and has participated in several climate attribution studies, was more cautious about linking the South Carolina extreme rainfall and flooding to global warming.
"All other things being equal, increasing atmospheric moisture resulting from large-scale warming would allow more such events to occur," he wrote in an email to Mashable.
"But other impacts of climate change, such as changing circulation patterns, could work in the opposite direction: so it’s an interesting question whether human influence on climate made this event more or less likely to occur, but not one on which we should jump to conclusions without doing the necessary analysis," he said.
Sea level rise makes matters worse
For coastal residents of the Carolinas, particularly those in Charleston, there was another climate change-related factor that helped accentuate the flooding: sea level rise.
Onshore winds associated with the squeeze play between a surface low-pressure area in the Southeast and the high-pressure area over the northeast helped drive high tides in Charleston to levels not seen since Hurricane Hugo made landfall there in 1989.
This exacerbated flooding caused by heavy rain, since the tide level prevented waters and sewage from draining out of the city at times.
According to Ben Strauss, a climate scientist at Climate Central who focuses on sea level rise, this flood event was a preview of what's to come for cities like Charleston as they face the prospect of more coastal flood events.
"This provides a mostly unrelated preview of what high tide could look like in Charleston after [the] sea level rise we could see later this century," Strauss wrote in an email.
Water levels for Charleston, South Carolina, showing the peak tide on October 4, 2015. Red marks water level above the predicted value. Image: NOAA
Climate Central's sea level rise report for South Carolina found that more than 800 square miles of land lie less than 4 feet above the high-tide line in South Carolina, including $24 billion in property value.
"Every coastal flood today is already wider, deeper and more damaging because of the roughly 8 inches of warming-driven global sea level rise that has taken place since 1900," the report found. "Since sea level rise multiplies extreme coastal flood risk, and global warming contributes to sea level rise, global warming multiplies flood risk."You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/157to
— Durham police were investigating Thursday afternoon after three people were found with gunshot wounds within a 10 minute period.
Durham police said officers responded to a shooting in the 500 block of North Maple Street at 3:08 p.m. and found a man and woman with gunshot wounds.
Both were taken to a local hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.
Authorities responded to a second shooting in the 2400 block of Harvard Avenue at 3:17 p.m. and found a man who had been shot. He was also taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.
Durham police officers and the department's SWAT team were on Taylor Street for more than five hours Thursday evening after they believed they had cornered the man linked to both shootings. They believed the suspected gunman was either inside an apartment on the street or had fled from an apartment in that area.
"At this particular time, we have made entry into that location and the suspect was not at that location," said Durham Police Chief Cerelyn Davis.
Taylor Street was blocked off while police were on the scene and some residents were forced to evacuate their homes as a precaution. The situation was unnerving for some who lived nearby.
"This is a quiet neighborhood; you don't see this type of activity around this neighborhood and when you see police out here like this, it kind of scares you," said resident Roosevelt Cromartie.
While some neighbors were frustrated about being out of their homes for more than five hours, Davis said it was all in the interest of public safety.
"We anticipated using some types of chemicals and you let individuals know what's going on so that they aren't afraid," she said.
Residents were allowed back into their homes Thursday night and police cleared the scene, saying they will continue to follow leads in the investigation.
No arrests have been made.
Anybody with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 919-683-1200.Young Swazi maidens have been transported in excitement to Swaziland’s royal residence to commence the annual traditional chastity rite called Umhlanga or Reed Dance ceremony.
According to officials overseeing the ceremony, over 98,000 maidens have registered to participate after their arrival on Tuesday from the four regions of the southern African country.
Good Morning #Africa from #Swaziland. The eight-day Umhlanga Reed Dance, an annual cultural festival starts today pic.twitter.com/A0Opbpv16w — This Is Africa (@ThisIsAfricaTIA) August 23, 2016
As part of safety improvements to this year’s festival, 20 buses were dispatched to each of the four regions of the country to transport the maidens to the royal residence.
Last year’s festival was marked by tragedy when 38 maidens traveling by truck died in an accident and at least 20 others were severely injured.
“We pray that the ceremony goes well with no injuries incurred,” Overseer Hlangabeza Mdluli told local newspaper, Swazi Observer during the registeration.
The Reed Dance ceremony coincides with the 36th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) scheduled to be held in the country on August 29, chaired by His Majesty King Mswati III.
Swaziland's King Mswati III will be the chairman of SADC when the regional heads of state meet in Mbabane, August. pic.twitter.com/KsQz6UCecE — TransAfricaRadio (@TransAfrica872) June 3, 2016
Rules & Regulations
The maidens sang praises to King Mswati III while in long queues as instructions were being issued on the rules and regulations of the eight-day ceremony, the newspaper reported.
Singing of derogatory songs is not allowed including the application of make up and wearing of hair weaves.
A loud scream of excitement was accorded the news of the gift from the King: hot showers.
“You are requested not to use river water as the mornings are still cold, better yet the king has made a provision for all of us to shower with warm water so we are in no danger of catching colds,” Swazi Observer quoted an organizer who informed the maidens.
Some gifts given by King in the past years included sport shoes for the women.
Rites
The registered maidens camping at the Ludzidzini royal residence, where the Queen Mother lives, will march to Engabezweni royal residence where they will be commissioned by King Mswati III before they go out to surrounding communities to cut tall reeds.
Placed according to age groups and led by male guards, the maidens put the reeds together and send them back to the royal residence the following day. The reeds are used to mend holes in the reed fences and buildings.
The maidens rest for a day and take baths mostly in the river. They then prepare their traditional costumes including bead necklaces, anklets, skirts and a sash.
They then dress up in their skirts and sash with their bosom exposed, as their customs stipulate. Holding the knives they used to cut the reeds as a symbol of their virginity, they march to the forecourt of the King’s palace where the royal family, guests, tourists and the public are seated.
The maidens display culture and tradition as they sing and dance for the King who chooses a new wife at the end of the ceremony.
Connotation
The annual ceremony created in the 1940s in Swaziland is to preserve the women’s chastity before marriage, serve the Queen Mother, and strengthen solidarity among the women as they work together.
Royal Family
The Queen Mother is Her Majesty Queen Ntfombi who is the mother of King Mswati III. She was the wife of King Sobhuza II who ruled Swaziland from 1921 to his death in 1982.
King Sobhuza II was succeeded by his son King Mswati III in 1983 when he was Crown Prince and then in 1986 when he was crowned King at the age of 18. He currently has 15 wives and 30 children compared to his father who left behind 70 wives and 210 children.
Swaziland is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies.A group of self-described "middle-class, middle-aged" women are taking the Occupy message about "economic justice" to San Diego malls filled with holiday shoppers.
The group, calling itself Women Occupy San Diego, is singing parodies of Christmas carols stressing the message that financial barons have rigged the game against 99% of Americans.
Included in the medley: "Jingle Bills, Jingle Coins |
. I started designing that five months ago before I knew for sure that we'd get a Season 2 because I know how enormous it is.
We are in the middle of making a thousand extra costumes. Most of the principal costumes have been designed and are ready to be made and we don't even have scripts yet. I can only do that because I know the books so well. [Spoiler alert!] I know they're going to be at the French court, in their apartment, in the hospital. I make it all in calico and when we get the scripts we'll move into fabric. But we are poised and ready. Otherwise, we would all die.
Outlander airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Starz.A Patreon supporter suggested looking into the bizarre production implosion of Regalia and subsequent broadcast restart, which seemed like an interesting enough topic. As a general rule I would rather not focus on projects that have collapsed – not so much because I feel negative criticism is unworthy, but rather because extensively highlighting troubled productions that follow common patterns feels like punching down for no good reason. However, Regalia’s case is enough of an anomaly that it piqued my interest, and hopefully yours as well.
For those who missed the buzz, Regalia: The Three Sacred Stars was an original TV series set to air on summer season. And that it did, until the surprise announcement that after 4 episodes it was going to take a break until September, then start anew. Some producers behind the project like Takayuki Nagatani explained that they would make modifications to these earlier episodes, and that they felt it was a necessary measure to have the production live up to their standards. No big narrative changes were planned, but some elements like direction, audio and animation were mentioned as aspects they planned on improving. They even mentioned the inclusion of new scenes, so presumably the script would require some alterations as well. Rather vague comments then, since those broad categories are about everything that constitutes an anime. Now that three episodes of the revamped version have aired, let’s compare it to the original ones.
Were their declarations true? Yes. Technically. The nature of the changes they made is obvious from the very first shot – readjusting the lighting accounts for about half the tweaks, never anything major. A couple of cuts are inserted without changing the flow, barely 5 seconds of new footage that just depict the reactions of the cast to the events going on. The length of a few sequences has changed ever so slightly, but that – plus some tiny framing changes that don’t really entail new layouts – is all the supposed revamped direction amounts to. The sound direction had been singled out as one of the issues in the original, but the revised audio is virtually the same too; only the crude SFX used on explosions and such have been noticeably altered. As it turns out though, the intro with inconsequential modifications is actually what received the most changes. After that you can find diverse changes to the composite, with new effects and slightly more intricate photography. Coloring that might look like quite the change but didn’t entail drawing new effects animation at all, and more lighting alterations. The fact that new napkins are amongst the most noticeable additions should tell you how insignificant it all is. The second episode follows a similar pattern, with general composite changes accounting for most of the polishing. There are some new aspects like two amusing replacements of background art by actual key animation, a tiny continuity error being fixed, and finally some minor animation director corrections. As you can tell though, it’s once again very minor. It’s barely worth comparing the third episode(s) since it’s the exact same case, just slightly more prominent; there are a few more corrected drawings since the character art had some rough scenes originally, and the rudimentary composite in some scenes got understandably revised. The first and only mechanical correction occurs too, though it doesn’t entail revising actual animation. All in all, we’re talking about a dozen of revised cuts out of ~300 per episode. If it weren’t for the two short spoken lines added to the first episode, this would pale in comparison to most latenight anime bluray/DVD enhancements. The renewed episodes are essentially the same, viewers wouldn’t notice the differences unles they watched them side by side. “[…] additional lines and scenes and alterations to the animation and direction” is true in the sense that it’s not entirely false, and the promise that “the ‘themes and intentions we were trying to convey’ will also be more strongly emphasized in the remake” was so vague they can get away with it. Nagatani’s words were meant to spin bad news in a positive light, trying to get new fans to check out the supposedly new version of their series they let the creators polish further. And you can’t blame him for that, but it’s hard to deny that the first episodes of Regalia are pretty much exactly as they were.
But content aside, what about the staff? Additions were to be expected as they had to produce new material, and perhaps management changes as well. Looking at the credits though, the first two episodes remained exactly the same. Not a single new animator, painter, digital artist or any other role. The changes were so minimal that they didn’t even need to ask a single new person to carry them out. It’s only in the third episode that a new name pops up under inbetweening and coloring, which only proves that they do credit the additions, but that those are negligible. If you thought that this unusual situation would lead to changes on a producer level instead… then you are right, sort of. These were the new names:
Yumi Wakabayashi (若林由美, from Yahoo! Japan) was added to the list of producers.
Gouta Aijima (相島豪太, from Animatic) and Eimi Nishida (西田瑛美, from Bandai Visual?) were added to the production committee.
Tsutomu Yanagimura (柳村努, from Yahoo! Japan) was added under Planning.
And the key detail? They appeared back in the second episode of the original broadcast, not in the renewed version. New producers stepping in halfway through a show isn’t extremely unusual, but big changes taking place all at once on a project like this is obviously no coincidence. And what’s more, these people represent companies that weren’t originally part of the production committee or even the planning group! They might have been involved to some degree before (Yahoo’s Gyao streamed the show, Bandai Visual was the disc distributor…), but they appeared in major roles out of nowhere. By the looks of it, this show had to be rescued by extra companies as far back as after the first episode. The idea that they got to the fourth episode and decided the quality was slipping is flimsy to say the least. This project encountered issues since the very beginning.
This might have been a bit confusing if you aren’t acquainted with the inner workings of the industry – and perhaps even worse if you actually do understand how messy the situation is – so let me list my main takeaways from this entire situation:
I pointed out that the revamped episodes were virtually the same, but don’t misunderstand, Regalia’s production was fundamentally screwed. It must have been. Paying more to part of the team not earning per cut, having everyone do a little extra work and booking an entire season’s worth of TV slots in multiple channels all over again is not a decision to take lightly, especially for a project that at best will aim to recoup costs – something obvious to any fan with a basic understanding of disc preorders, moreso to its actual producers with access to more data. For the representatives of the companies that funded the project to take a decision like this, it must have been the lesser economic evil; which is to say that if they hadn’t done this, the production might have crashed so hard they feared no fan would feel like supporting it. Obviously they might also be emotionally invested in the original series they planned, but we are talking about people whose job is to ensure their projects make a profit. If they were willing to make this sacrifice for the creators it’s because it really was required. The fact that the first episodes are, if anything, above average TV anime material that barely were polished up means that the disaster was happening in the part of the show we haven’t seen yet.
It should be obvious from what I have said already, but no there’s no way this was a publicity stunt. While it’s true that in the overcrowded latenight industry some projects die because they simply don’t manage to stand out, this would quite literally equal stabbing oneself for attention. Very backwards and ineffective to boot, since everyone’s reaction was just curiosity that mostly died down fast.
Saying Actas has been an unlucky studio would be quite the understatement. They keep getting into messy situations despite being simply hired hands, which is supposed to be the immediately safer position – even more proof that the current animation production model is broken. Back in Garupan they had the finale of the TV series delayed, seemingly because Tsutomu Mizushima’s standards were quite high and the small production team fell behind on the schedule trying to live up to them. The movie hit them even worse, and notoriously made the studio lose money despite going on to become a blockbuster; the constant delays lead to the production costs being higher than expected, and they didn’t convince the producers to increase the funding so they had to bear with the pain for ultimately little reward as they weren’t part of the committee. And now this. For all we know their staff might not be at fault on any of those cases, yet their corporate image – really important to keep getting contracts and thus stay afloat – keeps getting tainted. Have I mentioned the anime industry is broken?
There might be some truth to the speculation that the ambitious 2D mecha element caused this. To be clear: I doubt there was a single culprit, but even before the news about postponement arose I wondered how they planned to keep it up. Regalia seemingly has a very skilled but small team of mechanical animators, and I kept on seeing the same people credited for key animation whenever those scenes happened – Kanta Suzuki was clearly overworked as supervisor, and even someone who doesn’t regularly work on TV anime like Masahito Yamashita had consecutive appearances and a notable workload. Their output was very nice, but was it sustainable? Apparently not. It’s important to understand that anime production is multithreaded; lots of things are happening at once, it’s not as if episode 2 only starts being produced the moment the first one is done. If a recurring element needs to be handled by the same limited group of artists though, it’s easy to see how a lethal bottleneck could happen.
We might never know what exactly happened beyond this, though. There’s more to it than the producers can say, and as you have already seen their official statements contain some half-truths for understandable PR reasons. To get the full story we would need a staff member to leak insider info. And that could happen next week, next year, or never!
A bit of a different post compared to what I usually do with this column (which I have given a new name to reflect what I do with it a bit better, hopefully change doesn’t scare you too much), but hopefully people will enjoy it. I’ve mentioned it before that I would like to write about industry matters now and then, and I already have some neat ideas – and strings to pull – to get them eventually done. This kind of thing takes quite a lot of work though, so you know the drill! Please support us on Patreon to make it possible.
Support us on Patreon so that we can keep producing content like this, and move the entirety of Sakugabooru to an independent server. Those who contribute $20 a month or more will also be able to suggest some titles for us to extensively talk about like this!(CNN) An accused war criminal living in the United States is now working as a security guard at Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC.
A CNN investigation found that Yusuf Abdi Ali, who is accused of committing atrocities while he was a military commander during Somalia's brutal civil war, has been living a quiet life near the nation's capital for about 20 years.
He is just one of more than 1,000 accused war criminals living and working in the United States.
Mass graves and haunting stories
In a shallow pit in northern Somalia, forensic anthropologists have been delicately digging around battered bones that were recently found in numerous mass graves. They're the remains of a clan slaughtered during the war in the 1980s, alleged evidence of the brutality carried out by the government regime in power at the time.
Led by Mohamed Siad Barre, the regime took over Somalia after a coup in 1969 and ruled with an iron fist. In the north, the dominant Isaaq clan was heavily repressed and brutalized by government forces, according to human rights experts.
Yusuf Abdi Ali served as a commander in the Barre regime and is accused of terrorizing the Isaaq people, torturing clan members, burning villages and conducting mass executions.
Several villagers described these atrocities in a documentary that aired on the Canadian network CBC in 1992. One witness claimed Ali captured and killed a family member.
"He tied (my brother) to military vehicle and dragged him behind. He said to us if you've got enough power, get him back," the villager said. "He shredded him into pieces. That's how he died."
CNN Map
CNN found that, today, Ali is living a normal suburban life just outside of the nation's capital, in Alexandria, VA. He shares an apartment with his wife and works as a security guard at Dulles, one of the busiest airports in the country.
As a result of CNN's investigation, Ali has been placed on administrative leave.
Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre in May 1990.
Ali's employer Master Security has a contract with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) to provide unarmed security services. Ali passed a "full, federally mandated vetting process" that included an FBI background check and a TSA assessment.
However, when CNN initially asked Master Security about Ali, the company said it was "unaware of the pending litigation."
In light of the "very serious nature of the allegations," Ali is on administrative leave, and the company is reviewing the case, according to Chief Executive Rick Cucina. Ali's airport access has also been withdrawn.
The case against Ali
Yusuf Abdi Ali
Ali is being sued in a U.S. civil court. The lawsuit, which a human rights group initially filed in 2006, calls Ali a "war criminal" who committed "crimes against humanity."
"He oversaw some of the most incredible violence that you can imagine," said Kathy Roberts, an attorney for the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), which is leading the civil suit. "He tortured people personally; he oversaw torture."
The case has had numerous twists and appeals over the years. The most recent happened in February, when the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only part of the case can move forward -- the lawsuit's claims that Ali tortured and attempted to murder the plaintiff. The other part of the suit -- claims that he committed "war crimes" -- cannot because those alleged crimes happened outside of the United States.
The lawsuit is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court agrees to hear it, it could become a landmark case over whether foreigners living in the U.S. can be held accountable for crimes allegedly committed overseas.
Roberts claims Ali is directly responsible for these atrocities, painting disturbing images of acts he allegedly committed.
Rebels of Somali National Movement (SNM) sit on their beds in November 1989 in Leila, northern Somalia.
"He arrested people, stole their stuff, burned villages, executed masses of people," Roberts said. "At one point he had a school come out to view an execution."
Ali and his lawyer, Joseph Peter Drennan, deny all accusations listed in the CJA lawsuit.
When CNN approached Ali outside his apartment in Alexandria, he declined an interview, telling correspondent Kyra Phillips: "To tell you the truth, all is false. Baseless."
"How dare anyone call him a war criminal," Drennan told CNN. "Those are just allegations. If he is indeed a war criminal, take him to The Hague. Or if he is a war criminal, take it up with the immigration authorities. Don't sue him in an American court... My client deserves to live in the U.S. just as any other legal permanent resident."
However, there is no criminal court in the world that can try Ali for war crimes. One key reason for this is that no criminal court really has jurisdiction to do so.
"At one point he had a school come out to view an execution."
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague wasn't formally envisioned until 1994, following the genocide in Rwanda. The ICC didn't issue its first arrest warrants until a decade later.
Other special war crimes or genocide tribunals, such as those in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia, were only created for the specific areas where those crimes took place. Somalia has never been able to develop a complete justice system that could embark on such a tribunal.
The U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction over the events that played out in Somalia in the 1980s, even though Ali has ties to the U.S. military. At the time, the Siad Barre government was a U.S. ally. Thus, American officials considered many military soldiers and commanders, including Ali, to be fighting for U.S. interests.
Drennan asks: If the Defense Department had no problem with Ali, why should anyone else?
"My client has never been adjudicated to have committed any wrongful acts of any sort, much less be correctly seen as a war criminal," Drennan said. "He is not a war criminal."
The U.S. government says its investigators have been aware of Ali for years, "based upon allegations that he had been involved in human rights violations."
However, officials refused to provide further details.
The suspected war criminals among us
Ali is just one of many people who are living in the United States despite being accused of committing some of the worst violence in modern times.
These people -- most of whom are men -- are accused of crimes such as mass murder in El Salvador; torture and murder in Chile; ethnic cleansing in Somalia. Some are even wanted in their homelands, with outstanding extradition requests to remove them from the U.S. so they can be held accountable for their crimes.
Yet they continue to lead typical American lives, with some even working jobs in high-profile positions.
"There's about 1,000 suspected perpetrators in the United States," Roberts said.
Roberts and CJA say Americans should know that accused war criminals and suspected human rights violators are living across the country.
"It fundamentally violates what we could call American values," Roberts said. "But I really would rather say human values -- to allow people like this to get off scot-free, and to allow them to benefit from the rule of law that they deprived their victims of, and they need to be held accountable."
Ali ended up in Canada after the Barre military regime collapsed in 1991. But he was deported several years later after news about his alleged war crimes in Somalia became public through the CBC documentary.
Ali entered the U.S. on a visa through his Somali wife, Intisar Farah, who became a U.S. citizen. In 2006, she was found guilty of naturalization fraud for claiming she was a refugee from the very Somali clan that Ali is accused of torturing.
From Somalia to Dulles
Yusuf Abdi Ali, working security at Dulles International Airport.
Drennan said there should be no concerns whatsoever that Ali was working at an airport. Roberts, however, disagrees.
"... While I don't imagine that he's committing these same kinds of crimes at Dulles airport, I think it's very disconcerting."
"It's very deeply disturbing, in part because that is a position of trust," she said. "He abused that authority terribly in Somalia, and while I don't imagine that he's committing these same kinds of crimes at Dulles airport, I think it's very disconcerting."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials declined to comment on Ali's case, or on other alleged war criminals, but they did confirm that he was known to the agency.
In a statement ICE wrote: "Yusuf Ali came to the attention of investigators and attorneys within the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, ICE's legacy agency, based upon allegations that he had been involved in human rights violations."
However, ICE officials would not clarify why Ali has been allowed to remain in the U.S.
In the last 12 years, ICE's Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center has arrested more than 360 people "for human rights-related violations." The agency has also removed more than 780 known or suspected human rights violators from the U.S. It currently has more than 125 active investigations.The digital content network laid off 13 of its 90 employees Friday, according to sources, as well as a few part-time staffers. The eliminated positions were all production jobs tied to programming being discontinued at Machinima.
Machinima Respawn, a gaming-themed YouTube channel that was once one of Machinima’s most popular and longest-running attractions, is being canceled, as are some of the programs on another of its YouTube channels, Machinima Live. Also axed was a Machinima series titled “Ten FTW.”
Staff assembled at Machinima headquarters Friday were told that the cuts were necessary due to the declining popularity of the programming with users and advertisers.
A spokeswoman for the company confirmed the cuts, and issued a statement on behalf of the company.
“As Machinima positions itself for the future, we must focus resources toward high-growth opportunities. Toward that end, today Machinima released 13 production staff associated with Respawn, TFTW and certain shows on Machinima LIVE as this content was simply not delivering the monetization that supports our path to profitability. Machinima is in development on its expanded 2015-16 original programming slate, details of which will be unveiled at its Newfront presentation on May 4. Separately, the company also has 15 open positions associated with programming, talent development, business intelligence, sales, marketing, product development and engineering.”
The layoffs were the first round of cuts at Machinima since CEO Chad Gutstein came in nearly one year ago. Prior to his hire, the struggling company withstood several rounds of layoffs. Machinima was once one of the most popular multichannel networks on the Internet, but languished for years until recovering some momentum in 2014.
Warner Bros., which took an $18 million stake in Machinima last year, led a new round of financing Thursday that also included investments from Redpoint Venture, MK Capital, Coffin Capital and Allen DeBevoise.This week, Wayne LaPierre and the GOP proved I've been wrong about the right wing. All these years I've thought the guys on the right were smart. But faced with 27 coffins in Newtown, Ct.-- 20 of them tiny--the NRA executive vice president and his Republican friends displayed the worst tin ears in American politics.
Almost everyone knows LaPierre's suggestion to put armed guards in schools is easily demolished. As my old friend Mike Kane points out, armed guards don't stop bank robberies, mall shootings, or casino heists. Before some of you dismiss Mike because he's your typical gun-hating liberal: Mike's a retired Army colonel.
While LaPierre was speaking, a man shot up a church in rural Pennsylvania and killed three people--one while she was decorating the Christmas tree. Three Pennsylvania troopers were wounded before they took him down.
In fairness, LaPierre couldn't have possibly known events were showing everybody what the real stakes are; but that matters not a whit, because very clearly, LaPierre didn't think things through before he got behind the podium. Example: It apparently didn't occur to him that he was calling for a big tax hike. Putting armed guards in every school would cost about $7 billion--$80,000 a year for each of America's 91,000 schools, not counting colleges or universities.
It gets much more bizarre. The wound that shooter Adam Lanza opened wasn't just about the blood of 20 children, their teachers, and his mother: It plugged into all the other wounds we carry because we live in 2012, in a world that serves up gun deaths like hamburgers, that screams at us day and night, that so offends our sense of what should be that we can barely look at each other anymore and spend much of our time peering into various glowing screens spewing God knows what.
Given that, the nation is in no mood to find the money someplace and make the new taxes revenue neutral. More likely, we'd find the money by laying a user fee on owners of assault weapons, semi-auto pistols with big magazines, silencers, and the like--maybe with a surcharge levied every time there's a mass shooting--and with an amendment repealing the 2005 law shielding gun manufacturers from liability when their products are used in crimes.
You can imagine how popular that would be with the NRA membership. Next thing you'd know, LaPierre would be imitating Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) and opposing his own proposal. Because obviously, LaPierre wasn't serious--just hoping to muddy the waters, change the subject, and seem to be doing something.
Instead, he ensured that almost no one will take him seriously again. And since the NRA is welded to the GOP, he's taken it with him. You can almost hear the politicians saying that as far as the GOP goes the right to life doesn't extend to the living.
When you pair LaPierre's appearance with the collapse of the House Republicans' so-called Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff--a crisis they created in August 2011 by refusing at gun-point to allow a routine rise in the debt ceiling--it's clear that the wheels are completely off the right wing enterprise.
What they are telling the country by what they're doing is that they're uninterested in governing, and therefore can't be trusted with the reins of government. This shouldn't be surprising, since at bottom, the right's most extreme elements, routinely described by an over-polite press as "libertarian", don't really believe in government.
That in itself is fine: This is America and we're all entitled to our boneheaded ideas. But people run for office to govern, and no one's yet explained why someone who doesn't believe in governing should be in government. Unsurprisingly, little is heard on this question.
Meanwhile, the GOP's right wing is spoiling for a divorce, and there are plenty in what's left of the mainstream GOP who'd welcome one.
What said divorce will create, of course, is two small, narrow rump parties incapable of commanding a national base, followed by the disappearance of at least one of them, and the rise of a new party to represent the GOP's natural constituency--the nation's rich, and its business interests.
Maybe when that happens we can return to grappling with the many problems that right wing-inspired policy has allowed to fester, and now threaten to overwhelm us. Then, perhaps, we can begin addressing the many very large problems that will come in train with the approaching future.One of Studio Ghibli’s best animators, Makiko Futaki, likely won’t be remembered for her very best work – one that’s influenced everyone from MJ to Kanye West
Text Trey Taylor
Ask anyone – Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 film Akira is largely considered the most important animation of all time. OF ALL TIME, Kanye West will tell you. It served as a visual ammo for his video for “Stronger”, some of its signature graphics recreated exactly as they appeared in the film. One of Akira’s key animators, Makiko Futaki, sadly passed away last week at age 57 due to illness. She was the lead animator at Studio Ghibli before her death, a consequential contributor there, synonymous with films like Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle. She loved birds. Her specialty was drawing birds and nature, her hand noticeably behind the tree on steroids in Totoro and the geese taken down by a rogue gust of wind in Kiki’s Delivery Service. Before that was Akira – the cyberpunk thriller about a military project set in 2019 neo-Tokyo. It was not a work for which she can be solely attributed. In fact, she was only one of 68 key animators. Akira won’t even be the work for which she’s primarily remembered. However, by nearly every measure, it was the masterpiece that put a chokehold on pop culture’s psyche. When anime was still largely considered a diversion for kids and comic book nerds, mostly due to the medium and child-targeted releases like 1967’s Speed Racer, Akira sailed in on a river of blood and cartoon nudity. It looked different to previous anime features, as Otomo took Hollywood films like Bonnie & Clyde as inspiration. The result was a visual paroxysm: the final product pried open audience’s eyes by using a record 327 colours, 50 of which were created specifically for the production. (Akira Red is a thing, apparently.)
Rather than scrimp by animating and then recording dialogue like its corner-cutting predecessors, Akira tailored its animation to pre-recorded dialogue, meaning that mouths moved when characters spoke – something we now take for granted. Scenes were painstakingly hand-drawn and painted, even if they were only seen for a split second. The score was jarring and eerie, recorded even before the existence of a script. Upon its modest cinematic release in the West, it took in hundreds of thousands of dollars and won over anime sceptics. It kicked down the door for animated films with mature themes, paving the way for renegade animation from directors like Satoshi Kon. Its legacy is such that it continues to reverberate in pop culture’s echo chamber, occasionally reappearing in properties clearly influenced by its stunning visuals. Without Akira, we wouldn’t have The Matrix, Looper, Chronicle, or Inception.
In Michael Jackson’s video for “Scream” (see above), a scene of the film depicting its main character Tetsuo falling from a military laboratory can be glimpsed on a flickering screen in the background. For “Stronger”, Kanye West enlisted the help of veteran music video director Hype Williams to channel his inspiration into a visual love letter to his favourite anime. Avid fans immediately pointed out West’s influences: Akira. “He was always inspired by Akira,” Williams told SOHH around the release of the video. “There was a point where we really dove in and wound up filming parts of that movie for the video, but we decided to back off it and do something a little more abstract for the final version. So originally it went from inspired by – to us really diving into that world and giving him a piece of the story and that kind of transmutated into the video that’s out now.” West has since tweeted about his undying love for the film, saying, “No way Spirited Away is better than Akira… NOOO WAAAY…sorry was just looking at a youtube of top 10 anime films.” Now, it’s up there in Yeezy’s top two:
Akira and There Will Be Blood are equally my 2 favorite movies of all time. — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 10, 2015Interim Emergency Manager Steven Rhodes said the school district has just $50 million of unsecured debt that could be slashed in bankruptcy — a figure that pales in comparison with the $7.3 billion Rhodes allowed the city of Detroit to eliminate in its historic Chapter 9 case. (Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr. / Detroit News)
East Lansing — The former bankruptcy judge operating Detroit Public Schools said Friday that a bankruptcy restructuring of the state’s largest school district wouldn’t be “worth” the cost of litigating a case.
Interim Emergency Manager Steven Rhodes said the school district has just $50 million of unsecured debt that could be slashed in bankruptcy — a figure that pales in comparison with the $7.3 billion Rhodes allowed the city of Detroit to eliminate in its historic Chapter 9 case.
“It’s not a good option because the debt that DPS has is not the kind of debt that a bankruptcy case can deal with very well,” Rhodes said during a taping of WKAR-TV’s “Off The Record.” “Compared to the operating debt of $500 million or long-term debt of over $1 billion, it just wasn’t going to be worth it and still isn’t worth it to take DPS into bankruptcy.”
The Detroit district’s debt is either secured by state aid revenue or guaranteed by the state through bonds and a statewide school employee pension fund, creating exposure for all Michigan taxpayers.
Rhodes’ opposition to a bankruptcy of Detroit schools is one of the reasons he and Gov. Rick Snyder are urging lawmakers to approve a plan to rescue DPS from $500 million in debt and provide a new debt-free school district with $200 million in start-up funding.
Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House and Senate have effectively agreed to pay off the district’s debts, but remain at odds over controlling the proliferation of independent charter schools in Detroit and the amount of transitional funding for the new district.
The Senate’s plan called for $200 million in transitional aid and the creation of a Detroit Education Commission that effectively would control the opening of new charter schools in the city. House Republicans did not include the commission in its plan and limited start-up financing to $33 million.
Rhodes said the traditional school district’s future hinges on limiting the number of competing charter schools that receive state funding.
“It will be more challenging for DPS to succeed without some kind of control over the opening of new charter schools or other kinds of educational opportunities,” he said.
Rhodes’ remarks confirm “what we’ve been saying for over a year — that the purpose of the DEC is to prop up the new traditional district at the expense of parental choice,” said Gary Naeyaert, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, a pro-charter school group opposed to the commission.
“We believe this admission by Judge Rhodes should put the nail in the coffin of the DEC,” Naeyaert said in a Friday statement.
In a show of political diplomacy, Rhodes said he’s confident the House and Senate will find a resolution before July 1, when the Detroit district projects a cash shortfall that could trigger payless paydays for employees and the interruption of summer programs.
“I’m convinced that the House and the Republicans in the House are committed to finding a solution that will give DPS its best chance at success here,” Rhodes said. “They recognize the need and I believe they will come through as this process winds itself forward.”
State Rep. Tim Kelly, R-Saginaw Township, said Friday the House’s $500 million bailout for DPS may be “the high water mark” for Republicans who are frustrated after months of not getting “solid numbers” from DPS, Snyder’s office and the Treasury Department.
“I would accuse all three of them of being disingenuous players in this whole thing for not coming up with solid numbers,” Kelly said. “I am sick and tired of playing with dishonest brokers in this whole thing.”
Rhodes is a retired bankruptcy judge who oversaw Detroit’s historic Chapter 9 restructuring case and retired from the federal bench in 2015. He did a stint last year consulting for the debt-ridden U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
In March, Rhodes accepted Gov. Rick Snyder’s appointment to temporarily lead DPS, preferring to be called the school district’s “transition manager” instead of emergency manager.
On Thursday, Rhodes said the DPS administration would postpone contract negotiations with seven of the district’s eight unions until a resolution is reached in the Legislature about the district’s future financial picture.
“It will be more productive to begin the negotiations when all of the parties have a real understanding of the resources that will be available to make the kind of commitments required in the bargaining process,” he said in a statement.
Contracts for seven of the district’s eight unions expire on June 30, including one for the 2,600-member Detroit Federation of Teachers.
Earlier this week, Rhodes held a public meeting on his operational plans for revitalizing the city school system and faced a hostile crowd of parents and community activists.
On Friday, Rhodes acknowledged the public forum was far different from the kind of control he used to wield from the federal bench in Detroit.
“I didn’t like it. It was pretty brutal,” Rhodes told reporters after the TV show taping. “But you know what, that’s democracy. I brought as much democracy in my court process as I could when I opened up the courtroom to people who were similarly angry. I stood there and took and dealt with it the best I could.”
The transition manager said he doesn’t disagree with residents who are upset about the condition of Detroit’s schools after seven years of state control.
“I think we share a goal here to return DPS to local control,” Rhodes said. “Our disagreement is how quickly to do it. They want it done like today.”
The Senate plan calls for elections in November for a new Detroit school board. The House plan delays a school board election until August 2017, turning over management of the district to the existing Detroit Financial Review Commission in the interim period.
“My position is there has to be a transition back to local control under this legislation,” Rhodes said. “It’s not practical to just flip the switch and it’s also not politically feasible to do that.”
clivengood@detroitnews.com
(517) 371-3661
Twitter: @ChadLivengood
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1TeKRGtBUFFALO – Rasmus Ristolainen said he trusted a new contract would be finished. Still, the Sabres defenseman wasn’t sure if his deal would be completed before tonight’s season opener.
“Thursday was coming pretty quick,” said Ristolainen, who signed a six-year, $32.4 million contract Tuesday, ending a brief holdout.
The Finn, 21, practiced Wednesday beside new partner Dmitry Kulikov as the Sabres prepared for the Montreal Canadiens inside KeyBank Center.
Ristolainen briefly left the Sabres earlier this week. He had been practicing as a restricted free agent, something his agent called a “goodwill” gesture.
Naturally, big expectations accompany his new deal, which carries a $5.4 million salary cap hit.
Ristolainen cemented his status as the Sabres’ No. 1 defenseman in 2015-16, compiling nine goals and 41 points while skating a team-high 25 minutes, 17 seconds a game in 82 appearances.
But he often struggled in the second half.
“I think he came out of the gates for the first 40 games or so, played a real strong, really almost dominating game for us on the backside,” Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said. “The consistency, he played a ton of minutes for us.”
|
against Becker, but Debbie reassures her this is not the case.
When Rose learns the Toussaint can only be unclasped by a special magnet carried by the bodyguards hired by Cartier, Nine Ball enlists her younger sister Veronica's help in defeating the mechanism. At the gala, Lou spikes Daphne's soup, causing her to vomit in the restroom, a blind spot to the Met's cameras created by Nine Ball. Constance removes the necklace and sneaks it to Amita, who splits it into smaller pieces of jewelry. The Toussaint's disappearance triggers the museum's evacuation, but the search ends when Tammy "finds" the duplicate necklace. Constance slips the Toussaint pieces to the team to smuggle out; Debbie plants a piece on Becker. After the heist, Debbie and Lou reveal Daphne had been in on the plan.
Cartier discovers the recovered necklace is a fake, and dispatches insurance investigator John Frazier. Having crossed paths with the Oceans before, Frazier immediately suspects Debbie, but her careful presence on the gala's video footage gives her an unbeatable alibi. She tells Frazier she may know who stole the necklace. Daphne visits Becker and sends Frazier a picture of the jewel Debbie planted. To further frame Becker, Debbie hires actresses posing as elderly socialites to sell the Toussaint pieces and deposit the money in Becker's name. Frazier takes Becker into custody.
As the eight celebrate their victory, Lou reveals the heist's true target: while the gala was being evacuated, she and "The Amazing" Yen replaced a Met display of royal jewels with replicas, escaping with gems even more valuable than the Toussaint. With a larger-than-expected share of the score, each member of the team goes their separate way: Amita travels to Paris with a man she meets on Tinder; Weil pays off her debts and opens her own store; Constance buys a spacious loft in the city and becomes a YouTuber; Tammy expands her business in stolen goods; Nine Ball opens a pool bar; Daphne becomes a film director; Lou goes on a cross-country road trip; and Debbie visits Danny's grave with a martini in his honor.
Cast [ edit ]
Additionally, Dakota Fanning appears as Penelope Stern, a celebrity who Kluger is jealous of, and Nathanya Alexander appears as Veronica, Nine Ball's younger sister.[4] Elliott Gould and Qin Shaobo reprise their roles from the previous films as Reuben Tishkoff and "The Amazing" Yen, respectively. Matt Damon and Carl Reiner were also set to reprise their respective characters Linus Caldwell and Saul Bloom, but their scenes were cut.[5][6] Marlo Thomas, Dana Ivey, Mary Louise Wilson and Elizabeth Ashley appear as elderly actresses who help the crew shift their stolen gems.[7] Celebrities who cameo as themselves in the film include Anna Wintour, Zayn Malik, Katie Holmes, Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams, Kim Kardashian, Common, Adriana Lima, Desiigner, Kylie Jenner, Alexander Wang, Kendall Jenner, Ira Glass, Gigi Hadid, Lily Aldridge, Olivia Munn, Jaime King, Zac Posen, Hailey Baldwin, Derek Blasberg, Sofia Richie, Heidi Klum, Kelly Rohrbach, and Lauren Santo Domingo.[8][9]
Production [ edit ]
After the release of Ocean's Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh stated that there would not be an Ocean's Fourteen, noting that George Clooney wanted "to go out strong" with the third film.[10] In December 2008, Soderbergh again said that a fourth film in the franchise was unlikely, this time citing the recent death of Bernie Mac, who had appeared in the earlier films.[11] However, a female focused spin-off starring Sandra Bullock was in development as of October 2015.[12][13] Helena Bonham Carter, Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling, and Elizabeth Banks were later announced to star in the film,[14] though Banks' presence turned out to be a rumor that did not materialize.[15]
In August 2016, Bullock, Blanchett, Bonham Carter and Kaling were confirmed to star, with Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Awkwafina, and Sarah Paulson closing deals to fill the cast.[16][17] During production on the film, Dakota Fanning and Damian Lewis were spotted on set, with Lewis's casting being confirmed in December 2016 and Fanning confirming her casting in March 2017. However, Lewis does not appear in the finished film.[18][19][20]
On November 11, 2016, Richard Robichaux was also cast in the film.[21] That same month, Matt Damon stated he would appear in the film, reprising his role from the Ocean's Trilogy;[22][23][24] however, his scene was not included in the finished film. In January 2017, James Corden joined the cast as an insurance broker who begins to grow suspicious of the group.[25] That same month, it was revealed Anna Wintour, Alexander Wang, Zac Posen, Derek Blasberg, Lauren Santo Domingo, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Katie Holmes, Olivia Munn, Hailey Baldwin and Zayn Malik were announced to cameo in the film.[26][27][28][29][30] That same month, Richard Armitage joined the cast of the film.[31]
Principal photography on the film began on October 25, 2016, in New York City.[32][33] In March 2017, Blanchett said production had officially been completed.[34]
On May 5, 2017, it was announced that filming would continue on Staten Island at the former Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, which Broadway Stages was in the process of acquiring after an initial rejection.[35]
Box office [ edit ]
After premiering at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 5, 2018,[36] Ocean's 8 was released by Warner Bros. to theaters in North America on June 8.[37][38] Ocean's 8 grossed $140.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $157.5 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $297.7 million, against a production budget of $70 million.[3]
In the United States and Canada, Ocean's 8 was released alongside Hotel Artemis and Hereditary, and was projected to gross around $45 million from 4,145 theaters in its opening weekend, although some tracking firms had it debuting with as low as $30 million. Deadline Hollywood noted that it was tracking on-par with the 2016 all-female Ghostbusters reboot (which opened to $46 million), and had more interest from audiences than the likes of fellow female-led comedies The Heat ($39.1 million debut), Spy ($29.1 million) and Girls Trip ($31.2 million).[39] The film made $4 million from Thursday night previews, including $100,000 from additional early screenings Wednesday night, and $15.8 million on its first day (including previews). It went on to debut to $41.6 million, the highest of the franchise, not factoring in inflation; 69% of its audience was female.[40][41] In its second weekend the film made $19 million, finishing second behind newcomer Incredibles 2.[42] In its third weekend the film earned $11.7 million, finishing third behind Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Incredibles 2.[43]
Overseas the film was released in 16 countries alongside the United States and made $12.2 million in its opening weekend. Its largest markets were Australia ($4.7 million), Mexico ($2.6 million) and Brazil ($1.7 million).[44] By its third week of release (where it made $26.9 million), the film had an international total of $70.9 million. Its largest markets were United Kingdom ($14 million), Australia ($13.6 million), Japan ($11.7 million), South Korea ($10.8 million), Germany ($7.4 million), Mexico ($6.3 million), and Brazil ($5.6 million).[45]
Home media [ edit ]
Ocean's 8 was first released on Digital HD on August 21, 2018.[46] Warner Bros. Home Entertainment then released the film on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD Combo Pack on September 11, 2018.[47] The film debuted at the top of the NPD VideoScan First Alert chart for the week ending on September 15, 2018.[48]
Critical reception [ edit ]
According to several media outlets, Ocean's 8 received a generally lukewarm response from critics.[49] On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 68% based on 277 reviews, and an average rating of 6.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ocean's 8 isn't quite as smooth as its predecessors, but still has enough cast chemistry and flair to enjoyably lift the price of a ticket from filmgoers up for an undemanding caper."[50] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, based on reviews from 50 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[51] According to BBC News, while critical reviews of the film were "broadly positive", "most had some reservations".[52] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by Ocean's Eleven and Thirteen.[40]
Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and praised the cast (namely Bullock, Blanchett and Hathaway), saying, "Ocean's 8 is a heist caper that looks gorgeous, keeps the twists coming and bounces along on a comic rhythm that's impossible to resist. What more do you want in summer escapism?"[53] Alonso Duralde of TheWrap called the film "slick, charming and funny," though added it never quite kicks into high gear" and said, "Cinematographer Eigil Bryld gives the proceedings the high-gloss of a SkyMall catalog, which is appropriate for a movie about robbing a legendary Cartier necklace at fashion's most exclusive event...And between the sheen and the talented performers, Ocean's 8 does eventually coast on froth and good will."[54]
Variety's Owen Gleiberman said it is "clever enough to get by" and wrote "Ocean's 8 is a casually winning heist movie, no more and no less, but like countless films devoted to the exploits of cool male criminals, it lingers most...as a proudly scurrilous gallery of role models." He found Hathaway "commanding at every moment" and believed Bullock projected "the debauched insolence" and ideological drive of "a hungry criminal", but lamented the scarcity of impressive dialogue for Paulson and Blanchett, who "don't get a chance to create indelible characters".[55] In The Boston Globe, Ty Burr was more impressed by Blanchett's performance ("the Boss of This Movie") and said, apart from Hathaway, the film largely depended on the "established personas" of the actors.[56]
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and said, "Some movies are more about parallel play than actual playground interaction, and despite a screenful of terrifically skillful talents, Ocean's 8 never quite gets its ensemble act together. It's smooth, and far from inept. But it isn't much fun. That's all you want from a certain kind of heist picture, isn't it? Fun?"[57] Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper said the cast "banters beautifully, but the heist is a bit too breezy", lacking a "formidable, hiss-worthy villain" and "darker, more challenging, more nuanced adventure".[58]
Response from actors [ edit ]
Kaling and Blanchett attributed the lukewarm reception to the dominance of male critics and a lack of diversity among mainstream film reviewers. In an interview with Yahoo! Movies, Kaling cited actress Meryl Streep's criticism of Rotten Tomatoes and said, "There is obviously an audience out there who want to watch things like [Ocean's 8], what I work on, what Sarah [Paulson] works on... I think white men, critics would enjoy [the movie], would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they don't understand it, because they come at it at a different point of view, and they're so powerful, Rotten Tomatoes."[49]
Several film journalists strongly disagreed with claims that the reception had been dictated by the gender and ethnicity of the critics. Guy Lodge, a chief film critic for Variety, highlighted the fact that several female reviewers, including Emily Yoshida from Vulture and Time magazine's Stephanie Zacharek, concurred with the general lukewarm response.[49] Justin Chang, an Asian-American critic for the Los Angeles Times, argued that film criticism needed increased diversity, but "We negate the possibility of sympathetic imagination when we assume that someone’s particular affinity for a work of art will be dictated in advance by specifics of race, gender and age." He instead argued that the benefits would be a broader pool of talent and perspectives.[59] Donald Clarke from The Irish Times pointed out that film had received a "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a better score than Ocean's Twelve.[60]
Accolades [ edit ]By now you know that most of my blog posts comes directly from experiences in my day-to-day life. As a very out lesbian and owner of a business catering to education about the LGBT community, I have an endless supply of things to write about, which I am very grateful for. After hundreds of blog posts and counting and I have 48 topics on my running list. Yes, 48. And by the time I write those 48, I’ll have written another hundred or so in between. I typically write within days of something happening because it gives me just enough time to reflect on both sides of the topic to bring you the best possible view I can.
I want to share with you a line from a Facebook message I received a few days ago. I have a lot of folks reaching out to me to tell me about their product or service asking me if I would promote it to my Facebook fans. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It really comes down to what the person is promoting and if it makes sense for my audience, i.e. is this something they would like to hear? I know your time is valuable and you are taking the time to read this blog, so I don’t want to clutter it with things that won’t be of value to you.
So I get the following Facebook message “We’re looking for companies and individuals who can openly declare that they are happy to deal with LGBT people.” In the message was a link to their website. The website appeared to be some kind of LGBT directory of businesses who support the community. There are a lot of directory websites out there so it’s hard to tell which are good quality and which are folks who are spamming the web and trying to make a quick buck with advertising on the website.
However, my assessment of the validity of this website was not in question – I didn’t even get that far. The statement “We’re looking for companies and individuals who can openly declare that they are happy to deal with LGBT people” stopped me dead in my tracks. I’m hoping that you are reading this and seeing the issue at hand. Using a phrase like ‘happy to deal with LGBT people’ is a terrible expression to use if you are trying to do business with the community. I imagine there was good intent behind what this person was sending me but really, deal with LGBT people is your choice of wording? I would highly recommend not using anything of that sort in any communication or marketing outreach with the LGBT community. Or any community for that matter. Saying something like dealing with sends a signal that this is a chore or a duty, not something fun. You have to deal with the bills, you have to deal with a screaming toddler, you have to deal with the teenagers loitering in your neighborhood. None of these things sound positive, do they?
So if you are reaching out to LGBT folks and companies that support the community, you might want to try a phrase like “We’re looking for companies and individuals who openly declare their support for doing business with the LGBT community.” That sounds much better than, “We’re looking for companies and individuals who can openly declare that they are happy to deal with LGBT people”, doesn’t it? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.Serbian spy's trial lifts cloak on his CIA alliance
As Milosevic's intelligence chief, Jovica Stanisic is accused of setting up genocidal death squads. But as a valuable source for the CIA, an agency veteran says, he also 'did a whole lot of good.'
For The Record Los Angeles Times Wednesday, March 11, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 75 words Type of Material: Correction War crimes: An article March 1 in Section A about Serbian war crimes defendant Jovica Stanisic reported that prosecutor Dermot Groome said that Stanisic's actions to help the CIA and counter Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic underscored his power. Groome was not commenting on the relationship between Stanisic and the CIA, but on Stanisic's efforts to save lives during the war. Also, the article said that Georgetown is in Virginia. It is a Washington, D.C., neighborhood.
But the CIA officer, William Lofgren, needed help. The agency was all but blind after Yugoslavia shattered into civil war. Fighting had broken out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milosevic was seen as a menace to European security, and the CIA was desperate to get intelligence from inside the turmoil.
Jovica Stanisic had a cold gaze and a sinister reputation. He was the intelligence chief for Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and regarded by many as the brains of a regime that gave the world a chilling new term: "ethnic cleansing."
It was here in 1992, as the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic violence, that a wary CIA agent made his way toward the park's gazebo and shook hands with a Serbian intelligence officer.
BELGRADE, SERBIA — At night, when the lawns are empty and the lamps along the walking paths are the only source of light, Topcider Park on the outskirts of Belgrade is a perfect meeting place for spies.
So on that midnight stroll, the two spies carved out a clandestine relationship that remained undisclosed: For eight years, Stanisic was the CIA's main man in Belgrade. During secret meetings in boats and safe houses along the Sava River, he shared details on the inner workings of the Milosevic regime. He provided information on the locations of NATO hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for grave sites and helped the agency set up a network of secret bases in Bosnia.
At the same time, Stanisic was setting up death squads for Milosevic that carried out a genocidal campaign, according to prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which was established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993 to try those responsible for serious human rights violations in the Balkan wars.
Now facing a trial at The Hague that could send him to prison for life, Stanisic has called in a marker with his American allies. In an exceedingly rare move, the CIA has submitted a classified document to the court that lists Stanisic's contributions and attests to his helpful role. The document remains sealed, but its contents were described by sources to The Times.
The CIA's Lofgren, now retired, said the agency drafted the document to show "that this allegedly evil person did a whole lot of good." Lofgren, however, doesn't claim to disprove the allegations against Stanisic.
"But setting the indictment aside," he said, "there are things this man did that helped bring hostilities to an end and establish peace in Bosnia."
Through his attorney, Stanisic, 58, declined to comment, citing the tribunal's ban on communications with the media. But Stanisic has pleaded not guilty, and denies any role in creating the squads or even being aware of the crimes they committed.
The CIA's effort puts it in the unusual position of serving as something of a character witness for a war crimes defendant. The agency declined to comment on the document. Because its contents are classified, the letter could be considered by the court only in closed session. Court officials said it was unclear whether the document would be of significant use to the Stanisic defense, or would come into play mainly in seeking a more lenient sentence if he is convicted.
--
Prosecution dubious of Stanisic claims
This account is based on dozens of interviews with current and former officials of U.S. and Serbian intelligence agencies, as well as documents obtained or viewed by The Times. Among them are official records of the Serbian intelligence service, and a seven-page account of that bloody period that Stanisic wrote while in prison in The Hague.
In that memo, Stanisic portrays himself as someone who sought to moderate Milosevic, and who worked extensively with the CIA to contain the crisis.Through unimaginable tragedy, quarterback Tom Brady and his Patriots teammates rallied to help the family of a slain Massachusetts police officer pull itself back together.
Tricia Tarentino’s husband, Ronald, was shot and killed in the line of duty last May 22 while on patrol in Auburn, leaving her with their three boys to raise alone.
That’s when Brady stepped in.
Brady and his Patriots pals rallied to help a cause that raised $86,000 for the fallen officer’s family. Brady donated a signed home-game jersey that sold for $6,000 at a fundraiser, with Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski also pitching in gear.
But it was Brady who started the goodwill flowing.
“That immediate response shows where his heart is at, and that Ron’s death has made an impact on him as well,” Tricia Tarentino told the Herald yesterday. “Ron was just that kind of person. He had an amazing personality and wanted to reach out to help others. I think that’s why so many people have responded to this tragedy. It’s just a great loss.”
Tarentino said Brady’s generosity also lifted her boys’ spirits when they needed it most.
“They’ve grown up watching Tom Brady and looking up to him,” Tarentino said of her sons, Ronald III, 21; Spenser, 18; and Kyle, 15. “I can’t even tell you how great their response was. They were blown away. They were so excited. He is a role model that my boys will now, because they have that personal connection, will always look up to more than they already did.”
It’s a reminder of how Brady’s commitment to the region goes beyond Sundays on the football field.
“We have the deepest gratitude for his kindness and generosity. Just reaching out to our family in our time of need is unbelievable,” she said. “We’re so fortunate that he is part of the greater New England family and was kind enough to donate his time to do this. To be there for us, it means a lot to us.”
So here’s how it all unfolded.
Ronald Tarentino Jr. and childhood friend Rob Bjorkgren grew up together in Tewksbury, where Bjorkgren is currently a police officer.
Tarentino worked for the Leicester Police Department before joining the Auburn force. A few days after Tarentino was killed during a routine traffic stop and his suspected shooter was gunned down, Bjorkgren’s wife, Nicole, mustered up the courage to approach Brady at his annual Best Buddies bike ride.
Nicole asked Brady for 10 seconds of his time. He stopped and looked intently in her eyes as she explained the Tarentino tragedy.
“I really want to help,” Brady told Nicole.
“I couldn’t even believe it was coming out of my mouth,” Nicole recalled. “I can’t say enough about him as an individual.”
A mutual friend — Marc Ginsburg, owner of the Tewksbury Country Club — then helped out and Brady’s jersey was soon on the way.
“Nicole is such an amazing woman,” Tarentino said. “She’s got the biggest heart, and she was just trying to help us in any way that she could.”
Three weeks later, Brady mailed them the home-game Patriots jersey, which he autographed on the back, to use for the auction. Edelman then found out and shipped over a signed football. Gronkowski caught wind of it and asked Rob Bjorkgren to come to his house to pick up his own signed jersey.
Brady’s jersey was the most coveted item of the Aug. 11 event. Due to the overwhelming support, Tricia Tarentino has since reached out to the families of fallen first responders to assist.
She understands too well the pain of such a loss as well as the elation of a community that works selflessly to pick up a family in need.
Tarentino’s emotions are wide-ranging 11 months after her husband’s death, but the family simply wants to say thank you to Brady and the Patriots who came to their aid.
“It meant the world to my family and myself,” she said. “I know they don’t know us, but the fact that they did that to show support for another family in Massachusetts clearly shows they value family.”The Scottish National party is more like a cult than a political party. A recent poll showed that the majority of SNP members consider a criticism of the SNP as a personal criticism. And any manifest failings of their government at Holyrood are set aside in pursuit of the cause of independence.
But it is all based on mythology. Nicola Sturgeon used the word ‘progressive’ countless times in her speech at the launch of their manifesto, calling for a progressive alliance with other parties throughout the United Kingdom. This is based on the assumption the SNP is progressive. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The second largest individual donor to the SNP is Stagecoach-owner Brian Souter. Quite apart from his now legendary homophobic campaign on Section 28 he is against re-regulation of buses which was SNP policy until the money started rolling in from Souter.
Scotland is unique in that it has one main rail operator within our boundaries – Scotrail. When the franchise came up for renewal there were calls from the rail unions and Labour to bring it into public ownership. The SNP rejected these calls and put it out to tender. Ironically it is now government-owned – by a Dutch government-owned company.
In the current session of the Scottish parliament the SNP has also rejected Labour’s proposal that no public contracts should be awarded to companies unless they pay the living wage. This would have done a great deal for low-paid workers in the private sector but this progressive policy was rejected by the SNP.
They claim their policies on ‘free’ higher education, council tax freeze and ‘free’ prescriptions are progressive but the reality is that the beneficiaries are relatively well-off families.
In education they have slashed further education, which many poorer young people relied on for occupational courses, in order to end university fees for relatively well-off students, and they have reneged on their promise to cancel student debt.
The council tax freeze is proportionately more advantageous for people like me in the higher bands And the very poor, many of whom pay no council tax, are suffering from major cuts in social work and other vital services on which they depend but councils can no longer afford.
However, the most damning evidence of their lack of progressive policies was during the SNP minority administration in Holyrood from 2007 to 2011. They collaborated totally with the Conservative group who ensured every one of their budgets was agreed, along with the Tory amendments.
I was a member of the Scottish parliament at the time and I witnessed the way every progressive proposal put forward by Labour was rejected with SNP finance minister, John Swinney, and Tory leader, Annabel Goldie, working together like bosom buddies. And, of course, Sturgeon and Alex Salmond were part of that cosy conservative consensus.
Just as I had seen, as a parliamentary candidate, in 1979 when the SNP MPs voted with Margaret Thatcher to bring down the Labour government and usher in 18 years of Tory rule, which devastated industry in Scotland and around the UK.
As Jim Callaghan wrote in his memoir Time and Chance, ‘The result was in effect decided when the Scottish National party decided to put down their own vote of censure. The Conservative party gratefully latched on to it …’
And the Conservative party are now gratefully latching on to the SNP once again. The only way that David Cameron can be returned as prime minister is if the SNP take enough Labour seats in Scotland, and that is why we have seen Cameron talking up the SNP in the past few days. But, as Michael Forsyth has rightly said, that is a very dangerous and unwise tactic which could see the break-up of the union.
We now have two weeks left to dispel the myth that the SNP is progressive and paint it in its true colours, in a phrase we used to use, as Tartan Tories.
———————————
George Foulkes is a member of the House of Lords and a former member of the Scottish parliament. He tweets @GeorgeFoulkesILLEGAL SURGE-Up to 1,000 a Day!… Smugglers Tell Illegals to Get to US Now, Because TRUMP WALL Is Going Up (VIDEO)
Illegal immigrant smugglers are telling illegals to come to the United States now before Donald Trump becomes president.
The number of unaccompanied minors and family units apprehended so far at the border are well on track to surpass the numbers from two years ago.
More than 54,000 unaccompanied minors have been processed since August.
FOX News reporter Casey Stegall said he interviewed an illegal during his investigation and was told smugglers are telling migrants to get here now before Trump becomes president.
“And this is absolutely fascinating when we were down at the border shooting this last week one immigrant told me that word is spreading in Mexico and Central America to get here now because if Donald Trump wins the word on the street down there is the wall will go up, things will be sealed off. So the smugglers are saying to get here now, Melissa.”
MORE…. Stegall added that border agents are catching up to 1,000 migrants a day!
Via America’s Newsroom:A mismatch between demand for talent and supply is threatening US competitiveness. Public policies, not just in conventional areas but also in areas such as foreign investment need to be reassessed.
Introduction
This paper focuses on America’s talent competitiveness: our ability to foster, develop and maintain generations of educated, skilled employees. Due to how world economies are evolving and changing, both blue- and white-collar employees will need increasingly sophisticated and technologically attuned skills for the foreseeable future. With U.S. unemployment still at record highs, there may be no more important issue.2
It has become commonplace to focus on talent as a driver of global competitiveness.3Yet these discussions typically focus only on initiatives to strengthen our educational system. Education reform alone, however, as important as it may be, will not meet our future challenges. If we are serious about developing talent as a competitive advantage, we must reassess a whole host of public policies.
Such a focus would help us see many issues in a different light, and point toward new ways to overcome barriers created by existing policies. The public debate concerning many national issues might be different if our policies were explicitly aimed at boosting talent competitiveness.
Such a reassessment would have welcome side benefits. Many public policy debates have devolved into increasingly polarized, zero-sum games. Yet talent development by its very nature creates a positive-sum game—we all benefit when our nation develops talent more broadly and more rapidly. Talent expands the sum of economic rewards. Instead of debating who will get what slice of the pie, we can work together to find more creative ways to boost employment and make the pie bigger.
In one sense, most public policy debates can be reframed around one simple question: Which options will accelerate talent development and boost highly productive employment—and which will impede talent development? This question could become the basis for a much more productive policy consensus that would help us compete more effectively. Such a reframing is not only desirable, but essential if we wish to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy.4
The rewards could be significant, particularly if we recognize that talent is not solely the province of highly educated knowledge workers, but an opportunity that extends to all Americans, regardless of their present station in life. We all have unrealized potential to develop our talents and deliver more economic value to our communities. We would be a far more prosperous society if we could develop policies that help us realize our talent potential, both individually and collectively.
The talent imperative—What is talent? How is it changing?
To see how public policies affect talent, we must begin by understanding how the shape of U.S. talent supply and demand has changed over the past several decades.
In just 10 years, we have seen emerging demands for new skills from entirely new industries, and, just as importantly, from a rapidly evolving global economy. Countries that only recently began developing in earnest now compete for the best talent, wherever it can be found.
The types of talent in high demand have changed as well. Professionals are more mobile, and many are willing and able to pursue multiple income streams. And the best talent is constantly learning. Today’s graphic designer may be a software engineer in two years.
Unfortunately, the type of talent and the more flexible, dynamic disposition towards work demanded today—and tomorrow—often is in short supply in the United States. Our economy, known for its flexibility and resilience, must learn how to adapt.
Changing demand for talent
America’s demand for talent has changed in dramatic ways:
The shelf life of desirable skills is shrinking.
Once, a college degree provided enough basic training to last a career. Today, the skills that college graduates acquire have an expected shelf life of only five years, meaning that skills learned in school can become outdated long before the student loans are paid off.5
And this trend is not restricted to white-collar professions. The economy emerging after the recent recession is being driven by “smart jobs,” even in traditional blue-collar settings.6 Consider, for instance, the new metering systems and sensors added to our utilities. In many modern homes, office buildings and entire city blocks, plumbers and electricians need a different kind of know-how than did their colleagues just a decade ago. Think also of the wind turbine companies whose welders need specialized degrees and the ability to read computer-aided design (CAD) blueprints.
Markets for specialized skills are on the rise.
The knowledge economy is creating a constant series of niche markets, ushering in an age of hyperspecialization.7
“There is absolutely no way anybody can be an expert in a substantial part of the total field,” explains Hans de Zwart, senior innovation advisor at Shell. “The modern-day Renaissance Man just can’t exist.”8 The solution is not simply more education, but ongoing and more specifically tailored professional development for a new generation of talent.
Such specialized expertise can have significant economic advantages. The highly skilled can earn more, and companies can subdivide tasks among those who can execute each one perfectly. But highly specialized skills inevitably lose their relevance and niche abilities may be difficult to apply as opportunities evolve. As we specialize, it is important to retain transferable skills.
Individuals must also become more disposed to much greater professional flexibility. For the highly skilled generalists educated in the liberal arts from the nation’s top universities, this means they need to be quick to adapt to changing markets with specialized skill sets. This entails leveraging their BAs as a foundation while they continuously acquire new skills that emphasize social intelligence, computational thinking and a design mindset. (For a list of top requested skills in 2020, see appendix A.) Also important will be the ability to see across economic sector silos and connect the dots between how innovations in one industry can be applied to another.
The demand for high-end skills is accelerating.
The rapid evolution of technology has pushed the demand for high-end skills past the supply. In an Economist Intelligence Unit survey of more than 350 executives from multinational companies, more than 60 percent of respondents feared that “talent shortages are likely to affect their bottom line in the next five years”—with most shortages in the highly skilled talent pool.9 Highly skilled workers are projected to continue to earn higher wages and maintain their bargaining power, while less-skilled workers are more likely to be left out of the equation. This notion is further supported by our analysis of U.S. Department of Labor occupational data; only 8 percent of “bright outlook occupations” between 2010 and 2020 will require “little or no preparation” compared to the 28 percent of positions that will require “considerable to extensive preparation.”10 (For a full analysis, see the chart: “Skill levels required for jobs of the future.”)
Demand for knowledge workers continues to grow.
Today’s economy depends on knowledge workers such as computer engineers and researchers with problem-solving skills and a willingness to update their knowledge constantly. Estimates suggest that anywhere from 28 percent to 45 percent of the U.S. labor force works in these types of jobs.11 And knowledge industries are increasing in number—with up to 85 percent of new positions created since the turn of this century requiring specialized skill sets.12
Companies with the highest numbers of such workers tend to grow the fastest.13
As digital technologies continue to permeate our daily lives, the knowledge of individuals and teams will be worth much more than mere machinery. As more information jobs are created, the challenge will be to staff them efficiently and effectively. There is no longer a standard workforce manual. Top-down processes now intersect with bottom-up innovations. The new game is handling challenges and contingencies through improvisation and individualized solutions.
The demand for part-time and contract workers is skyrocketing.
In the wake of mass layoffs and buyouts, companies have begun hiring more part-time, freelance and contract workers to fill gaps. Part-time work is at an all-time high; 19.7 percent of all U.S. employees in 2010 were part time. In five years, 58 percent of firms expect to use more part-time, temporary or contract employees. According to the research firm Staffing Industry Analysts, such models are about 8 percent cheaper than staffing with permanent employees.14
Changing talent supply
Our supply of talent has changed as well, in ways that provide strong reasons for concern.
Skill shortages persist.
While headlines are filled with news about high unemployment, a surprising number of industries and regions are finding it nearly impossible to obtain qualified workers.
Such talent shortages are increasingly common. While manufacturing unemployment is high, for instance |
been my aspiration. I feel like I have to choose between the two [career and family] and I don't like it."
Another interviewee said: "I did not take time off to go to school sports days. You sort of felt that if a bloke took time off to go to school sports day everybody was saying what a good father he is."
Other women compromised their personal integrity by not complaining about sexism. One woman barrister said that there was: "a lot of sexism, very casual sexism, at the Bar. I think there still is. The older barristers would hit on you, and that was perfectly acceptable. And I think they kind of assumed you would go along with that because you needed their patronage in order to get on'."
One black solicitor told the researchers about an incident with a colleague in an office: "As I walked in he joked that he thought I was one of the cleaners because all the cleaners were black and they didn't have any other black lawyers in the firm. I went to him the next day and said I was upset because he was my supervisor at the time, he said that if I mentioned it to any of the partners he would say that the comment had never been made and that the other colleagues in the room would back him up."
Other lawyers adopted another strategy -'playing the game' - in order to get on, said Dr Tomlinson, "volunteering to sit on committees and enthusiastically pursuing networking opportunities within their employer or in the wider profession. This is crucial since, as discussed earlier, in the informal and personal world of the legal profession, decisions are often based on impression management, fitting in with important clients and winning personal favour with leading partners.
"One female Asian solicitor spoke of being 'pretty much on every committee I can be' to ensure her name was known and in order to facilitate connections with more senior colleagues."
One white solicitor told her: "When I was probably six months into my training contract I decided that I needed to be very clever about the way I networked within the firm in order to secure a job, because at that stage jobs were few and far between. I found out who was powerful, I found out who the biggest clients of the firm were, I found out where the power base in the firm was, and I applied myself in that direction very, very carefully."
But networking and bringing in new clients was difficult for some women and lawyers from ethnic minorities. One woman told the researchers: "The men play golf and they all go out on golf days and they are spending the whole day out of the office, then get drunk at dinner afterwards and then spend several days talking about it and it's very unusual to have a female at these events. The only reason I know what it is like first hand is that my husband is a solicitor and I would join him at the dinner afterwards - there would be one female for every 25 men."
One Muslim said: "It's a profession which drinks the whole time, and I am reluctant to go to an event which is alcohol dominated. I came here very self assured and I still am, but do I think I can be the best at what I do? No, because I don't think I'll ever be able to build the relationships that people who are not Muslims will be able to build."
Other strategies adopted by women and lawyers from ethnic minorities included finding better working conditions by moving to a new area, sector or specialism, one favoured particularly by women wanting more flexibility to raise a family. Nine of those interviewed were considering leaving law altogether.
Another strategy was to reform the system, though this was only possible for those who had climbed to positions of power. Examples of reforms included campaigning to make a barristers' chambers develop maternity support policies, changing and making more transparent partnership promotion criteria, lobbying for diversity and equal opportunities issues within professional associations, and engaging in outreach activities to mentor and recruit disadvantaged groups.
Dr Tomlinson said that Law Society surveys had revealed that lawyers from ethnic minorities were over-represented in the legal aid sector, and were more likely to work in small high street firms or as sole practitioners, while barristers from ethnic minorities were heavily concentrated in a few chambers, drawing much of their work from their own communities and specialising in criminal defence and immigration rather than more lucrative commercial work.
She said that there was: "extensive evidence that while overtly discriminatory practices have largely been dismantled, the top echelons of the legal profession remain not only dominated by white, upper-middle class men, but as sites of subtle institutional discrimination."
The research was carried out for a project funded by the Legal Services Board, directed by Professor Hilary Sommerlad of Leicester University, together with Professor Lisa Webley and Liz Duff of the University of Westminster.
The report from the research can be seen here:
For further information:
Please contact the University of Leeds Press Office on +44 (0)113 343 4031 or email pressoffice@leeds.ac.ukThe details come as Teagasc published figures today that show that the average Irish farmer received less than €18,000 in EU direct payments, accounting for almost 75pc of their income.
The details come as Teagasc published figures today that show that the average Irish farmer received less than €18,000 in EU direct payments, accounting for almost 75pc of their income.
This is in stark contrast to Larry Goodman and his family, who through two farms, Branganstown and Glydee received €217,153 and €214,275 in EU payments in 2016 - giving them a combined income of €430,000 in EU farm subsidies.
Goodman has the largest EU farm payment, by far, of any individual in Ireland. However, it is significantly surpassed by the €6m Teagasc receives and the €3.9m Commercial Mushroom PRS Co-op receives. Bord Bia received €2.28m last year, while Ornua received €1.6m last year.
Other notable beneficiaries include Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashin Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and owner of Kildangan stud farm. It received €156,000 while Godolphin racing received €167,000 last year.
Also Read: See the top farm payments in your county
Further, 17 farmers and companies with an address outside of Ireland received EU payments. In a recent FarmIreland survey, 75pc of farmers said they are unhappy with the current farm payment system and that payments are unfairly distributed, with many saying that they would prefer a fair price for their produce instead of subsidies.
Larry Goodman, Louth, €431,000
Between the two farms Branganstown and Glydee that are owned and by Goodman, they were in receipt of €214,275 and €217,153 in EU subsidies. His home farm at Castlebellingham, Co. Lough is the 850-acre Branganstown enterprise. However, he also owns in excess of 1,100 acres in his Glydee farm at Kilsaren, which is a feedlot for 8,000 head of cattle.It appears, at least from our readers’ standpoints, that the Moto X reveal yesterday rubbed many of you the wrong way. It’s pretty obvious that many of you were hoping for a price well below that of the typical $199 on 2-year contract trend. We sort of forgot about the idea that this phone could drop in at some sort of Nexus-like pricing once we saw the pricing of the DROID ULTRA, but it is what it is. And after all, this is Motorola’s new flagship – they fully consider this to be on-par if not better than the competition.
No matter what, we can tell that you aren’t exactly happy, since many of you were focusing on this as potentially being your next phone. I’ll just say this, you have to give it a chance. You have to go get your hands on it once it hits stores. By no means are we done with a review nor do we have final thoughts, but everything we have seen in the last day with the phone has been nothing but positive. It’s a different type of device, that’s for sure. It’ll take a different mindset, one that isn’t worried about quad-cores and 1080p. If those things are the most important thing to you, then maybe this phone isn’t for you.
Over the next week, we’ll be diving fully into this to decide if we are in that boat or not as well. For now though, we wanted to share some Moto X features that you may not be familiar with that might improve your thoughts on it. If anything, at least take a look at the CPU and GPU section, as there is some confusion on this front.
Same GPU as the Galaxy S4 and HTC One, performs better in benchmarks.
Worried about a processor that is a “year old”? We’re seeing that argument over and over again in the comments, so we thought we’d point out a bunch of tests ran by ArsTechnica this morning to kick this thing off. Before we dive into performance, though, we wanted to make it clear that the Moto X, even though it sports a dual-core CPU, uses the exact same Adreno 320 GPU as the Galaxy S4 and HTC One. The CPU is also more than likely using Krait 300 cores instead of the year-old Krait 200 cores that many think it’s using. By all means, this is a custom job with tech on-par with the Snapdragon 600, it’s just not quad-core, so it’ll lack some overall power, something that seems to be throwing you all for a loop. That said, this phone is no slouch.
In terms of gaming, you may see better performance on the Moto X than you will on the One and Galaxy S4. For one, the Adreno 320 GPU will run better on a 720p display than a 1080p display, that’s for sure. You can see proof of that in the frame rates generated in the GFXBench 2.7 onscreen test above. But even offscreen, where the benchmark scales everything to 1080p, to put all phones tested on an equal playing field, the Moto X tops the GS4 and Nexus 4.
Their series of benchmarks also shows the Moto X beating the Galaxy S4 in browser tests, but overall falling in a full performance bench, but that’s because it’s only a dual-core CPU.
The processor and GPU combo in the Moto X is nothing to worry about.
HD Display may only be 720p, but it sure as hell isn’t PenTile.
Full Macro Shot
In the past, we have been extremely critical of Motorola for using terrible (and I mean terrible) PenTile AMOLED displays in phones like the Bionic and RAZR. So when we saw that the Moto X was carrying another AMOLED display, we were initially concerned. That said, Motorola is making it as clear as possible that this is not PenTile and is 100% RGB. There are no shared pixels, as each has its own red, green, and blue sub-pixels. We’re talking no blurring when scrolling through text and sharp images. You are looking at 316ppi for the Moto X’s 4.7″ display.
So no, it’s not 1080p, but you could argue either way that none of us truly need a 1080p display on a smartphone. From personal experience, I’ll simply say that as long as its a great HD display, I could go without the full HD resolution. Remember, I’m the guy that kept going back to the Nexus 4 and its 4.7″ 720p display, even after there were handfuls of 1080p phones on the market. Sure FHD is great to have, to say you have it, but if it’s a great 720p panel, your eye probably won’t tell the difference, other than icons and text will look bigger when compared to a 1080p panel.
Also, the 720p display on the Moto X should greatly improve battery life over other phones using 1080p displays.
Includes Crystal Talk for HD calls and better Touchless Controls.
Motorola has included CrystalTalk dual mic noise cancellation and noise adaptive hearing enhancements to aid in voice calls in noisy environments. This tech features automatic vocal amplification, background noise filtering, and articulation enhancement, but also plays a role in making Moto X’s Touchless Control feature work well, even in loud situations. So in other words, you get better sounding “HD” calls for both you and the person you are having conversations with.
Features dual LTE antennas.
This was rumored a week or so before the reveal, but the Moto X does indeed have dual LTE antennas. So you are looking at an antenna that carries the 2G, 3G, and initial 4G LTE signal, like you would see in a normal phone. But then Moto tossed in a second, dedicated LTE antenna to help it sustain and maintain fast connections on 700MHz LTE bands. They claim that this move means less power is needed to transmit and receive data, so in the end, you should see improved battery life and better data performance.
Has water-repellent coating.
To be clear, the Moto X is not a water-resistant phone. With that said, Motorola has used water-repellant coating on the outside and inside to keep you safe in a rain storm or something that would cause droplets of water to sneak onto your device.
Custom-shaped battery.
This is sort of a random bit, but cool none-the-less. Motorola told us during a briefing yesterday that they are using a custom step-shaped battery in the Moto X because of the space constraints. To keep the phone small enough, they had to get tricky on the inside, which is also why they went with nano SIM cards. They claim this battery enables 31% additional capacity without impacting the size.
802.11 ac WiFi, custom vibration effects, and speaker membrane temperature monitoring.
The Moto X also features the newest 802.11 ac WiFi standard, uses new haptics technology, so that you can customize vibration effects (though I’m still looking for this feature on the phone), and somehow monitors the temperature and movement of the speaker membrane to enable up to 6x more sound power to be emitted.
Just sharin’.A new report offers fresh reason to think that the Affordable Care Act isn’t collapsing ― or, to be more precise, that the program wasn’t collapsing before Donald Trump took over as president.
The report, from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, examines the financial performance of insurers selling coverage to individuals, whether directly to consumers or through one of the health care law’s new, state-based exchanges.
The Kaiser analysis comes not long after S&P Global Market Intelligence released a similar report that focused exclusively on nonprofit Blue Cross insurance companies offering these “non-group” plans. S&P’s analysts reached essentially the same conclusion as Kaiser’s ― that, while some of these insurers were still suffering big losses by the end of 2016, on the whole carriers were seeing better financial returns after two rough years in the newly reformed health care system.
The individual insurance market is showing signs of stabilizing. Still political uncertainty makes insurers hesitant https://t.co/21h4CmEkzH pic.twitter.com/RY11nsXykN — Cynthia Cox (@cynthiaccox) April 21, 2017
The ability of private insurers to cover their costs and, eventually, to make at least a small profit is critical to the Affordable Care Act’s success. That is because the law depends on these companies ― operating under the law’s new rules ― to provide coverage to people who can’t get insurance through employers or through government programs like Medicaid.
Going into 2016, the third full year of the law’s implementation, insurers realized that they had misjudged who would sign up for their plans. In particular, carriers expected a higher portion of relatively healthy people (with low medical bills) and a lower proportion of relatively unhealthy people (with high medical bills). As a result, the premiums they set were generally too low to cover costs ― and most ended up with big losses.
Some carriers responded by jacking up premiums, others by withdrawing plans altogether. In both cases, they made news that played into the arguments of the law’s critics, including Trump, who insisted that Obamacare suffered from fatal design flaws.
It’s an argument that Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have made repeatedly this year, as they have attempted to repeal the law and cited its supposedly imminent “collapse” or “implosion” as grounds for acting swiftly.
Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation
But many experts have said that last year’s turbulence was likely more of a one-time adjustment ― insurers bringing their premiums into line with medical expenses, or recognizing that their business model simply wasn’t suited to the kind of customers who buy coverage on their own. The data in the Kaiser report backs up this argument.
Overall, Kaiser found, the medical-loss ratio for these plans ― that is, the proportion of premiums that insurers paid out as claims ― fell from 103 percent in 2015 to 96 percent in 2016. That’s still too high for the plans to cover expenses, given overhead, but it represents a significant improvement, following two years of deterioration.
Another measure of plan performance, the ratio of revenue to claims per person, had changed in the same way, the Kaiser study found ― with a year of improvement following two years of increasing trouble.
Past performance does not guarantee future results, as the saying goes, and it’s impossible to know whether, absent other changes in the health care system, insurers were poised to see another year of improvements in 2017. But Cynthia Cox, one of the report’s co-authors, told HuffPost there’s good reason to think that insurance markets were, on the whole, stabilizing.
“First, we know that insurers raised premiums substantially this year, and second, we know that enrollment has mostly held steady,” said Cox, associate director of Kaiser’s Program for the Study of Health Reform and Private Insurance.
“We don’t usually think of rising premiums as good news, but in this case, since many insurers were losing money, some premium growth was necessary to stabilize the market,” Cox said. “Similarly with enrollment holding mostly steady, that’s a sign that there aren’t a lot of healthy people leaving the market.”
The overall trends mask huge differences from state to state, county to county, and insurer to insurer. That’s always been the case with the Affordable Care Act, which is really 51 different programs ― one for each state plus the District of Columbia ― and with a lot of variation even within those jurisdictions.
The reality is that consumers in Los Angeles or the suburbs of Detroit have more choices, and better prices, than those in Raleigh-Durham or rural Oklahoma. One major metropolitan area, the counties in and around Knoxville, Tennessee, currently has no insurers lined up for next year ― a reminder that, even with recent progress, the law still has significant problems that need fixing.
But now, all of a sudden, the program is facing new difficulties ― thanks to a change in who’s managing it.
The Obama administration worked hard to nurture the new insurance markets, whether by pushing to enroll people, or by working closely with insurers that were running into trouble. The Trump administration, by contrast, canceled planned advertising designed to encourage sign-ups, and signaled it will relax enforcement of the individual mandate.
Most ominously, Trump and his advisers have suggested they might stop payment of some key subsidies for insurers ― or at least use that money as leverage for legislative deal-making. It wouldn’t be the first time Republicans at the state or federal level had taken action that looked an awful lot like sabotage.
The uncertainty about the law’s future ― which includes, of course, the ongoing efforts to repeal it ― has spooked insurers. Officials and consultants have warned that, without some clarity about what the system will look like in the next year and beyond, carriers are more likely to jack up premiums (in order to protect against big losses) or simply to give up on the project altogether.
Trump has frequently predicted such an outcome would help Republicans politically, to the point where it sounds like he might welcome disarray. “I’ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode,” Trump said last month.Christina Hall's weekly grocery shopping ritual begins Thursday night in the kitchen of her cramped mobile home in Fairfax County, with the low hum of the refrigerator and the steady drip of the faucet in the background.
"Shredded cheese, bagels, milk... Maybe we can do two gallons this week," she says hopefully, scribbling the grocery list on a sheet of notebook paper. She goes through a cabinet, looks in the freezer, checks a shelf behind the linoleum-covered table. "Yogurt, crackers, bananas." She jots down a dozen or so more items: salad dressing, frozen vegetables... "That should keep me at about $50 for the week."
A divorced mother of two, Hall receives $219 a month in food stamps; the fastidious inspection of her cupboards and the dollar-by-dollar addition she does in her head are the only way she can make the allotment last through a month.
At a time when food prices are soaring, a growing number of Americans are struggling financially and local social service agencies are seeing record numbers of applicants, advocates are concerned that the purchasing power of food stamps has shrunk since 1996, when Congress recalculated benefit levels. The result slowed the value of food stamps relative to inflation. If benefits had kept pace with inflation over 12 years, a family with one working parent and two children would be receiving an additional $37 a month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.
To qualify for food stamps, recipients must have an income below 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or less than $22,880 for a family of three.
"An extra $37 a month," Hall said, chuckling. "That would be nice. Might be able to splurge every now and again."
Hall, 38, who lives in a scruffy, tree-lined cul-de-sac of mobile homes in Hybla Valley, one of the poorest sections of one of the country's richest counties, knows that the monthly payment doled out on a blue plastic debit card is meant only to supplement her food budget. The federal government's guidelines make that clear.
But her $8.75-an-hour home health aide job -- about $1,200 after taxes during a good month -- stretches only so far, with rent ($550), utilities ($100, sometimes much more), gas ($180, even in her fuel-efficient Honda Civic), a car payment ($288) and car insurance ($163). That doesn't include other expenses that come with raising a 13-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. The stamps are the family's entire food budget. Skyrocketing food prices and the declining value of the government benefit has made feeding the family a daily struggle for Hall, a first-time food stamp recipient.
Hall wrestled with the challenge the next day as she tried to manage the family's weekly food needs and squeeze in a few extra items for her daughter's birthday party that weekend. Her son had lost his school meal card, which allows him to eat a free breakfast at school every day, so she has to make him breakfast at home until the end of the month, adding an unexpected expense.
"Okay, we can get one package of potato chips and one package of popcorn, okay?" Hall said to her daughter, Rosita, who was having a tough time containing her excitement about the party.
Hall shops at the Aldi on Route 1, a discount supermarket along the frayed commercial strip, where many shoppers go to save money on store brand items that can be as much as 50 percent cheaper than other chains'. The week's dinner plan called for spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, sloppy Joes, tacos and chicken nuggets, plus mixed vegetables with each meal. As she shopped earlier this month, though, she was feeling lucky. Her mother had given her some ground beef and pork earlier in the week. And her son, Richard, was going on a Scout trip, so she wouldn't need as much food over the weekend. (As it turned out, Richard came home a day early, so she had to "wing it for Sunday dinner," she said later.)
Hall made her way through the store using her shopping list as a guide: two gallons of milk, $3.08 each; one package of macaroni and cheese, 59 cents; two quarts of yogurt for her lunch, $1.29. She picked out a box of yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting for Rosita's birthday cake, only to put them back later. Her mother would buy them. Into the cart went vegetables, frozen orange juice and hoagie buns. Bacon and ground turkey, initially on the list, would have to wait. "This! This!" Rosita squealed, pointing to a stack of bagel pizzas at $5.99 apiece.I have to give this product 2 stars for its technical support. The product itself is great I have been using BD for years. My problem is with the out sourced tech support guruaid. I was forced into and early upgrade by Win 10 like so many others (look it up on the Internet). 2015 is not compatible with Win 10, so you have to trick it to work. I chose to go through BD tech support rather than try the antics I read on line. After five attempts to get some one to answer the 24/7 support line I got a guy in a "out sourced" call center. I explained the issue, he remotes in and then he put me on hold for 10 minutes. He returns to explain he can install the software for me, but first he would have to do a system clean up for a small fee. First it was $120, then it was $100, finally it was $80; when I explained that I would rather switch to a different brand of software than pay another dime. He said fine and hung up; amazing third part product support. I went back to the rigging I found on BD's website forum comments and I was up and running in 15 minutes. Guruaid support guy called back to verify that I did not want to have the product install and have my laptop protected. I started to rip him a new one then I just said no thanks I will figure something out, and I let him think he left me high and dry. Needless to say I double packed my my firewall rules.Where is the Wikipedia for Debates?
Timothy High Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 11, 2016
We all know Wikipedia. We all love it, we all use it, and we all love to ridicule anyone who uses it as their primary source. Wikipedia is a game-changer. It is the reason for Wangston's Law: Humans should not waste their time discussing things that can be answered by Wikipedia.
What is it that makes Wikipedia so special and so unique? The fact that it IS unique. If you need to know about anything that is a noun, proper or common, it's the first place to go. And, if you are an expert on a subject and want to make sure it is properly represented to the internet (and, maybe, get your name out there as an expert), you know where everyone will look first. This is how Wikipedia has managed to reach 5,275,000 unique articles in English alone (not counting those removed for being too "unimportant").
So What's Left?
If we can't discuss petty facts over the dinner table, what are humans to do? It turns out there is a whole area of conversation not covered by Wikipedia: Debate. Opinion. Controversy. Basically, anything that isn't a static fact. Let's breathe a sigh of relief that Wikipedia won't be ruining tonight's cocktail party.
But then let's take a look at how we, as humans, are doing with those leftovers, using the imminent presidential election as our prism:
You're So Vague
We just chose as a nation who will be the most powerful executive officer in what is currently the world's only super power. And yet, rather than going into details on the specifics, news reports focused on the scandals and personal lives, ads tried to elicit a feeling rather than engage with intellect, and even discussions on "issues", whenever they popped up, were so high level that you could get away with agreeing with both sides, or none.
It's not that the information isn't out there. It's ALL OVER THE PLACE! Never before have we had so MUCH information. And that's part of the problem. Where to go? (Right, Google… but then, which link to click??) Also, everywhere we go, we only get a part of the story. And often, complete contradictions, with no way to bring it all together into some sort of consensus.
As a rule, the BEST information is generally locked up in academic research, in papers behind paywalls, in a language that is totally incomprehensible to most of us, and definitely not linkable. People are dedicating their lives to policy-relevant information that no one will read.
Our decision-making process is totally inverted: the expert information is "down in the weeds" where we don't see it, while unsubstantiated clickbait flickers mesmerizingly before our eyes.
Living In a Bubble
Given the fogginess of the situation, one can be excused when the "facts" are made subject to interpretation. As anyone familiar with cognitive biases can attest, those interpretations will naturally reinforce whatever was believed before, and whatever "side" we were originally on. We surround ourselves in Facebook, Twitter, and cocktail parties with people that agree with us (or agree to avoid uncomfortable discussions) until we are armed more with in-jokes that are funny to our friends than we are with deep policy insights.
How is it possible that Donald Trump, the most narcissistic public figure alive, who doesn’t pay taxes, is a father-made billionaire, and is known to stiff his employees and cheat business partners, can be seen as the one person that is in this race for the good of the common middle class worker? How can anyone vote for someone like that?
How is it possible that the most corrupt woman in politics, under investigation by the FBI, embroiled in multiple scandals, who uses political power and supposed philanthropy for personal profit, and who was caught on tape as being secretly in the pocket of Wall Street, can claim to be the champion of the poor and the powerless? And how can anyone vote to give someone like that access to the most powerful post in the world?
The real question is: how can so many people accept exactly one of these two statements at face value, while discussing ad infinitum the reasons the other is wrong. And why is there no in-between?
La la la la la! I Can't Heeeeeear You!
When chance (or, more often than not, family) brings us in contact with someone with whom to exchange opposing views, we greet them as "opponents" with idiotic misconceptions that must be ridiculed and smited (smitten? smot? I'm open for discussion…). This is the most infuriating and useless exercise possible. Fireworks and epithets fly as both sides spout half-remembered half-truths, red herrings and straw men, and just for yucks, the aforementioned in-jokes in a frustrated attempt to belittle our enemy before all.
(I would like to take an aside here and declare what I am hereby calling High's Law (Tim's Law? Troll's Law? more discussion…) of the Internet, which is: Anything you say online can and will be interpreted in the absolute worst way possible… which is really what makes this sort of thing so entertaining, and so hard to walk away from.)
The point here is that this kind of behavior probably shouldn't be considered discussion. It's about taking turns lobbing snotty logic grenades, ducking back down for cover, and watching for the next grenade just long enough to figure out where to aim our next attack.
It Doesn't Add Up
You've tried that, right? Did it feel good? Did you accomplish something? Or did you come out with an empty feeling, a weird mix of shame and rage? And the next time you talked about this same subject with someone else, did it go better? Were you enriched with the tools and information you learned in the previous exchange? Or did you start all over from zero, armed only with your puny arsenal of hearsay facts taken way out of context?
The problem is that the way we conduct our debates, in person and online, it just doesn't accumulate. If we're building an ivory tower of wisdom, we are doing it one grain of sand at a time, with no glue to cement it together. In a strong wind. With our eyes closed.
Just Give Me the Elevator Pitch
I don't want it to be like this! I want to be informed! I want to see both sides, evenly and without hyperbole. And I want it in 30 seconds or less. Is that asking too much?
I want there to be exactly one place that I can trust will have all the information I need on any controversial subject, rolled up nicely and neatly into the top 5 or so relevant arguments from each side.
I want to trust that these arguments have been vetted by experts on the subject, they themselves having been discussed and bantered about, with evidence that has itself been openly discussed.
I want to see the pros and cons, the expected impacts and outcomes of a decision, also openly debated.
When I have a point to make, or supporting evidence, or an opinion about the relevance or validity of something, I want to be able to contribute it once, and once only, to the one place I know others will see it.
I want there to be one canonical place where I can send all trolls, doubters and outright fibbers whenever an absurd claim is made, be it in a Facebook comment, a Tweet, a news site comment section, or, uh, on national TV.
I want the Wikipedia for Debates!The default kernel which comes with Trisquel is a generic kernel which aims to run on the maximum number of hardware configurations. When you build your own, you can optimize it for your hardware and leave out all the drivers and features you don't have use for. It's also educational to take a peek into the inner workings of GNU Linux-libre.
Make a directory inside your home directory for compiling the kernel:
mkdir ~/kernel_compiling/
uname -r
To see what kernel you're now on, typeAcquire the source code for the new kernel at http://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/ and save it to the kernel_compiling folder
Install packages needed for the job:
sudo apt-get install kernel-package ncurses-dev bzip2 module-init-tools initramfs-tools procps fakeroot build-essential lzop unp bc
If you plan on using the graphical configuration tools, gconfig or xconfig, you'll need additional packages, respectively libgtk2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev libglade2-dev for gconfig or libqt3-mt-dev for xconfig. There might be other dependencies too and if they're not satisfied you'll be notified once you try to invoke the graphical configurator.
Goto the kernel_compiling directory:
cd ~/kernel_compiling
unp linux-libre-3.18.8-gnu.tar.xz
cd linux-3.18.8
Extract the new kernel archive, e.g.Goto the new kernel directory:Now you may apply any patches you wish.
Now comes the configuration step. This requires a lot of work on your part and will take a long time. There are many interesting ways to automatically select some of the options, you'll want to read the README file.
less README
The localmodconfig is quite handy, it still probably needs additions and subtractions.
Perhaps start with copying the config of the current kernel you're running.
make oldconfig
make config
make menuconfig
make gconfig
make xconfig
And then pick one of the interactive configuration tools(text based, linear)(text based, ncurses interface)(graphical GTK based) (GTK=gnome toolkit)(graphical QT based) (QT=toolkit used in KDE)
I think menuconfig probably is the fastest, gconfig prettiest and xconfig has by far the best search function.
Y means integrated into the kernel and (theoretically) always active
M means built as a module and activated if required
N means not included in any form
You can get info about your processor with
cat /proc/cpuinfo
lspci
lsusb
To get info about the rest of your hardware, runandStart with changing only the obvious things, the ones you're 300% sure of. You will repeat this process many times and will get to know the more esoteric ones... If this is your first time, don't be too bold! Once you're done, save changes and exit.
Clean the slate for kernel compiling
make-kpkg clean
grep -c '^processor' /proc/cpuinfo
export CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=2
You can get the current number of CPUs using the commandIf you have a multiprocessor machine, you'll want to make all processors work, do e.g.Documentation suggests using "a (small) integer".
Perform the actual compile, this will take anywhere from 10 minutes to 5 hours depending on your hardware and configuration choices (the more you selected, the longer it will take). Your presence is not required. You need to include kernel_headers if you later want to compile some other modules against your kernel.
make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers
It then will give you all kind of chatter, warnings and notices during, it's quite normal. Only errors are serious, as in the process will halt. If you get an error about missing zlib.h, you need to install the zlib1g-dev package. If you get any other error, you probably need to install a related -dev package as a rule of thumb.
Once it's done through with no errors, goto the lower directory where the.deb we just created is
cd..
sudo nano /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
If you didn't select kernel support for gzip type of initrd compression then you need to edit the COMPRESS parameter of initramfs.conf to match your selection. Gzip will be used for compressing the initrd unless you specify something else in initramfs.conf. If your kernel doesn't support the compression used to make the initrd, you'll get a kernel panic at reboot (indicated by hang + flashing caps lock).Install the.deb package(s)Then it's the moment of truth, the smoke test! It's a good idea to have a live CD or live USB at hand now. Reboot and hold shift to show grub menu and select from the list the new kernel.
If it boots, nice, you made it, congratulations!
Checklist
Network (Wireless and Ethernet)
Audio
USB Sticks
CD/DVD Drives
Any |
, GPS trails, telemetry from automobiles, financial market data, the list goes on. Are these all really the same thing?
To clarify matters, the three Vs of volume, velocity and variety are commonly used to characterize different aspects of big data. They’re a helpful lens through which to view and understand the nature of the data and the software platforms available to exploit them. Most probably you will contend with each of the Vs to one degree or another.
Volume
The benefit gained from the ability to process large amounts of information is the main attraction of big data analytics. Having more data beats out having better models: simple bits of math can be unreasonably effective given large amounts of data. If you could run that forecast taking into account 300 factors rather than 6, could you predict demand better?
This volume presents the most immediate challenge to conventional IT structures. It calls for scalable storage, and a distributed approach to querying. Many companies already have large amounts of archived data, perhaps in the form of logs, but not the capacity to process it.
Assuming that the volumes of data are larger than those conventional relational database infrastructures can cope with, processing options break down broadly into a choice between massively parallel processing architectures — data warehouses or databases such as Greenplum — and Apache Hadoop-based solutions. This choice is often informed by the degree to which the one of the other “Vs” — variety — comes into play. Typically, data warehousing approaches involve predetermined schemas, suiting a regular and slowly evolving dataset. Apache Hadoop, on the other hand, places no conditions on the structure of the data it can process.
At its core, Hadoop is a platform for distributing computing problems across a number of servers. First developed and released as open source by Yahoo, it implements the MapReduce approach pioneered by Google in compiling its search indexes. Hadoop’s MapReduce involves distributing a dataset among multiple servers and operating on the data: the “map” stage. The partial results are then recombined: the “reduce” stage.
To store data, Hadoop utilizes its own distributed filesystem, HDFS, which makes data available to multiple computing nodes. A typical Hadoop usage pattern involves three stages:
loading data into HDFS,
MapReduce operations, and
retrieving results from HDFS.
This process is by nature a batch operation, suited for analytical or non-interactive computing tasks. Because of this, Hadoop is not itself a database or data warehouse solution, but can act as an analytical adjunct to one.
One of the most well-known Hadoop users is Facebook, whose model follows this pattern. A MySQL database stores the core data. This is then reflected into Hadoop, where computations occur, such as creating recommendations for you based on your friends’ interests. Facebook then transfers the results back into MySQL, for use in pages served to users.
Velocity
The importance of data’s velocity — the increasing rate at which data flows into an organization — has followed a similar pattern to that of volume. Problems previously restricted to segments of industry are now presenting themselves in a much broader setting. Specialized companies such as financial traders have long turned systems that cope with fast moving data to their advantage. Now it’s our turn.
Why is that so? The Internet and mobile era means that the way we deliver and consume products and services is increasingly instrumented, generating a data flow back to the provider. Online retailers are able to compile large histories of customers’ every click and interaction: not just the final sales. Those who are able to quickly utilize that information, by recommending additional purchases, for instance, gain competitive advantage. The smartphone era increases again the rate of data inflow, as consumers carry with them a streaming source of geolocated imagery and audio data.
It’s not just the velocity of the incoming data that’s the issue: it’s possible to stream fast-moving data into bulk storage for later batch processing, for example. The importance lies in the speed of the feedback loop, taking data from input through to decision. A commercial from IBM makes the point that you wouldn’t cross the road if all you had was a five-minute old snapshot of traffic location. There are times when you simply won’t be able to wait for a report to run or a Hadoop job to complete.
Industry terminology for such fast-moving data tends to be either “streaming data,” or “complex event processing.” This latter term was more established in product categories before streaming processing data gained more widespread relevance, and seems likely to diminish in favor of streaming.
There are two main reasons to consider streaming processing. The first is when the input data are too fast to store in their entirety: in order to keep storage requirements practical some level of analysis must occur as the data streams in. At the extreme end of the scale, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN generates so much data that scientists must discard the overwhelming majority of it — hoping hard they’ve not thrown away anything useful. The second reason to consider streaming is where the application mandates immediate response to the data. Thanks to the rise of mobile applications and online gaming this is an increasingly common situation.
Product categories for handling streaming data divide into established proprietary products such as IBM’s InfoSphere Streams, and the less-polished and still emergent open source frameworks originating in the web industry: Twitter’s Storm, and Yahoo S4.
As mentioned above, it’s not just about input data. The velocity of a system’s outputs can matter too. The tighter the feedback loop, the greater the competitive advantage. The results might go directly into a product, such as Facebook’s recommendations, or into dashboards used to drive decision-making.
It’s this need for speed, particularly on the web, that has driven the development of key-value stores and columnar databases, optimized for the fast retrieval of precomputed information. These databases form part of an umbrella category known as NoSQL, used when relational models aren’t the right fit.
Variety
Rarely does data present itself in a form perfectly ordered and ready for processing. A common theme in big data systems is that the source data is diverse, and doesn’t fall into neat relational structures. It could be text from social networks, image data, a raw feed directly from a sensor source. None of these things come ready for integration into an application.
Even on the web, where computer-to-computer communication ought to bring some guarantees, the reality of data is messy. Different browsers send different data, users withhold information, they may be using differing software versions or vendors to communicate with you. And you can bet that if part of the process involves a human, there will be error and inconsistency.
A common use of big data processing is to take unstructured data and extract ordered meaning, for consumption either by humans or as a structured input to an application. One such example is entity resolution, the process of determining exactly what a name refers to. Is this city London, England, or London, Texas? By the time your business logic gets to it, you don’t want to be guessing.
The process of moving from source data to processed application data involves the loss of information. When you tidy up, you end up throwing stuff away. This underlines a principle of big data: when you can, keep everything. There may well be useful signals in the bits you throw away. If you lose the source data, there’s no going back.
Despite the popularity and well understood nature of relational databases, it is not the case that they should always be the destination for data, even when tidied up. Certain data types suit certain classes of database better. For instance, documents encoded as XML are most versatile when stored in a dedicated XML store such as MarkLogic. Social network relations are graphs by nature, and graph databases such as Neo4J make operations on them simpler and more efficient.
Even where there’s not a radical data type mismatch, a disadvantage of the relational database is the static nature of its schemas. In an agile, exploratory environment, the results of computations will evolve with the detection and extraction of more signals. Semi-structured NoSQL databases meet this need for flexibility: they provide enough structure to organize data, but do not require the exact schema of the data before storing it.
In practice
We have explored the nature of big data, and surveyed the landscape of big data from a high level. As usual, when it comes to deployment there are dimensions to consider over and above tool selection.
Cloud or in-house?
The majority of big data solutions are now provided in three forms: software-only, as an appliance or cloud-based. Decisions between which route to take will depend, among other things, on issues of data locality, privacy and regulation, human resources and project requirements. Many organizations opt for a hybrid solution: using on-demand cloud resources to supplement in-house deployments.
Big data is big
It is a fundamental fact that data that is too big to process conventionally is also too big to transport anywhere. IT is undergoing an inversion of priorities: it’s the program that needs to move, not the data. If you want to analyze data from the U.S. Census, it’s a lot easier to run your code on Amazon’s web services platform, which hosts such data locally, and won’t cost you time or money to transfer it.
Even if the data isn’t too big to move, locality can still be an issue, especially with rapidly updating data. Financial trading systems crowd into data centers to get the fastest connection to source data, because that millisecond difference in processing time equates to competitive advantage.
Big data is messy
It’s not all about infrastructure. Big data practitioners consistently report that 80% of the effort involved in dealing with data is cleaning it up in the first place, as Pete Warden observes in his Big Data Glossary: “I probably spend more time turning messy source data into something usable than I do on the rest of the data analysis process combined.”
Because of the high cost of data acquisition and cleaning, it’s worth considering what you actually need to source yourself. Data marketplaces are a means of obtaining common data, and you are often able to contribute improvements back. Quality can of course be variable, but will increasingly be a benchmark on which data marketplaces compete.
Culture
The phenomenon of big data is closely tied to the emergence of data science, a discipline that combines math, programming and scientific instinct. Benefiting from big data means investing in teams with this skillset, and surrounding them with an organizational willingness to understand and use data for advantage.
In his report, “Building Data Science Teams,” D.J. Patil characterizes data scientists as having the following qualities:
Technical expertise: the best data scientists typically have deep expertise in some scientific discipline.
Curiosity: a desire to go beneath the surface and discover and distill a problem down into a very clear set of hypotheses that can be tested.
Storytelling: the ability to use data to tell a story and to be able to communicate it effectively.
Cleverness: the ability to look at a problem in different, creative ways.
The far-reaching nature of big data analytics projects can have uncomfortable aspects: data must be broken out of silos in order to be mined, and the organization must learn how to communicate and interpet the results of analysis.
Those skills of storytelling and cleverness are the gateway factors that ultimately dictate whether the benefits of analytical labors are absorbed by an organization. The art and practice of visualizing data is becoming ever more important in bridging the human-computer gap to mediate analytical insight in a meaningful way.
Know where you want to go
Finally, remember that big data is no panacea. You can find patterns and clues in your data, but then what? Christer Johnson, IBM’s leader for advanced analytics in North America, gives this advice to businesses starting out with big data: first, decide what problem you want to solve.
If you pick a real business problem, such as how you can change your advertising strategy to increase spend per customer, it will guide your implementation. While big data work benefits from an enterprising spirit, it also benefits strongly from a concrete goal.People attend a course on new types of drugs including "ice", ecstasy and ketamine in Hefei, east China's Anhui province, October 31, 2005. REUTERS/China Newsphoto
TAIPEI (Reuters) - About 30 kg (66lb) of smuggled party drug ketamine arrived on one of the first direct cargo flights between political rivals China and Taiwan following six decades of hostile relations, a Customs official said Friday.
Airport Customs agents in Taipei found the popular powdered hallucinatory drug Thursday packed into eight boxes on a Chinese cargo plane, customs officials said.
“Our expectation was that direct cargo links could possibly lead to drug smuggling,” said Lin Shu-chi, deputy Taipei Customs Office head. “I can’t say this was beyond our imagination.”
The ketamine was worth T$930,000 ($27,000), Lin said.
Taiwan and China opened direct cargo routes and launched daily direct passenger flights Monday for the first time since 1949 to help Taiwan investors save time and money on travel and factory shipments.
China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communists won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (KMT) fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.
The jump in trade and transit links underscore how quickly ties have warmed under the island’s pro-China President Ma Ying-jeou, who took office in May on a pledge to improve cooperation with Beijing.
A 31-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in connection with the ketamine, which was destined for a convenience store in central Taiwan, local media said.Donald Trump’s nomination of Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke to lead the Interior Department could signal the revival of a much-debated coal-export terminal in Northwest Washington state that’s pitted industry groups and unions against environmental and community groups, and two Indian tribes against each other.
In Congress, Zinke has been a staunch supporter of the Gateway Pacific Terminal, a $600 million facility in Whatcom County, Wash., that would export about 48 million tons a year of coal mined in western states to Pacific Rim markets.
Zinke also wants to lift a moratorium on new leases for coal extraction on federal lands, 90 percent of which takes place in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. The Interior Department imposed the hiatus earlier this year.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the project in May, citing its impact on the fishing rights of the Lummi Nation. Zinke has countered that Montana’s Crow tribe would benefit from the project by sending coal mined on its lands to the new terminal.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Bellingham Herald
“The Gateway Pacific Terminal is incredibly important to Montana, the Crow, and even to the blue-collar workers in Washington State because it is literally the gateway to economic prosperity and rising out of poverty,” he said in May. “It’s a sad day in America when even our Army Corps of Engineers can be wooed by special interests.”
The Gateway Pacific Terminal is incredibly important to Montana, the Crow, and even to the blue collar workers in Washington State because it is literally the gateway to economic prosperity and rising out of poverty. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Montana
In April, Zinke compared the Army Corps permitting process for the coal terminal to the Obama administration’s earlier rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
“Thanks to political pressure and the environmental special interests,” he said, “the Gateway Pacific Terminal is suffering the same bureaucratic death as the Keystone XL Pipeline.”
Thanks to political pressure and the environmental special interests, the Gateway Pacific Terminal is suffering the same bureaucratic death as the Keystone XL Pipeline. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Montana
Zinke made the project a campaign issue this year, producing a TV ad in September featuring Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s comments that appeared to promote putting coal companies and miners out of business and tying his opponent to Clinton’s remarks.
“I always side with Montana Coal Country,” Zinke said in the ad. “I supported the Gateway Pacific Terminal for the Crow tribe to export their coal.”
Zinke and other Montana officials visited Northwest Washington in August 2015 and touted the project’s benefits for the Crow tribe.
The Crow tribe has a deal with Cloud Peak Energy, a coal producer that purchased a 49 percent stake in the Gateway Pacific Terminal.
The tribe has a deal with Cloud Peak Energy, a coal producer that purchased a 49 percent stake in the Gateway Pacific Terminal. Under the agreement, the company would pay the tribe $10 million up front and royalties of as much as 15 percent to mine coal on its lands.
“The Crow tribe is tired of being poor,” Zinke told the Bellingham Herald. “Their only option for jobs and to control their destiny is utilization of coal.”
But one of the leading opponents of the project was another tribe, the Lummi, whose fishing rights in Puget Sound are protected by treaty. The tribe had the backing of many environmental and community groups that opposed the project based on climate change impacts or the potential increase in the number of coal trains.
One of the leading opponents of the project was the Lummi Nation, whose fishing rights in Puget Sound are protected by treaty.
Zinke said in his 2015 visit to the region that the project would address those concerns.
“Their environmental plan is flawless,” Zinke said. “Looking at the restoration of the wetlands along the coast, their willingness to work with the local tribes to reflect their cultural history, I think is well served.”This is my second time with a pre-release version of Prison Architect. You can read my first impressions right here. This time I’ve played a slightly more advanced version, albeit one that is not tuned for IGF judges. Fresh thoughts stockaded below.
Last time around the game landed me in the story sequence of its tutorial, and taught me quite a specific lesson about building certain things in the game. This time, however, I landed straight into a large pre-built prison, and instead of following instructions I simply took charge of what someone at Introversion – perhaps Chris, the programmer – had already constructed.
I watched things play out. As soon as I’d loaded the level up there was a fight about to break out in the showers. A huge brawl of bodies surged into the large shower complex, with one of the inmates going down quite rapidly. A lone guard, far ahead of his colleagues, waded in, and was stabbed to death. Soon after the rest of the guards bundled in, pacifying the riot and cleaning up the mess. Even before it was over I had begun to wonder at the collection of rules that must govern the behaviour of the AI, and dictate how events play out in the prison. I looked at the tiny corpses of the guard and inmate. I reloaded the level.
The brawl erupted again. This time guards responded faster to the fracas, and two of them arrived on the scene ahead of the main group. Already, within seconds, Prison Architect’s systems were playing out the complex interactions of a large group of prisoners and their guards in a different way. This time the fight was quite different. One of the guards went down, but was only injured – the fighting between the inmates, however, was far more ferocious, and four of them ended up dead on the shower room floor. Grisly, despite the plain, clean, cartoon visuals.
Watching the guards clear up and carry bodies to the morgue, I swept the camera around the rest of the large prison. Some inmates were in their cells. Others in the canteen. One was still fleeing from the fight, pursued by guards. On the other side of the prison some inmates were getting exercise before wandering back their bunks. It was a large, bustling complex that I was in charge of. I swept across it, and spotted the warden in his office. He pootled back and forth, as if unsure of his responsibility. I knew how he felt.
There’s something about watching these sorts of systems that fascinates. I am not sure quite why it’s so compelling, but you can see it in everything from The Sims, through old Bullfrog games, and into more complicated corners of gaming, like Dwarf Fortress. Prison Architect certainly appeals to that caretaker-voyeur feeling in gaming, and I can appreciate exactly what Introversion were trying to do when they put this together.
Of course there’s also the raw prison-building aspect, and I began afresh as soon as I’d bored of tinkering with the pre-made prison. There’s definitely a solid theme/manager building process at work here. I was rapidly engrossed in making every cell have a toilet in the centre of the room, like a peculiar echo of the nearby electric chair. But balancing the budget at the start was maddening, too. This is one of those game development things that I am sure Introversion will have to sink endless hours into balancing, but I can already see what the game is here: the juggling of resources to take on more inmates than you will ever really have space for. I hope there’s a deluxe wealthy prison option, too, so I can go to down on grand detention plans.
That said, I wonder precisely how the game will escalate beyond opening up a tech tree of facilities for you to build. Dangerous prisoners? A Charles Bronson you must contain, at huge expense? I also felt, as I built my cells and shower blocks, that there was something missing in the planning element of the game. Perhaps it was my haste to get something put up, but I kept making mistakes, and felt that my prison was less architected than it was simply cobbled together, as if by accident. “Prison Cobbler” doesn’t sound quite the same.
Still, it was clear that my slam was no panopticon, and that I am more a builder and manager than I am any kind of spatial visionary for the future of keeping people incarcerated.
But these are silly, hand-wavey quibbles. The truth is that Introversion are building something that sits within a familiar heritage for PC games, and they are doing it with style. The game’s systems are fascinating, and the blue-printy style is bang on, well complimented by the dark sound effects that rumble beneath your mouse pointer.
And yet there’s still clearly a long way to go, too. I am looking forward to getting my hands on a final build, and see exactly what the little British game company made instead of Subversion.ANALYSIS/OPINION:
It’s now up to Texas Gov. Rick Perry to rescue the nation’s travelers from the indignity of x-rated airport screening at the hands of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). On Tuesday, a state House of Representatives committee is scheduled to consider revised legislation holding blue-gloved bureaucrats criminally liable for grabbing the private parts of passengers without probable cause or consent. For the measure to proceed further, however, Mr. Perry would have to formally add it to the list of bills considered during the special session now under way.
State Rep. David P. Simpson, the bill’s author, believes that ought to be the natural thing to do for Mr. Perry, author of the book, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington.” Mr. Simpson’s legislation merely clarifies that federal agents do not have a blank check to violate the Lone Star State’s criminal statutes while acting without explicit orders from Congress - no such orders exist. “This is not nullification,” Mr. Simpson explained to The Washington Times. “There is no federal law we’re contravening. We’re seeking to protect the citizens of Texas from an overreach - literally - of a federal bureaucracy that’s gone wild.”
TSA is so brazen that the most perverted aspect of the job has become a selling point used in advertisements: “A career where x-ray vision and federal benefits come standard - become a Transportation Security Officer.”
Support for reining in this unseemly conduct crosses party lines. Phones throughout the state capital have been ringing off the hook, prompting House members on both sides of the aisle to embrace the bill unanimously last month. On the eve of a final Senate vote, however, a last-minute Obama administration threat to ground all air travel in Texas derailed the issue in the regular session. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a Republican, called on Mr. Perry to add the TSA bill to the special-session agenda. A near-unanimous State Republican Executive Committee joined in that call, as have a number of Tea Party groups.
Grass-roots activists see the importance of taking a stand against federal power that continues to grow without limit. The public rightly wants air travel to be secure, but nobody believes groping grandmothers and toddlers does anything to achieve that goal. Applying criminal statutes to TSA agents doesn’t mean screeners will end up spending time in the slammer. It’s even less likely that the White House would cut off the primary hub airports like Dallas and Houston, which would cause unprecedented travel chaos. Rather, Mr. Perry needs to advance this bill because it would force a rogue federal agency to revise the obscene policies it devised behind closed doors without the support or confidence of the American people.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.BACK to How to live well on very, very little
In the early days we almost never threw anything away in my family. We'd put everything away somewhere, 'just in case' we found a use for it later. Scrap lumber, metal, and paper, old clothes, broken radios and TVs, car parts, you name it, we kept it. We often accepted the cast offs of neighbors and friends too, and simply added it all to the pile. This drove my mom crazy, but it sure did come in handy. Over the years we ended up actually re-using quite a bit of this stuff, often in ways we'd never guessed when first putting it aside. This often saved us from having to buy new items, or waste the time driving around shopping/looking for same. So it saved us both money and time.
All us kids (well, at least the boys) thus became trained to always check the 'junk' in the basement or garage first when we needed or wanted something. We'd scan the assortment of items, brainstorming on ways to improvise upon this item or that, to achieve our goal of the moment. And so, we were being steadily trained in the art of 'aggressive exploratory recycling'.
Of course, to be a master of this technique like my dad, you must educate yourself by all available means. Schooling helps a lot-- but mainly serves just to get you started on your real education, in this field. You have to be willing to learn as you go, on-the-fly, allowing what opportunities come your way to shape your studies and experimentation.
For instance, decades ago dad noticed some electrical motors being thrown away at his workplace, and realized such things could really come in handy in his own personal workshop. So he'd gather up the discarded items and take them home and test and disassemble them to find and correct the problem, where possible. Often it turned out to be simple fixes which were considered impractical for a large company to fool with, but well worth the time of an individual looking to cheaply motorize a home or small workshop. He'd replace worn out brushes or bearings, and end up with valuable industrial grade motors which in many cases would last the lifetime of a single household like ours (which couldn't stress motors as severely as a factory). Indeed, I'd wager dad still has some such motors ready to work at the flip of a switch today, that he first salvaged and repaired 40 years ago or more.
Of course, motors usually require the housing of frameworks or larger devices to really do anything. So dad designed and built himself things like combination saw and grinder tables for such purposes. He also built custom window fans to cool our non-air conditioned home in the summers.
Dad did things like obtain 'junked' lawn mowers and electric drills from places like yard sales or the discards of neighbors, revamp their motors or other items needing repair, and add the once-again functional devices to the household armory. Some 10-15 years back he built an electric lawn mower out of an old dead and motorless mower chassis, discarded car battery, and electric motor. He's used it regularly ever since.
Another motorless lawn mower chassis he did something quite different with. During a spate of neighborhood vandalism, dad's front yard and driveway became frequently strewn with very hard to see nails, which were a hazard to both his and visitors' car tires and to anyone walking the area. Dad checked his junk collection and found he had a motorless law mower chassis, and a large two-foot long magnet which had been discarded by a food plant maybe 25 years before (it was originally used to extract metal objects from produce to be canned). So dad put larger wheels on the chassis to raise its rolling height to accommodate the magnet, and viola! he now had a 'nail sweeper'. This gave dad a tool by which he could comprehensively sweep the affected area of all nails early each morning. I saw for myself its effectiveness. It literally gathered up hundreds of nails, filling up bucket after bucket, over a several week period. So besides removing a real danger from his yard and driveway, dad actually profited from the vandalism by adding to his carpentry nail supply.
To help keep us kids entertained and out of trouble decades ago, dad built an amusement park ride out of a single tall metal pole, four or five long lengths of chain, and maybe ten short metal rods or pipes. This gave several kids at once a contraption they could each slip one leg into and hold onto with one or both hands, and fly at great speeds around at wildly fluctuating heights-- with the speed and height determined solely by their own physical exertions. It was much better than a conventional swing set. So much so that all the neighborhood kids preferred coming to swing on our special ride, than use their own store-bought swing sets.
As a teen I got into cars big-time-- especially race cars. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to get the shiny new Firebird Trans Am I drooled over in the magazines, and some of my richer high school associates managed to receive as gifts. Fortunately though, me and dad were able to work together to pretty much satisfy my automotive yearnings in another way. One which as a byproduct provided me with a substantial education in automotive systems, principles, design, troubleshooting, and repair (That training would serve me and those around me well in the decades to follow).
Dad and I did a heavy customization of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach One, with the goal being to incorporate many cutting edge features of the most famous race cars of the time (this was ages ago: the nineteen-seventies). One of these refinements was a large air dam for the front of the car. The bottom needed to be flexible so it wouldn't break when it occasionally encountered a curb or the road itself. So we shaped the upper portion from sheet metal and the bottom six to eight inches from an old thick rubber conveyor belt, thrown away by a factory. It worked like a charm. Heavier duty suspension parts (like anti-sway bars and springs) and sleeker, more functional body parts (like air scoops) from originally better equipped or newer versions of our Mustang were sought out and retreived from auto salvage yards. Discarded steam pipes formed the interior roll cage. Discarded aluminum conduit was used in building a custom dashboard. We cut louvers out of a metal box which originally contained an air conditioning unit gone bad, and welded them into the hood for both cool looks and extra engine cooling. Built our own custom grill with window screen and sheet metal. I guess you get the idea here. We were able to do some pretty neat race car customization of an existing vehicle using largely junk materials available for free or very low cost.
I'd end up having quite a few interesting times with that car, before everything was said and done.
Another time I was embarking on one of my earliest stints of self-employment, and needed a heavy duty but still portable air compressor. To buy a ready-made new unit like I wanted would maybe have cost a $1000, and still wouldn't have been as lightweight and portable as I wanted. So my dad and I figured out another solution. I bought a tiny new light duty compressor for a fraction what the heavy duty tanked model would cost. Dad happened to have a good-sized steel water tank among his 'junk' stores, which we decided to make a part of the system. This tank was several times larger in capacity than most of the new tank-compressors available on the market, and so would create less strain on the light duty compressor (the compressor wouldn't have to run as often). Plus, we figured we'd keep the portability and lightweight elements by keeping the system in two parts: the small compressor and the tank itself. I could carry them separately to my set up sites, and instantly assemble or disassemble the whole set up using the quick connects/disconnects we installed in the plumbing work. Dad also had a water pressure gauge we added to the system, only to use for air pressure here. We installed handy valves while we were at it. All the main valves, gauges, quick connects and the pressure regulator for telling the small compressor when to start and stop we built onto the top of the water tank, in a piping framework. This mass also gave me a useful handle by which to lug the tank around. We tied a rope harness around the tank to give me a few other handles too for moving it around with. This set up worked superbly for many years, and is still functional today, if I need it. Even the light duty compressor itself still works (despite getting a tremendous workout for many years), apparently because dad and I designed the overall system so well the light duty compressor never became strained by its tasks.
In 2002, my mom wanted a movable desk type of device that would hover over her bed to hold her flat panel desktop computer display, keyboard, mouse, and possibly other items so she could use them from the bed itself. Within a day or two dad had put together an impressive, sturdy, and stable bed desk which spanned the entire width of the bed, offering more than enough desktop space for all mom's needs. The bed-desk was custom built to mom's bed specifications (so someone else's would necessarily be different), with a desktop 17 inches deep and 64 inches long, with a half-inch raised lip around every side but the one facing the user, so that small items could not roll off out of reach onto the bed. A wooden panel on each end stands 29.25 inches high to hold the desk off the floor. Reinforcements of various means were applied to where the desktop and side panels meet, among them a couple of boards 17 inches long (cut to fit), 3.5 inches high and 0.75 inches thick, which conveniently double as exterior handles for moving the desk. The desk can be easily pushed towards the foot of the bed for mom to disembark, and put completely away by removing the computer gear to a nearby standard desk, pushing the bed-desk all the way to the foot of the bed, and then tilting the bed desk over to lay on the floor and act as a foot stand to the bed, neatly tucked out of the way and almost unnoticeable in the room, despite its significant size. The main three sections of the bed-desk consist of (one) the top of an old piano we disassembled to get rid of from the house many years ago, and (two) two panels from some old cabinets we removed from the house long ago too, during a renovation.
I have more tales where these came from, but you get the idea. Aggressive exploratory recycling can save you tons of money and time, and expand your horizons in countless ways. Of course, it helps if you have a spacious place to store all that junk until you find a use for it. It might be that getting together with close family, friends, or neighbors of like-mind on such matters, and all storing their junk in the same fortuitous place, agreeing to share the spoils first-come-first-served could work out well. However, everyone might also have to agree NOT to sell anything from the common store in yard sales/garage sales/flea markets once it had been placed in storage, unless all participants agreed.
One last point here: You don't have to restrain your 'junkstorming' salvage efforts to physical resources alone. You can also aggressively seek out pure ideas too. For example, my dad loves building bird houses and feeders. He's been known to see an interesting but expensive bird house design in a store, or pictured in a mail order catalog, and build his own much more economical version later in his workshop. Plus, by building his own, he can customize the design to his liking, scaling it up or down in size, or adding features he believes the store-bought version was lacking. Similar re-use of ideas can be done with all sorts of devices you might see in stores, advertisements, or elsewhere. Often you can get even more information about a particular design (if needed) by searching out references on the internet, or browsing through related how-to books in your local library or bookstore. Sometimes the business promoting the original item will even provide free brochures, photos, and other info on request.
Of course, if you go beyond making such items for yourself and begin selling them to others, you might get into intellectual property issues where legal permissions and a licensing fee would be necessary, if your own design too closely mimicked that of another. Things like patents and trademarks are considered serious matters in most developed nations these days. That's a whole other subject though, which is beyond the scope of this page.
If you have suggestions for improvements or additions to this page, please send them. You never know: it might be your idea that saves the world.Second hydrogen refuelling station opens in Aberdeen
Aberdeen’s second £2.6 million hydrogen refuelling station was officially opened on Monday (27 February 2017) to coincide with the launch of a fleet of 10 hydrogen fuelled Toyota Mirai cars.
The Toyota Mirais are to be leased for three years, with five going to the NHS, three to the Co-wheels car club, one to Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and one to Aberdeen City Council. Cove-based ACHES (Aberdeen City Hydrogen Energy Storage) has been designed to serve the city’s expanding fleet of vans and cars, and is due to be fully operational by mid-March. Funded by Aberdeen City Council, ERDF, Transport Scotland and NESTRANS, it was built, and will be maintained and operated, by Hydrogenics. The Toyota Mirai project was part funded by the UK Government Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and Transport Scotland. ACHES has four electric recharging points and the potential to produce 130kg of hydrogen per day. It also facilitates fast refuelling, with hydrogen is dispensed at 350 bar and 700 bar pressure. “We have a very clear hydrogen strategy for the future and ACHES adds to the expanding hydrogen infrastructure in Aberdeen,” comments councillor Barney Crockett. “The Aberdeen Hydrogen Bus Project has been a major success and is helping to inform the growth and development of hydrogen technologies and the hydrogen industry,” he continues. “The |
sick people for the purposes of experimentation - or if they also derive from other sources.'
HORRIFIC EXPERIMENTS OF THE NAZI'S 'ANGEL OF DEATH' Josef Mengele (pictured) greeted doomed arrivals at Auschwitz Immaculately dressed, it was Josef Mengele who greeted doomed arrivals at the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, in occupied Poland. With a flick of his gloved hands, the supreme arbiter of life and death would consign terrified prisoners either to work or to death in the gas chambers. But many, especially twins, were condemned to an altogether more diabolical fate; they became guinea pigs upon his operating table as he pursued his berserk quest to clone blue-eyed Aryan supermen. Most of his victims died in terrible pain without anaesthetic. Mengele had a doctorate in medicine from Frankfurt University, but used his knowledge in a sickening manner at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed experiments as an SS physician from 1943 to 1945. Although prisoners transferred to his wing to be studied escaped the gas chambers and were well fed, they often ultimately met an even more painful death. Mengele regularly performed surgery without anaesthetic and would obtain bodies to work on simply by injecting chloroform into inmates' hearts while they slept, which would kill them in seconds. He was most interested in heredity and once tried to change the colour of children’s eyes by injecting chemicals directly into them. Twins held a particular fascination for him and it's estimated that he examined around 3,000 - but only 100 pairs survived. Pregnant women were also singled out. He was known to have performed vivisections on them before consigning them to the death chambers. The so-called Angel of Death was on the Allied commanders' most-wanted list from 1944, but he escaped to South America and was never found, despite the best efforts of private investigators and the Israeli secret service, Mossad. He died in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming and thirteen years later, DNA tests proved his identity beyond doubt.
From 1940 to 1945, hundreds of brains from victims of the mass murder of psychiatric patients and the mentally deficient at that time were examined scientifically at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research (KWI) in Berlin.
'Researchers at the KWI for Brain Research like Julius Hallervorden (1882 -1965), who worked at the KWI from 1938, made themselves complicit in the organised murder of patients in an unbelievable manner,' said the institute.
'The investigation mandated now should reveal more about the possible victims as well as scientific evaluations which have been performed.Hi Point 4095 Carbine, Semi-Automatic,.40 Smith Wesson, 17.5 Barrel, 10+1 Rounds is rated 4.8 out of 5 by 40.
Rated 4 out of 5 by Thomas from No complaints Nice shooting gun with very manageable recoil. Easy to accessorize with a light, a scope, etc. I bought the.40 caliber carbine so that I can stock ammo for this carbine and my.40 caliber SW M&P handgun. Both use the same ammo.I did not give an Excellent rating only because I have not fired it enough yet to give it such a high rating, but it is a good gun so far.
Rated 4 out of 5 by Curby from Two years of ownership. I have probably put about 300 - 400 rounds thru this carbine. The only problem I have had was with one of the magazines not feeding properly. With testing of magazines, I found that is was definitely a mag issue. Recently I fired it on an outdoor range with an inexpensive scope, at 25 yds & 100 yds. It performed well. I also fired it with an inexpensive BSA Red Dot.
Rated 4 out of 5 by appy from over look gem very easy to handle easy to use I feel it is a over looked rifle because of price
Rated 5 out of 5 by Tbone from Awesome Price & Great Gun!! This gun was accurate right out of the box....I had more fun shooting this carbine then my high end Ar's!! I highly suggest if your thinking about buying one just do it.
Rated 5 out of 5 by TripodBob69 from Great shooter! My old eyes needed a red dot which allowed me to hit a 3” target at 50 yds. The.40 S&W is everything I hoped it would be. Look forward to many years of happy shooting.
Rated 5 out of 5 by BEN01 from THIS PRICE WAS UNTOUCHABLE GREAT FIREARM. SHOOTS SMOOTH AND VERY ACCURATE. THANKS
Rated 5 out of 5 by Darryl from Best bang for the buck I've purchased 6 guns this year...this is, by far, my favorite. Fun to shoot and accurate. My 12 year old enjoys it just as much, and is just as accurate, and that's with the stock sights.A powerful documentary chronicling prison rehabilitation is currently screening at film festivals across the nation. The Work makes a compelling case for implementing similar programs in order to reduce both prison violence and recidivism rates, ultimately assisting former convicts in becoming productive members of their community.
Inside Circle Foundation's mission is to help former convicts live up to their full potential.
The film follows four law-abiding men who participate in a group therapy program at Folsom State Prison, near Sacramento, California. During the four-day intensive program, the men face their inner demons while getting a firsthand look at how the nation’s most violent criminals seek redemption.
The group therapy program is run by the Inside Circle Foundation. Their mission is to help convicts live up to “their full potential as human beings.” During the periodic therapy sessions, convicts deal with the emotional toll their actions have caused.
Robert Allbee, a former convict, created the program to help those in similar situations “heal and achieve meaningful lives.” The foundation also provides a weekly support group that promotes emotional literacy and behavioral change.
America’s Prison Problem
Since it was founded in 1999, the foundation has been successful at impacting the culture and environment at Folsom State Prison.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The latest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that, as of 2015, there are more than two million Americans behind bars.
It is up to the American people to demand reform from inside prison itself.
This statistic looks even more grim when it is realized that, even though the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, it has around 25 percent of the world’s total incarcerated population.
The Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to criminal justice reform, backs up these severe claims as well. In fact, according to the organization, the U.S. prison population has tripled since the 1980s.
Moreover, the recidivism rate is abysmal. Within three years of release, 67.8 percent of ex-convicts are rearrested, according to National Institute for Justice. That number jumps to 76.6 percent within five years of release.
The current criminal justice system, which focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation, is a complete failure. When the incarcerated are not taught how rejoin society, they often fall back to their old ways. Their record also limits their opportunity to find meaningful jobs. Therefore, they go back to slinging drugs or stealing to survive.
Rehabilitation is Key
That is why the current criminal justice system is a failure. It traps people in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime. The problem is exacerbated if the inmates have families of their own. That cycle persists through generations, increasingly complicating the lives of the individuals who try to break free.
Rehabilitation programs reduce prison violence and recidivism rates.
Even though criminal justice reform has reached the national discourse, it seems that most politicians still want to seem tough on crime. During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump strived for the strong man image by pushing “tough on crime” talking points.
Now that he is in power, his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, wants to return to the failed policies of the 1990s. For example, Sessions is a proponent of mandatory minimums and enacting harsher drug penalties, even advocating for the punishment of marijuana use in states where it is legal.
To make matters worse, in conjunction with private prisons, police and prison guard unions that lobby for harsher penalties, actual legislative reform seems distant and sometimes impossible.
However, there is a glimmer of hope. Nonprofits have made strides in this realm. In fact, criminal justice reform is a policy area that the Charles Koch institute focuses on. The institute provides financial support to organizations with the same goal. With that said, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.
Even though legislative reform seems distant, it is up to the American people to demand reform from inside prison itself, and The Work provides an example of what that entails.
As the documentary indicates, rehabilitation programs reduce prison violence and recidivism rates by teaching convicts to collaborate and set their differences aside.
“The gang and racial affiliations that otherwise define much of life behind bars are left at the chapel door by the participating prisoners,” Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter said in her review of the documentary. “Their willingness to put aside tribal divisions speaks volumes about the hierarchy of the yard and the rules of survival. Not only do a former Aryan Brother, a onetime Crip, an ex-Blood and a member of the prison-system-wide Native American Brotherhood sit together, but they listen to each other.”
If Americans want to stop the prison-industrial complex from profiting off the imprisonment of fellow citizens, then they should watch The Work to understand how beneficial rehabilitation can be.Birdman, the latest effort from distinctive director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárittu, is a particularly bold film. Not only is it very technically impressive, but it deals with risky themes like the differentiation between pop culture and art and the inherent impotence of critics, which when handled poorly can make a film look self-conscious and above reproach. Luckily for both the movie and the audience, Birdman negotiates these incredibly complex and substantial themes deftly and with a sense of scope and proportion, touching on modern pop-culture, egomania, self-delusion, and the fundamental purpose of art; no small order for a film so immediately accessible. Beautifully written and performed, with a striking and unique soundtrack alongside genuinely breath-taking cinematography, Birdman is a strong contender for the best film of 2014.
The story follows Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton, taking a good-natured jab at his own career), a washed-up superhero movie star who, in a desperate attempt to be taken seriously, is writing, directing, and starring in a stage adaptation of the short stories of Raymond Carver. The production threatens to close at every turn, and Riggan is forced to hire the pretentious but beloved actor Mike Shiner (Ed Norton) the day before preview shows open. Shiner chooses to make every scene he’s in a nightmare to direct, and embodies the antithesis of Keaton as a performer. On top of the shaky production, his dysfunctional family also pressures Riggan, with an estranged yet affectionate wife (Amy Ryan) and his drug-addicted and caustic daughter (Emma Stone).
Zach Galifinakis (as the play’s financial manager) and Naomi Watts (as one of the other actors) round out this truly prestigious cast. Everyone brings their best, with career best turns from both Galifinakis and Stone, with another reliably brilliant performance for Norton. Keaton is phenomenal in the leading role, playing both Riggan and Riggan’s ego, which takes the form of the leather-suited Birdman character from his glory days. Despite the surrounding family conflicts and the ever-building tension of the production, this mental tug-of-war is the central conflict of the film. It is an exploration of the inner workings of the creative mind rarely seen in mainstream cinema, and makes for absolutely fascinating viewing. Riggan’s slow mental breakdown is overwhelming to behold, Keaton managing to showcase remarkable restraint and honesty in his portrayal of these crushingly irreconcilable emotions.
His gradual breakdown gives the script room for interesting introspection, and also allows for some highly entertaining fantasy sequences. In his head, Riggan can move objects with his mind, fly, and fabricate a blockbuster action sequence at a moment’s notice, aided by some surprisingly solid effects for a film with a limited budget. Despite this, the most impressive visual effect is by far the cinematography. Emmanuel Lubezki (behind last year’s Gravity), quite possibly the best DP working today, achieves mesmerising continual motion in Birdman, with the entire film shot to look as if it is all one take. Whilst some may find this trick to be somewhat gimmicky, there is an incredible feeling of intimacy and closeness within the compact and claustrophobic backstage spaces, nicely paralleling Riggin’s own mental state. Rather than cutting from scene to scene, the camera follows particular characters around the mazy backstage halls, and fluid movement never undermined its dense film language. By following the most interesting action (as much of the action happens in parallel, as in many other ‘play-within-a-play’ structures), the audience’s curiosity is perpetually satisfied with each twist and turn. Its final one-take sequence is perhaps the gutsiest and most well executed final act of any film in recent memory, a transcendent display from both Lubezki and Iñárittu that makes Birdman absolutely unforgettable.
The film’s depiction of performative art appears, at first glance, reductive. Is art really about the artist in the end? To answer this question, one need only look at Birdman’s structure. The action of the film so closely parallels Riggin’s own mental deterioration and plays with his interiority. Both Shiner and Riggin are plagued by an obsession with capturing reality in their performances. The theatre itself illustrates Riggin’s conflict between his interior anxiety and exterior fame, with its claustrophobic backstage and the wide-open stage. By the end of the film, Riggin becomes both artist and art, and his surroundings reflect this. This polished construction gets more complex the more closely it is examined, and is a mark of a truly thoughtful film.
Birdman is a near flawless film, and any hiccups are swiftly forgotten by a directorial flourish or a big laugh (even with all its Big Themes, it is still a very funny film). It is the oddest Oscar contender in some years and whilst its many idiosyncrasies may prove irksome to some viewers, we could not recommend it more highly. An astounding achievement in both the technical and narrative sides of film-making, Birdman is quite probably the best film of this year.
★★★★★
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárittu
Written by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárittu and Nicolás Giacobone
Starring Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Norton, Emma Stone
Run time: 119
Rating: TBA/15
AdvertisementsDuring the Foo Fighters' Saturday night set at the Global Citizen Festival, frontman Dave Grohl made it clear that it would be a while before the band took the stage again, telling the 60,000 in New York's Central Park:
"This is it, man. We don't have any [shows] after this. This is the show where we come out and we play as many songs as we can in a short period of time, because honestly, I don't know when we're going to do it again."
Grohl went on to punctuate his point by declaring "last chance to dance!" before the Foos launched into the set-closing "Everlong," and though he tempered his statements by adding "without making a big deal out of it," it seems that some of his fans — or some overzealous members of the media — may have missed that fact, as, within hours, news began to spread that the Foo Fighters were calling it quits.
So on Monday (October 1), MTV News reached out to a spokesperson for the band seeking clarification on Grohl's comments, and he told us, in no uncertain terms: "They are definitely not breaking up."
So there you have it. Of course, the spokesperson wouldn't comment on just how long of a break the Foos would be taking. Though, to be fair it's not all that uncommon for bands to cool their heels for an extended period of time after a lengthy world tour (or two). In fact, this isn't the first time rumors of the Foos taking an extended hiatus have surfaced (or the first time the band has been forced to deny said rumors, either). Grohl made similar comments during the band's headlining stand at England's Reading Festival last August, and would subsequently dismiss any rumors of a hiatus on Twitter, writing "Relax... I was talking TO England ABOUT England... stop eavesdropping Internets!"
And while he may not have any Foo Fighter shows on the horizon for the foreseeable future, Grohl's still staying busy. He's currently putting the finishing touches on his "Sound City" documentary, which is, as always, "coming soon."Catedrático de Políticas Públicas. Universidad Pompeu Fabra
El documento que el Profesor Juan Torres y yo (titulado “Democratizar la economía para salir de la crisis mejorando la equidad, el bienestar y la calidad de vida. Una propuesta de debate para solucionar los problemas de la economía española”) hicimos a petición de Podemos (y que este partido ha distribuido ampliamente bajo el nombre de “Un proyecto económico para la gente”) ha despertado una gran hostilidad por parte de los mayores promotores de la sabiduría convencional que gozan de grandes cajas de resonancia puestas a su disposición por los grandes grupos financieros y empresariales del país, que ejercen una enorme influencia en los mayores medios de información y persuasión así como en los principales partidos políticos gobernantes del país. Estos defensores del statu quo – los economistas gurús mediáticos – marcan ahora las pautas de la campaña de desprestigio en contra del documento y también de sus autores.
Uno de estos economistas es José Carlos Díez, profesor de Perspectivas Económicas Globales de la Universidad de Alcalá, que tiene una columna en El País, desde donde promueve los dogmas del conocimiento económico dominante. También lo hizo en el programa La Sexta Noche que se dedicó, por primera vez, al documento que Juan Torres y yo escribimos. Y ha aparecido en muchos canales de televisión y estaciones radiofónicas manipulando les datos de nuestro documento sin ningún freno en sus manipulaciones y prácticas claramente deshonestas. Es, sin lugar a dudas, uno de los muchos economistas (algunos con chaquetas muy llamativas, y otros sin) promovidos por los medios de información del establishment financiero y económico.
Leyendo a tales gurús mediáticos, sin embargo, sorprende la tolerancia que existe en tales medios hacia su clara incompetencia. Tal tolerancia no se presenta en otras áreas de conocimiento. Si un médico, por ejemplo, se equivoca en su diagnóstico y tratamiento a un paciente, y dicho error ocurre con frecuencia, aquel médico es probable que pierda no solo su prestigio y respeto profesional, sino incluso su puesto de trabajo, con sanción incluida. Esto nunca ocurre, sin embargo, con los economistas cuyos diagnósticos y propuestas de tratamiento han sido erróneos y han dañado, en consecuencia, el bienestar de millones de personas. En realidad, continúan gozando de acceso a los medios, sin que sus probados errores e incompetencias les supongan el menor coste. Un caso claro es el del economista en cuestión, el Sr. José Carlos Díez, que fue asesor económico del gobierno Zapatero. La revista catalana Cafèambllet, en diciembre de 2014, ha publicado un extenso artículo que muestra los diagnósticos y pronósticos de este personaje, contrastándolos con los datos empíricos que muestran hasta qué grado tal individuo ha errado en su práctica profesional. Veamos algunos ejemplos, contrastando lo que predijo y lo que ocurrió:
En El Mundo escribió el 09.06.2006 que “la probabilidad de ver una caída significativa del precio de la vivienda es cercana a cero”. Datos: según el Instituto Nacional de Estadística, desde 2007, el precio de la vivienda cayó nada menos que un 36%.
En Economía Exterior, en abril de 2007, escribió que “se tiene que contrarrestar el mito de la burbuja inmobiliaria en España”. Predeciblemente la patronal de la construcción distribuyó ampliamente dicho diagnóstico como parte de su campaña para “desmitificar los mensajes negativos que afectan a la confianza del comprador… No hay ningún peligro de que los precios bajen”. Datos: los precios bajaron y mucho.
En Cinco Días, el 22.11.2009, escribió que “los precios han tocado fondo. La demanda de viviendas se está recuperando”. Datos: los precios continuaron bajando.
Todos los datos empíricos, fácilmente accesibles, muestran lo profundamente erróneos que fueron sus diagnósticos. La realidad era opuesta a lo que el Sr. Díez pontificaba. La burbuja inmobiliaria fue una realidad muy fácil de predecir (como algunos de nosotros así hicimos), y cuando explotó creó un desastre. Más tarde, el Sr. Díez intentó ridiculizar aquellas voces críticas – como lo hace ahora – que vaticinábamos que las políticas públicas que se estaban siguiendo nos llevaban a una situación muy negativa, realidad que este economista mediático continuó negando. En Cinco Días el 06.12.2009 escribió que “los escenarios apocalípticos de seis millones de parados, con tasas de desempleo del 25%, están siendo refutados por la realidad”. Los datos: España entró en recesión el año 2008, de la cual salió brevemente en el segundo trimestre de 2010, para entrar de nuevo en el 2011. En 2012 se alcanzó el 26% de paro, con 6,2 millones de parados.
Tal economista fue también de los que enfatizó con mayor intensidad la salud robusta del sistema financiero español, lo cual explica que el Sr. Zapatero fuera por el mundo señalando la ejemplaridad del sistema financiero español. Así, en Cinco Días, el 22.11.2009, indicó que “no sería posible contar la historia de nuestro Pura Sangre español (queriendo decir del supuesto éxito español) sin contar con un sistema bancario tan eficiente y no tengo ninguna duda que volverá a suceder en el próximo ciclo expansivo en el que ya estamos inmersos”. La realidad ha mostrado hasta que punto este señor ha estado equivocado. Negó que hubiera una burbuja inmobiliaria, que bajarían los precios, que íbamos hacia una crisis enorme, que el sistema financiero era muy deficiente, entre otras lecturas erróneas de la realidad y ahora tiene el atrevimiento de dar lecciones sobre cómo salir de crisis, y criticando como irrealizables las propuestas que Juan Torres y yo hicimos en el documento citado anteriormente. Ahora bien, les garantizo que este señor continuará apareciendo en los mayores medios. Sus evidentes errores no serán obstáculo para que continúe siendo promovido por los mayores medios de información y persuasión del país. Así es España.Since the electoral success of the left social-democratic Syriza coalition in Greece, and the immediate challenge to austerity and the rule of finance capital in Europe that it represents, many people are understandably keen to consider how this could be repeated in the UK. While it is clear to everyone that Syriza is not presently a revolutionary outfit and not seeking to become one in the short term, it is equally clear that for a sustained left challenge to the politics of the last few decades to emerge from this countermovement requires a deepening of political organization of the left across Europe. The northern European left has an important role to play here because of the very real possibility of isolating a left confined to Greece alone, or even just Greece, Portugal, and Spain. If we are to break the back of the intellectual coalition between the neoliberal social imagination and the economic policies of austerity and debt enforcement, it is of the greatest importance that the left in the creditor countries makes a priority of making the enforcement of such regimes by their own governments impossible – not just domestically, but internationally. In the current European context, internationalism is not just a desirable principle but an absolute precondition for success.
Given this problem, it is worth looking at some of the analysis of Syriza’s success and the possibilities of replication elsewhere that has been making the rounds. One starting point is the discussion by comrade Pierce Penniless of what it would mean to renew the left in Britain, taking inspiration from Syriza. This discussion is based on a series of discussion points raised by a certain ‘Alexander Trocchi’, attached to the post. The main points for Trocchi of why Syriza succeeded was the combination of its ability to become the electoral weapon of the social movements, and its integration of both ‘horizontalist’ and ‘bolshevik’ elements on the basis of uniting behind a (fairly moderate) programme for the short term. However, Trocchi also points to a few other points of significance: the funding of political parties in Greece, allowing membership to more effectively lead to large-scale mobilization, the collapse of the extant social-democratic party, and its charismatic leadership in the person of Alexis Tsipras (and perhaps we should now add Yanis Varoufakis too).
However, as Pierce also points out, quite a few of its claims as to what it would take to replicate such dynamics in Britain are contestable, to say the least. I agree certainly that some of the strengths of Syriza derive from its ability to become the electoral front for a variety of social (and political!) movements, and this is something for which potential on the British left scene exists and is not currently realised. Other points are also surely right but not easy to replicate – one cannot for example engineer the collapse of the Labour Party just like so; on the other hand all European social democracy has for a long time been suffering a slower version of the death that is now described as ‘Pasokification’.
More dubious are the claims ‘Trocchi’ makes about ‘identity politics’ as a major inhibiting factor for the British left, or for that matter the presence of ‘Islamic leftism’; I do not know enough about Greece to say for sure, but I rather doubt that identity issues are irrelevant there, and I do not in any case know of any evidence that either of these political phenomena have been a problem to forming a more fundamental left political organization. Rather the opposite: so-called identity politics often acts as a mobilizing factor, stemming from the confrontations people face on an everyday basis with the structures of social and economic life, and are in that sense as good as any union in the classical Marxist analysis: namely in generating the awareness of conflict between the fulfilment of human needs and the organisation of society. Equally, I don’t think that George Galloway’s opportunistic coalitions are particularly significant for the left as a whole. His modest successes have had little to do with some kind of fundamental religious defect in the British left, but rather with his campaigning on a consistent antiwar platform, combined with his Labour Party skills at mobilising local ‘community leaders’ and ward bosses to his advantage. Generally, one of the problems of the author’s analysis is the use of rather straw figures for contrasting the Greek situation to ours – ‘horizontalism’, ‘Bolsheviks’, ‘Islamic left’ etc. are not really defined, nor is it evident that their counterparts do not exist in Greece as well.
In a sense this expresses one of the actual problems of the British left, namely its rather stubborn refusal to first analyse the political and economic situation empirically before deducing what mechanisms and ideologies have most salience within it: something more than a little ironic given the long British tradition of excessive empiricism. Having said that, I want to add a few critical notes both to ‘Trocchi”s claims and to Pierce’s discussion in somewhat the same style as the original, since the question itself is really worth asking, and I think it is right to discuss the various answers that have been given to it in a straightforward way. So here are some provocations intended to sharpen this discussion a bit, written on purpose in a kind of ‘stream of consciousness’ fashion that hopefully stimulates discussion more than it suggests definitive answers.
1) There is I believe no prospect whatever of the Labour Party splitting into a left and right wing any time soon, nor are British unions at all interested in generating such a situation. People have been talking for years about how ‘when the Blairites take over’ the party would split and the opportunity for alliance with the Labour Left would come. But this is illusory. The party is already firmly in the hands of the right and in fact almost always has been in the history of its existence, and more often than not the unions have firmly preferred it that way. British unions are too weak to challenge even the rule of its ‘business wing’ even within their own party, let alone at a national level; and they are timid beyond even what is justified by their weakness. The lesson they have learned more than any other from the confrontation with Thatcher is that when an open war breaks out between their side and that of capital backed by the state, they will lose. If this was true in the 1980s, it will be true a fortiori now, and they know it. Simultaneously, they are too conservative and nostalgic in their social base and political outlook respectively to attempt any kind of regeneration based on new kinds of unionism, direct action, and so forth. The only split that can occur in the Labour Party is the split of the right from the left, not vice versa, as exemplified by the SDP and by the expulsion of the RMT. And unless the right massively overplays its hand in this, the result is simply the isolation of the left. The Blairites have proven to be competent enough not to overdo this, as shown by their willingness to indulge Ken Livingstone even after his direct challenge to Labour’s official policies and candidates in London. This being the case, there is no immediate collapse of Labour on the horizon, and talk of ‘general strikes’ is especially illusory. If Labour fails to win the upcoming election, this will probably strengthen the right over the centre (David Miliband over Ed Miliband), but these kind of factional shifts in a fundamentally centrist party are not where we should seek our own opportunities.
2) It does no good to accuse Syriza or its supporters of ‘electoralism’. Generally, the accusations of electoralism and the subsequent back and forth about parliamentary power give more heat than light. Of course the power to control the capitalist state ultimately resides in the combination of the property relations that are the legal foundation of capital and the social relations of production that are its material foundation, plus the use of violence to enforce and reproduce these relations. Parliamentary power can affect the property relations to some extent, but the amount of leeway that exists there is very variable and ultimately depends on extra-parliamentary struggle and confrontation. But this is obvious: everyone knows this. When Lenin suggested that Communists take part in “even the most reactionary Duma”, this was not a sign of his belief that the limited franchise talking shop created by the Czar’s advisors was the instrument of revolution. Equally, neither Syriza nor its (radical) supporters think this is the case: indeed Syriza functionaries have several times said the contrary. The only relevant question about electoral participation, in Britain or Greece or wherever, is whether the ability of socialists to advance social revolution, which itself depends on the class struggle in general, is increased or decreased by it, all things considered. That being said, I think there are relatively few situations in which parliamentary participation is worse than abstentionism, and I certainly do not think that this is true in Greece. Even for morale reasons alone the victory of Syriza is significant in stemming the tide of austerity, and I do not see any a priori reason to believe that it would weaken the larger social struggle in Greece.
3) In any case one observes that generally the social struggle reaches a peak very soon after the imposition of the worst reactionary measures, and then dies down within a few years at the visible level – but retains or even increases its radical potential even when seemingly slumbering in the lap of civil society. This pattern is visible in the UK and in Greece as well, where great solidarity and cooperation at the everyday level, as well as some cases of heroic strikes and occupations, have gone together with a very weak level of larger organised movement of opposition in the recent period. The Greek unions have, as far as I can tell, as little capacity to affect things in Greece as they do in the UK.
4) One factor that is relevant in electoralism that is not mentioned in the analysis often is the impact of the voting system. There’s no reason at all to think that the Green ‘surge’, if it were to materialize, would affect anything as long as the net outcome is at best a gain of 1 MP. The room for any party to be an electoral weapon of left parties and movements is much narrowed in countries that have highly restrictive voting systems like the UK does, and for this reason this is a matter of significance beyond policy wonks and LibDem naifs. It is worth pointing out that Syriza obtained its result under conditions of a more proportional representation, and that in fact its actual seat tally is an overrepresentation of Syriza MPs compared to its share of the vote – a ‘bonus principle’ introduced by previous governments of the Greek establishment precisely to keep a radical challenge out and to diminish the necessity of working with such a party! This has now backfired because of PASOK’s complete collapse.
Nevertheless it underlines that the restrictions on the possibility of electoral action in the UK greatly limit relatively the potential for a Syriza-type formation to translate a broad membership base into an equally significant electoral and institutional front. This goes also for the funding of parties based on members, something which is favorable to radical parties with a greater activist base – a fact used to its advantage by Syriza, but also for example by the Socialist Party in the Netherlands. Since the UK allows neither of these possibilities to be used, the electoral strategy must be correspondingly different: trying to maximize the number of candidates standing, for example, or using electoral participation as a means of gaining short-term political traction is probably hopeless.
5) It is worth pointing out that Greece has not suffered the worst austerity regime ever – this dubious honor surely goes to Russia in the 1990s. It is to Syriza’s credit, and indeed more so to the credit of the Greek people, that the political results of this have been considerably better there. That said, one aspect of Syriza’s reformist tactics that is underappreciated is the fear of fascism: Yanis Varoufakis has said multiple times that his desire to save the European Union and even the Eurozone within it is motivated not by love for these institutions, but because for him saving the EU as such against the New Right in Europe is an essential precondition for the survival of the left. Whether this is true and whether their tactics are helpful or counterproductive in this regard is debatable, and a discussion that should be had intensively in the coming months. But it should be understood as part and parcel of the peculiar combination of radical intellectuals and reform-oriented short term policies of Syriza, and if it has merit, it should be kept in mind elsewhere also.
An important dimension here is the dimension of time: Syriza’s reformist tactics are aimed at the very short term, whereas the question of ‘Grexit’ and its potential consequences, or the possibility of an alliance with left parties elsewhere (if they should win), arises in the short to medium term. Equally, the KKE’s critique of Syriza, namely that over time their reformism can only disappoint the hopes and radical potential of the situation, must be kept in mind: what is good in the short run can become actually an aid to the radical right (as the ‘real alternative’) in the longer run.
6) Coming to the point of mass organisation: the first observation is that Syriza is, in fact, a ‘lash-up’ of a number of divergent Communist parties (sects) from Maoists to Eurocommunists, plus elements of the left of social-democracy. This coalition came together a considerable time ago to form an electoral front of the left outside the more classically Marxist-Leninist KKE, in particular to make the connection between party organisation and the electoral and organisational possibilities this offers and on the other hand the significance of the ‘social movements’. The original formation of 1989 actually consisted of an ad hoc coalition between the KKE and the various Communist factions that had left the KKE or were outside it. The KKE left the coalition after the fall of the USSR when it made a turn towards ‘fundamentals’, following party congresses in 1991 and 1996 which focused on rebuilding the party (very damaged by the collapse of the USSR) according to traditional Third International lines, quite contrary to the general rightward trend of other ‘official’ Communists. This meant the loss of the largest and most organised faction of this coalition, but the alliance of the other groups endured.
What is significant here is to point out that throughout the 1990s this coalition remained in existence while achieving virtually nothing at the level of electoral results, membership growth, or other kinds of impact based on size. After the departure of the KKE, the coalition (Synaspismos) never achieved over 5% of the vote, usually hovering around 3 |
success factors, we should define what would constitute a project failure.
Kerry Wills lists five guiding principles for an agile portfolio. 2 minutes to read.
Harry Hall lists seven project management influencers to watch. Thanks for including me in such esteemed company! 3 minutes to read.
Agile Methods
Stefan Wolpers curates his weekly list of all things Agile, from scaling Spotify to uncontrollable technical debt to cost of delay. 3 minutes to scan, 9 outbound links.
John Yorke’s new Kanban training board game is almost ready for general distribution, but he’s looking for feedback. Seems really interesting. 3 minutes to read.
Johanna Rothman explores minimalism—how little can we do and yet still be effective? Just over a minute to read.
Shane Billings articulates the type of “deviations” needed to adapt a plan (connect the moving dots) in a fast-changing environment.
Jesse Fewell calls out the haters—“Hate is not an Agile value.” Attack the problem, not the person. 4 minutes to read the text, 5 minutes for the podcast. Safe for work.
Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter interview Jake Knapp, father of the design sprint and author of Sprint. 2 minutes to read the article, 57 minutes for the podcast.
Applied Leadership
John Goodpasture notes that any activity at scale requires strangers to work together effectively. Which requires things like currency, bureaucracy, and the rule of law. 2 minutes to read.
John Goodpasture notes that any activity at scale requires strangers to work together effectively. Which requires things like currency, bureaucracy, and the rule of law. 2 minutes to read. Art Petty maps out the distinctions between a team and a group. Yes, groups are useful, too. 4 minutes to read.
Kat Boogaard shares some legitimate tactics for becoming a thought leader. Yes, thought leaders are leaders. 3 minutes to read.
Technology, Techniques, and Human Behavior
Ryan Ogilvie gives us a detailed plan for improving business support. 7 minutes to read.
The Nuvro blog has a new article on how to create a customer success team. 5 minutes to read.
Vaibhav Aparimit begins a series on the fundamentals of system design with definitions of reliability more accurately resilience), scalability, and maintainability. 2 minutes to read.
Karik Patel explains augmented analytics and tells us why it matters. 3 minutes to read.
Working and the Workplace
Michael Lopp describes that moment when the Old Guard and the New Guard actually come together for the first time—in a moment of crisis. 5 minutes to read.
Suzanne Lucas explains how to keep working when you’re depressed (and shares some insights into managing depressed people). 5 minutes to read.
Seth Godin: “Sonderis defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours.” 1 minute to read.
Enjoy!
Share this: Tumblr
Pinterest
Print
Like this: Like Loading...S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for October (actually a 3 month average of August, September and October).
This includes prices for 20 individual cities and and two composite indices (for 10 cities and 20 cities).
Note: Case-Shiller reports NSA, I use the SA data.
From S&P: U.S. Home Prices Weaken Further as Six Cities Make New Lows
Data through October 2010, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show a deceleration in the annual growth rates in 18 of the 20 MSAs and the 10- and 20-City Composites in October compared to what was reported for September 2010. The 10-City Composite was up only 0.2% and the 20-City Composite fell 0.8% from their levels in October 2009. Home prices decreased in all 20 MSAs and both Composites in October from their September levels. In October, only the 10-City Composite and four MSAs – Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington DC – showed year-over-year gains. While the composite housing prices are still above their spring 2009 lows, six markets – Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Portland (OR), Seattle and Tampa – hit their lowest levels since home prices started to fall in 2006 and 2007, meaning that average home prices in those markets have fallen beyond the recent lows seen in most other markets in the spring of 2009.
Click on graph for larger image in new window.
The first graph shows the nominal seasonally adjusted Composite 10 and Composite 20 indices (the Composite 20 was started in January 2000).The Composite 10 index is off 30.7% from the peak, and down 0.9% in October(SA).The Composite 20 index is off 30.5% from the peak, and down 1.0% in October (SA). The second graph shows the Year over year change in both indices.The Composite 10 SA is up 0.2% compared to October 2009.The Composite 20 SA is down 0.8% compared to October 2009. This is the first year-over-year decline since 2009.The third graph shows the price declines from the peak for each city included in S&P/Case-Shiller indices. Prices increased (SA) in only 2 of the 20 Case-Shiller cities in October seasonally adjusted. Only Denver and Wash, D.C. saw small price increases (SA) in October, and prices fell in all cities NSA.Prices in Las Vegas are off 57.8% from the peak, and prices in Dallas only off 8.6% from the peak.Prices are now falling - and falling just about everywhere. As S&P noted "six markets – Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Portland (OR), Seattle and Tampa – hit their lowest levels since home prices started to fall in 2006 and 2007". More cities will join them soon.The Houthis are to prosecute ten Yemeni hunger striking journalists in Sanaa, the Anadolu Agency reported.
Fatimah Mohamed, the wife of one of the journalist Salah Al-Qaedi, said: “The Houthis did not allow us to visit my husband in prison,” adding that she has had no information about him for a month.
The Houthis had threatened her husband and the other journalists in an effort to end their hunger strike, she said. “They [Houthis] warned they would accuse them [the journalists] of inciting sedition.”
The journalists were abducted from Sanaa on 9 June last year, 18 days into their hunger strike, and were physically and psychologically tortured, Anadolu said in a report. They started their hunger strike in protest against their unjust imprisonment and the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the Houthis.
The families called on the international community, the UN envoy to Yemen and the Yemeni government’s delegation, which is participating in the Kuwait peace talks, to save the missing journalists.Blizzard’s MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) has a new man in charge.
Heroes of the Storm director Dustin Browder announced on Blizzard’s forums that he is leaving the development team for that game to work on a new, unknown project at the company. Alan Dabiri, a 20-year veteran at the studio, will take over as the new Heroes of the Storm director. We have no idea game Browder is working on now, but the idea of any new project at a company known for quality software like Blizzard is exciting.
“Alan has had a hand in nearly every aspect of Heroes since the beginning, both in his role as our technical director and as part of the team’s collaborative development process,” Browder said on his post. “Alan is also a passionate member of the community, and he’s always in touch with what’s happening on Reddit, in our forums, and wherever you’re talking about Heroes. He’s been relentlessly working to make Heroes better for years, and I’m excited that he’ll be continuing to push the game forward as game director.”
Heroes of the Storm originally released on PC in 2015. MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2 are some of the most popular games out there, especially in the growing esports market. We don’t know exactly how well Heroes of the Storm is doing, however, since Blizzard doesn’t release player numbers for it. Blizzard does keep updating the free-to-play game with new heroes and game modes.A Brief History of Comic-Con International's Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive
Then in the early 1970s, Heinlein had a life-threatening illness and needed many pints of a rare blood type. He felt he owed his life to the donors, so when asked to be a guest at the 1976 World Con in his hometown of Kansas City, he agreed-but with one specific stipulation: that he would only sign autographs for people who donated blood.
Thus longtime Comic-Con committee member Jackie Estrada approached the author with an offer to hold a blood drive in San Diego if he would consent to being a guest. He agreed, and in 1977 Heinlein came to Comic-Con. He and his wife, Ginny, had a great time and Heinlein even drew a picture for the Sunday morning Art Auction.
"David Scroggy [who went onto be a VP at Dark Horse Comics before he retired] was the first blood drive coordinator," recalls Estrada. "We also had Theodore Sturgeon there signing his book, Some of Your Blood, which he gave to all of the blood donors. We also had entertainment for the people while they were [donating blood]. I remember that Leslie Cabarga played the piano, C. C. Beck played the guitar. It was a very fun event and Robert was delighted. We've had the blood drive every year since."THE first archaeological study of the Gallipoli battlefield shows that troops on opposing sides quenched their thirst with different brews. While the Anzacs were more likely to drink rum, beer was the beverage of choice for their Turkish enemies.
The preliminary findings of a joint Australian, New Zealand and Turkish project to identify and record Gallipoli's significant sites before the battle's centenary in 2015 were unveiled by Veterans' Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon yesterday.
Professor Antonio Sagona announces the preliminary findings. Credit:Department of Veterans' Affairs, Antonio Sagona
The study mapped trench systems, 12 cemeteries, concrete boundary markers and tunnels created during the Gallipoli campaign, which began with the dawn landing on April 25, 1915 and ended on January 9 the following year. About 50,000 Australians served during the Gallipoli campaign and more than 8700 died there.
Using GPS technology with accuracy to within 30centimetres, researchers mapped 4000metres of front-line and communications trenches on both sides. When laid over the original 1915 battlefield maps, the two matched.The gang at “Fox & Friends” celebrated “Founding Fathers Friday” by bringing on a Thomas Jefferson impersonator who stayed in character and on the tea party talking points throughout the bizarre interview.
From the beginning, co-host host Steve Doocy used the appearance by the “third president of the United States” to push the small government message that typifies the conservative network.
“Even though you were one of the very first presidents of the United States, as you remember, you were a budget cutter, weren’t ya?” Doocy asked, fully playing along.
“Well, I was. I believe that government needs to be simple and frugal,” the impersonator said. “And when I became president in 1801I inherited a debt, $83 million. When I left the presidency eight years later I had reduced that $33 million.”
He continued, “We are not only being irresponsible but stealing from posterity. Posterity that we paid a great price to purchase liberty for that it seems we’re giving away.”
Co-host Gretchen Carlson then reminded “Jefferson” that the world — and government spending — had changed dramatically since he died in 1826.
“I know that you’ve never seen a number that big that we just showed on the screen,” Carlson said, referring to a graphic that detailed the U.S. government’s debt. “That’s something that’s been created since you’ve passed.”
Doocy closed by revealing that Jefferson was in fact Stephen McDowell, president of Biblical Worldview University.
Watch the highlights from the interview:There always seems to be an odd man out, and in this case it's Max Holloway.
Surging UFC featherweight contender Holloway has been calling out UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor, former champion Jose Aldo and current top contender Frankie Edgar for months, but all three were recently booked for the landmark UFC 200 card later this year. Holloway did not get his wish of fighting a top three 145-pounder despite a very impressive winning streak of eight in-a-row, including finishes over Cub Swanson and Charles Oliveira last year, and now there is no clear next-fight for the 24-year old.
"I just feel left out because my last fight wasn't a finish," Holloway told MMAFighting.com. "When I was finishing guys, the media was on me like crazy. Then I have this one decision fight against a guy (Jeremy Stephens) who, 'Cowboy' Cerrone, Anthony Pettis, these guys couldn't finish him. And then [people are] looking at me, asking me how the hell I didn't finish him. It's like, look at these guys. These guys are beasts and they had a hard time with the fight too. They couldn't finish him either.
"So I'm a true believer in, people only remember you for your last fight. And my last fight, I felt, was great, but I guess some people didn't think it was so hot. So it is what it is."
A very frustrated Holloway isn't too impressed with the UFC matchmakers and, at this point, just wants a fight. Whether he has to take a step back down and fight another top 10 opponent, or top 15, it doesn't really matter to the Hawaiian anymore.
"I want to get back in there and I want to get busy," Holloway said. "I've been telling everybody, I've had four fights each in back-to-back years. One fight was in January [in 2014], and then last year my first fight was in February. Now, it's like the end of March and I have no fight. I'm not even booked yet. I would like to get back in June or July. The UFC 200 card, that big one, or June on that big Weidman-Rockhold card (UFC 199). But still, look, that's almost half the year. Half the year is almost gone by fighting there, so I want to get busy.
"If it takes 10, 12, 13... I'll just keep going," he insisted. "Because like I said, I want to just prove I'm the best in the world. So if I have to keep proving it, I'm going to go out there and keep proving it. But at the end of the day, I want those big money fights. So whenever the big money fights start rolling in, that should be fun. But I don't know. Who knows? The UFC has a mind of its own. Whatever they want to do, I'm down for. Just keep me active, please. That's all I ask the UFC to do. Keep me active."
The top of the featherweight division is a mess right now with McGregor fighting in heavier weight divisions still figuring out whether he will move up full-time or return to 145-pounds to defend his title and Aldo and Edgar fighting for the interim belt.
Holloway doesn't believe McGregor, who faces Nate Diaz in a non-title welterweight bout in the UFC 200 headliner, will return to the featherweight division because he was already a massive featherweight. And now, after July 9, the Irishman will have competed at heavier weight twice in-a-row, making it even more difficult to cut down to 145-pounds.
"At the end of the day, who knows if he comes back to 145? Honestly, my feeling, I don't think that he does," Holloway told MMA Fighting. "I think that 155-pound fight (against dos Anjos) was already saying that he just wanted to be at 155, hold the two titles, say that he did it, then just move up full-time. That's what I thought he was thinking of doing, because he's a big guy. All you hear of him is struggling to make 145. This guy struggles. You see, all he does is [cut weight] all week long.
"So he was going to go up sooner or later. Then you see him getting bigger every fight.... His last fight, he was a big boy. And he already had a hard time cutting. [With him] going back up to 170, I think he's going to gain weight and have to cut a little, just trying to compete at that level, at 170. So who knows if he's coming down?"9 years ago
Nearly six in ten Americans want Congress to continue working on health care reform bills that have been passed through various committees, according to a new CNN poll.
Washington (CNN) - Nearly six in ten Americans want Congress to continue working on health care reform bills that have been passed through various committees, according to a new national poll.
Full results (pdf)
Fifty-nine percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey say lawmakers should continue working on the legislation, a rise of 6 points since August. But only a quarter say those bills should be passed pretty much as is, with a third suggesting that Congress should make major changes. The poll also indicates that one in four say lawmakers should start from scratch and 15 percent want Congress to stop all work on health care reform.
The survey's release Friday morning comes one day before the full House of Representatives is expected to hold a floor vote on the Democrats health care reform bill.
"Most of the Democrats interviewed support some form of heath care reform, but the divisions within congressional Democrats are reflected in the party nationwide," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Forty percent of the Democratic rank and file want Congress to approve the proposals that have passed through committee with only minor changes. But an equal number of Democrats nationwide want Congress to make major changes to those proposals before approving them."
According to the poll, 45 percent support President Barack Obama's proposals to reform health care, with 53 percent opposed to his plans. This is the first time since the president's early September prime time address a joint session of Congress on health care that a majority of people questioned in a CNN survey oppose Obama's proposals.
"Six in ten independents say they oppose Obama's health care proposals," says Holland. "That's a nine point increase since October."
The House bill that faces a probable Saturday vote contains a version of the public option, an insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private insurance companies. According to the poll, 55 percent support the public option, with 44 percent opposed.
Rising health care costs could be a factor in support for Congress to take action.
"The appetite for some version of health care reform may be explained by the fact that 55 percent of Americans with health insurance say that their insurance company has raised rates, deductibles or co-payments within the past year," says Holland.
No House Republicans are expected to vote Saturday for the Democrats health care bill.
"With any health care bill likely to face near-unanimous opposition from the GOP, only one in three Americans say that the Republicans in Congress are doing enough to cooperate with Barack Obama. Is Obama doing enough to reach out to Republicans? Half say yes; half say no," adds Holland.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted October 30-November 1, with 1,018 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Follow Paul Steinhauser on Twitter @psteinhausercnnChelsea are free-falling, Liverpool are in transition and Manchester United do not quite seem to know what they want to be. If ever there was a chance for Tottenham to step in and crack the top four, it would appear to be this season.
They are unbeaten in the Premier League since the opening day of the campaign, have a solid defence, a brilliant goalkeeper and an attractive attack. It is a young team of surprise packages and swagger, which increasingly appears to have mastered Mauricio Pochettino’s plans for high pressing and quick passing after some disjointed attempts last season.
But against all that, it is also a team that has to juggle their domestic assignments with Europa League football. Not many clubs pull off the trick. So, can they do it?
Here, Sportsmail looks at five reasons why Tottenham have done so well this season and considers why this might just be time for them to take the next step.
Harry Kane (left) and Erik Lamela celebrate combining for Tottenham's third goal in their win over Aston Villa
Spurs appear to have mastered Mauricio Pochettino’s plan for a high-pressing and quick-passing game
THE REVELATIONS
Has another side in the Premier League had so many pleasant surprises this season? Tottenham were able to survive Harry Kane’s lean spell because other areas of the team were so effective – and they were areas of success that few could have anticipated.
Dele Alli is the standout name, having arrived from MK Dons. Jan Vertonghen was honest enough on Monday evening to admit he had never heard of Alli before he rocked up at Hotspur Way.
Vertonghen said: ‘To be honest, before he came here, I didn't really know him. Nothing bad about that - I don't know anything about lower leagues. But you think I mean this in a bad way but this guy has impressed everyone since the first day we met.’
Alli’s performances as a deep-lying midfielder have incredibly led to two England caps at 19. Alongside him, and equally as impressive, has been Eric Dier. He has journeyed around right back and central defence, but as a defensively-minded midfielder this season has been exceptional. The combined age of that Dier-Alli axis is only 40.
Beyond that pairing, Erik Lamela has suddenly stirred. His reputation has shifted from that of a £30million flop to a player who can change games. He has been excellent, scoring twice and creating three more in the Premier League. Along with Christian Eriksen, he offers the creative power to keep Tottenham winning games.
England midfielder Dele Alli has been a revelation for Spurs since his step up from MK Dons this season
Defensive midfielder Eric Dier (right), who with Alli makes a combined age of 40, has also impressed
THE BACKLINE
Tottenham have conceded only nine league goals this season – jointly the third best tally in the division - and a significant element of that is down to the pairing of Toby Alderweireld and Vertonghen.
Between them, they have not missed a minute of Premier League football so far. Considering every other player in the squad has been taken off or rested at some point or other, it would indicate how important they are to Pochettino. Certainly the pairing has strengthened as a result.
As a pair of big men, they also add strength and experience to a team that likes to be light on its toes. Across the Premier League, only Sebastien Bassong and Russell Martin have a higher combined number of headed clearances (122) than Vertonghen and Alderweireld (84).
A key aspect of this campaign will be how Pochettino manages his resources across domestic and Europa League assignments. He has already shown a willingness to rotate Danny Rose and Ben Davies at left back for continental games, while Kieran Trippier has also been used in place of Kyle Walker in the Europa League, where Spurs have looked less sturdy.
Domestically, though, the unit has been strong. Dier is a big element of that, with the defensive base balancing the five attack-minded players that Pochettino tends to deploy. It helps that Hugo Lloris is one of the best goalkeepers in Europe.
Jan Vertonghen (left) and Toby Alderweireld (below right) have played every Premier League minute so far
The Belgian centre-back partnership has been strengthened by regular game time and faith from the manager
KANE IS ABLE
Harry Kane was always going to suffer close scrutiny after his breakthrough last season, but it is worth noting that while his scoring was slow to gain momentum, he was not playing badly. The fact Tottenham lost only a single game in the dry patch is not only testament to the other players, but also an encouraging sign. If they could make progress up the table when Kane was not scoring, what will they do now that he is?
Such hypotheticals don’t always play out, but after scoring against Villa, having hit a hat-trick at Bournemouth a week earlier, he now appears to be in good form. With five goals for the season, a hefty element of the numerical pressure is off as well.
Concern will come from the heavy strapping he has recently worn on his knee, as Tottenham are worryingly light on strikers.
Spurs won without Harry Kane not scoring but now he's back in the goals who knows what can happen
THE WIZARD
Christian Eriksen is the creative master of the side. While Kane took the credit last season and the emergence of Dier and Alli have drawn attention this time round, it is Eriksen who consistently delivers match-winning performances.
He is an exceptional player, an attacking midfielder who not only spots and executes the passes through tight spaces, but who also hits free-kicks as well as any player in the division. His performance at Bournemouth recently was simply exceptional.
In all, he has created 25 chances and had three assists. Aged only 23, like Lamela, he is another example of a deeply talented Tottenham player with time on his side. There are still questions about how frequently he can dominate the big games, but there cannot be many contenders out there who would not want him in their side.
Christian Eriksen is Spurs' undoubted creative master who consistently delivers match-winning performances
Another creative power is Erik Lamela, who has gone from being derided as a flop to a game-changer
NO MORE CHOKING
Tottenham have long been the soft touch that wilts against their direct rivals in the table. That psychological sense of inferiority has been discussed at length by Pochettino and Lloris in the past and it is only by beating the established giants that a change can be made.
The 4-1 demolition of Manchester City felt like a major moment for this squad, which is now demonstrating an ever clearer understanding of Pochettino’s system.
This month, when Tottenham play Arsenal and Chelsea immediately after Europa League fixtures, will offer a major indicator of how they are developing on this front.
…BUT A NOTE OF CAUTION
As mentioned, Tottenham are perilously thin up front. A shortcoming of their transfer window operations was that they started the season with only Kane and Heung-min Son as recognised strikers. Son’s lingering foot injury has highlighted the shortcoming of that approach, interrupting his impressive start to life at Spurs.
Clinton N'Jie frequently played as a second striker in France, but still looks too lightweight to play up front on his own. He has more often been used out wide. An injury to Kane, therefore, could have a devastating effect.Yes, you read the title right and I hope I just grabbed your attention! A new GNU/Linux distribution or distro designed for helping you in every aspect of your mobile forensics, mobile malware analysis, reverse engineering and security testing needs and experience has just been unleashed and its alpha version is now available for download for you to try out.
Guys, meet the new Santoku Linux! Santoku is a general purpose kitchen knife which originated from Japan. Santoku means “three virtues” or “three uses” (Wikipedia). This distribution is not from Japan, but
the name was suggested by Thomas Cannon of viaForensics (who happens to be the project leader of Santoku Linux) because the distribution was crafted specifically for Mobile Forensics, Mobile Malware Analysis, and Mobile Security Testing. The current alpha release is based on a fork of the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) MobiSec Ubuntu distro thus making this alpha release an OWASP MobiSec Remix (released under GPL) with added tools from viaForensics and some of its contributors or supporters. This project or platform is sponsored and launched by viaForensics which is a known and very innovative digital forensics and security firm that focuses or specializes on computer and mobile forensics, mobile application security, enterprise security, information security and penetration testing, and forensics training.
The Three Virtues or Three Uses
Like I said, Santoku Linux is aimed at Mobile Forensics, Mobile Malware Analysis, and Mobile Security Testing; these three aims are called the three virtues or the three uses of the said distribution and is the very foundation for the existence of this new distro. With these three virtues, users can use the free and open source tools and some of the commercial tools of Santoku Linux to forensically acquire and analyze data, examine mobile malware, detect malicious softwares, and support security assessment of mobile applications because of the increasing amount of malware that has plagued the users of mobile phones or smart phones. If you are into mobile security and mobile forensics then this distribution is definitely right for you.
Mobile Forensics:
Firmware flashing tools for multiple manufacturers
Imaging tools for NAND, media cards, and RAM
Free versions of some commercial forensics tools
Useful scripts and utilities specifically designed for mobile forensics
Mobile Malware Analysis
Mobile device emulators
Utilities to simulate network services for dynamic analysis
Decompilation and disassembly tools
Access to malware databases
Mobile Security Testing
Decompilation and disassembly tools
Scripts to detect common issues in mobile applications
Scripts to automate decrypting binaries, deploying apps, enumerating app details, and more
List of Tools for the Alpha Release
Aside from the platform’s three endeavors which are Mobile Forensics, Mobile Malware Analysis, and Mobile Security Testing, this platform can also be used for Application Security Testing and Penetration Testing. As of this moment, the tools included in the July 2012 alpha release are categorized into Development Tools, Reverse Engineering, Penetration Testing, Wireless Analyzers, Device Forensics, and Mobile Infrastructure.
Development Tools:
Android SDK Manager
Apple Xcode IDE
BlackBerry JDE
BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK
BlackBerry WebWorks
DroidBox
Eclipse IDE
Windows Phone SDK
Android 2.3.3, 3.2, and 4.0.3 Emulators
SecurityCompass Lab Server (HTTP and HTTPS)
BlackBerry Ripple
BlackBerry Simulators
The set of tools for this category contains software development kits (SDK) or devkits plus the Eclipse IDE (Integrated development environment) in order to create or code applications for mobile software packages. Aside from the development environments, it also comes with emulators and simulators for the Android OS and the Blackberry. Thus, you can test the versions 2.3.3, 3.2, and 4.0.3
for the Android OS for your hacking needs.
Penetration Testing:
CeWL
DirBuster
Fierce
Nikto
nmap
Burp Suite
Mallory
w3af Console
w3af GUI
ZAP
BeEF
Ettercap
iSniff
Metasploit Console
Metasploit GUI
NetSed
SET
SQLMap
SSLStrip
With the addition of the tools for the Penetration Testing category, users can do penetration testing easier without the hassle of installing your favorite pentesting tools for web applications and servers. Because pentesting is very important. And so, Fire it all up!
Reverse Engineering:
APK Tool
Dex2Jar
Flawfinder
Java Decompiler
Strace
With the set of tools for Reverse Engineering, users will be able to reverse engineer third party, closed, binary Android apps and rebuild them easier. Thus, making it your average distro for examining source codes and looking for security weaknesses, decompilation, and debugging. This is very important because nowadays a lot of developers who don’t practice or are not aware of safe coding have released their softwares in the Android Market.
Wireless Analyzers:
Aircrack-ng
Kismet
Ubertooth Kismet
Ubertooth Spectrum Analyzer
Wireshark
Santoku Linux also includes tools for wireless spectrum, packet analysis of wireless devices, sniffing the network, and for monitoring wireless networks. And of course, it can also be used for cracking and retrieving WEP, WPA/WPA2 keys just like other penetration testing distros out there. Thus, eliminating some of your time in installing your favorite Aircrack-Ng suite.
Device Forensics:
AFLogical Open Source Edition
Android Encryption Brute Force
BitPim
BlackBerry Desktop Manager
Foremost
iPhone Backup Analyzer
MIAT
Paraben Device Seizure
Sift Workstation
Sleuth Kit
SQLiteSpy
The Device Forensic Tools will help you in your endeavor in analyzing data, data recovery, data manipulation and exploration, investigate disk images, seize digital evidences, software auditing, and for testing the security of your mobile phones. The Paraben Device Seizure for example has been giving forensic examiners access to mobile device data for over 10 years and is recognized as the first tool for the forensic analysis of cell phones.
Mobile Infrastructure:
BES Express
Google Mobile Management
iPhone Configuration Tool
These categories will help you with your mobile phone’s configuration and installation of its apps or platforms. Take for example the iPhone Configuration Tool which lets you easily create, maintain, encrypt, and push configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs[1]
and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express which is a free software to mobilize email platforms for growing businesses[2].
There are tools that are still to be updated or added and if you want a cool tool to be added on the distribution then feel free to drop your message or request in the contact page of the Santoku Linux’s official website. Remember, Santoku Linux is by the Community and for the Community. It’s still an alpha release so expect more tools to be added and more improvements.
Getting Started (for newbies)
Santoku can be downloaded at santoku-linux.com (official website) and the full.iso image or file capacity is 3+ GB so be sure you have a fast connection. Santoku is a pre-configured Linux environment so if you want to install it in your computer or laptop as one of your Operating Systems (multi-boot or dual boot) or as your primary Operating System then you need to create a bootable DVD or USB using the ISO image. Then boot the bootable or live DVD by prioritizing it as your first boot device. If all goes well, you should see something like this:
If you really want to install Santoku Linux then choose the third option that says “install – start the installer directly” or if you just want to try it out first before installing it then choose “live – boot the Live System”, the installation should let you choose your language, time zone, clock settings, and allow you to erase the entire hard disk or install with other OS’s. However, if you have chosen the first option which boots you to the pre-configured Linux environment without installing it, you should see a graphical interface that asks you for a password.
Make sure that you type the word “santoku” in the box that lets you input the password. The next thing you should see is the Desktop Wallpaper of a santoku knife and now you can already play with the distro.
And if want to boot or emulate it with Oracle’s Virtualbox then you can just follow this instruction from the official blog of Santoku.
Santoku Pro
You may be wondering why there is a link for Santoku Pro in the download link of the official website of Santoku Linux so let me explain a few things about it. The Santoku Pro version will be released later this year (2012) and this version will offer an easy-to-use interface for mobile application security assessment. So be sure to subscribe to the mailing list in order to be updated for this version and for the new tools update because there are still a lot of tools that will soon be added for this new distribution because the Santoku Community (contributors) is growing. Stay tuned!
Santoku Linux Download Page:
https://santoku-linux.com/download
Note: Thanks to Infosec Institute for letting me promote Santoku Linux on their popular and very informative resource page and kudos to Thomas Cannon for heading this project and letting me join his community as a supporter or a contributor.
References:
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/
http://us.blackberry.com/business/software/besx.html
http://www.paraben.com/device-seizure.htmlThe response was overwhelming. The doctor was inundated with questions about drug interactions, risks of use in people with specific medical conditions, dosage levels, adverse effects and toxicity. Users asked about enhancing sexual experiences with ecstasy, alleviating cancer-related pain with cannabis and how to store psychedelics to ensure their longevity. Caudevilla, who lives in Spain, answered them all. Well, nearly all. "I was asked once about the dose or combination of benzodiazepines to knock out a person without his knowledge and I would not answer a question like this," he says. "Questions about drug dosage for suicide are also delicate. I think people should have rights to decide about their own death in some circumstances but I do not think an internet forum is an adequate tool for this." His advice thread on Silk Road has had more than 64,000 visits and he has answered 750 questions in it. He is also active on The Hub, a centralised discussion forum for all the dark markets (that cannot be accessed on the regular internet) and answers questions by private message. "The doc is a pillar of the community" wrote one user, TheChain, last month. "If I went to my doc with some of the questions he's answered I would get the same old 'drugs are bad' response even though I was going to do it without his consent."
This refusal to pass judgment has made Caudevilla, who lives in Spain, one of the most respected voices of Silk Road. When one member said they were thinking about trying dissociatives (a class of hallucinogen, which distort perceptions of sight and sound and produce feelings of detachment |
there are fair provisions already in place and that disabled individuals will not be ‘worse off’ than a non-disabled student when pursuing employment.
Finally, EHRC says that “treating a disabled person unfavorably because of something connected with their disability when this cannot be justified.” Again, the argument would most likely be that the government is treating both disabled and non-disabled students in the same manner and that ‘protected characteristics’ are not being discriminated against because both are being treated equally. Therefore there isn’t a substantial claim for discrimination arising from disability.
After analysing the claim that disabled students are being unlawfully discriminated against by the cuts, unfortunately, it does appear that the government is well within the remit of the law to make them, even though they will certainly effect the most vulnerable.
It is agreeable that these cuts and their implications are inhumane. However after analysis, ironically the proposed cuts certainly do appear to comply with all human rights legislation and the Equality Act 2010.
What do you think of these cuts? Have your say in the comments section below.TODAY: COMING AT YA LIKE IT RIPPED ITSELF FROM THE HEADLINES AND THEN BURIED ITSELF RIGHT IN YOUR BROWSER CACHE, CAT TOWN PRESENTS AN EXCITING TALE OF CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT SKULLDUGGERY OF OLYMPIC (YOU'LL GET THIS JOKE ONCE YOU'VE READ IT) PROPORTIONS
DEEDLE DOOT DOO DEE DEE
LET'S ALL GO TO CAT TOWN
DEEDLE DOOT DOO DEE DEE
IT'S TIME TO GO TO CAT TOWN
AND SEE EVERYTHING THAT'S GOING DOWN IN
HELLO AND WELCOME TO CAT TOWN, IT IS A TOWN WHERE EVERYBODY IS A CAT
THERE ARE A LOT OF AMAZING ADVENTURES AND HILARIOUS COMEDY IN EVERY EPISODE
STOP BY AND VISIT CAT TOWN FOR YOURSELF AND SEE WHAT I MEAN
HERE YOU WILL FIND ALL THE CAT TOWN EPISODES FROM THE FIRST ONE TO THE LATEST
GET THE SCOOP ON ALL YOUR FAVORITE CAT TOWN STARS HERE
HERE ARE SOME FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT CAT TOWN, maybe yours is one of them
IT WOULDN'T BE CAT TOWN WITHOUT EXTRAS SO HERE WE GO
IF YOU LIKED CAT TOWN THEN MAY WE SUGGEST ANOTHER SITE
THAT'S ALL THE TIME WE HAVE FOR THIS PAGE, SO LONG AND THANKS FOR READINGArmory supports cold storage through offline transaction signing. This technique allows funds to be spent without exposing private keys to network-based attacks. Offline signing requires two computer systems - one with an Internet connection, and one without.
Installing Armory on an Internet-connected computer is relatively easy, but installation on an offline computer is much more difficult. The problem comes down to dependencies; online computers can automatically download them, but offline computers must be given dependencies as files on a removable medium. Armory offers an offline bundle designed to simplify the process of offline installation on Ubuntu 12.04. However, some users, including myself, ran into problems using it. Moreover, some situations call for installing Armory on other Linux systems.
What’s needed is a simple procedure for creating an Armory offline bundle on arbitrary Linux systems. This article gives procedures for Ubuntu 14.04 and Tails 1.3.
About Dependencies
Dependency Hell refers to a problem caused by software modularity. Before a given piece of software can be installed, the software it depends on must be installed, and so on. Instead of dealing with a single file, users must deal with many of them.
Modern operating systems solve this problem with package managers. Many varieties of Linux, including Ubuntu and Tails, use the one introduced by Debian. Generally speaking, packages built with the Debian package manager can be used in other Debian-based systems.
Be sure to verify the authenticity of any packages installed on a production offline system. Two techniques are available. First a checksum can be calculated and compared to a published value. Second, a digital signature can be verified.
Offline Bundle for Ubuntu 14.04
This recipe creates an offline bundle for Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit systems. A total of twelve packages are needed. The first package is Armory 0.93, a link to which appears on the Armory downloads page. Create a directory called armory, and download the Armory package into it.
The remaining packages are available through the Ubuntu Packages page. Download each one into the same armory directory.
On completing this step, you should have a folder called armory containing twelve Debian packages. Boot your offline Ubuntu 14.04 system, and copy the armory directory to your home folder or another convenient location. A USB drive, SD card or DVD can be used to make the transfer.
Next, issue the following commands using Terminal. On completion, you should see the the line “!!! Armory installed successfully!!!” several lines before the last line of output.
$ cd armory $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb
Armory is now available by clicking the swirl icon and typing “armory”.
Clicking on the “Armory (Offline)” option starts Armory.
Offline Bundle for Tails 1.3
Tails is a bootable Linux distribution that offers some advantages over Ubuntu. Booting from a DVD drive, Tails enables offline signing with a single computer. For example, a laptop used for routine tasks can run Armory in online mode. Booting with Tails establishes the offline environment needed for secure transaction signing. Tails was designed to retain no record, either on disc or in RAM, of the previous session. This deliberate forgetfulness is especially useful when working with private keys. A previous article discussed Tails in the context of paper wallets.
The recipe for creating an offline bundle for Tails 1.3 follows the one used for Ubuntu. Begin by assembling a directory of Debian packages. At the time of this writing, the 32-bit version of Armory 0.63 wasn’t available from the download site. One workaround is to use the previous stable 32-bit release, 0.92.3. Alternatively, the 32-bit 0.93.0.70-testing release, announced by Armory’s lead developer, can be used. Fortunately, the same set of packages can be used for either version.
The remaining packages are available from the Debian Packages site. Gather these files into a folder called armory.
To install software on Tails, an administrator password must be set. After booting, Tails shows a “Welcome to Tails” dialog. The “Login” button can be pressed to start a session without setting a password. To set a password, click the “Yes” button, followed by the “Forward” button.
A new dialog will appear containing more options. The first two fields allow an administrator password to be added and confirmed. Enter a memorable password in both the “Password” and “Verify Password” fields. This password will be used when installing Armory. Click the “Login” button to continue.
To install the offline bundle, begin by copying the armory directory you prepared to the desktop. Locate the terminal application from the Applications ‑> Accessories menu. Then issue the following commands to begin installation.
$ cd Desktop/armory $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb
After installation finishes, Armory can be run from the Applications ‑> Internet menu.
Other Operating Systems
The specific dependencies needed to create an offline bundle will vary by operating system, and Armory version. The following general procedure can be used when building a custom offline installer:
Add the Armory package to a folder. Attempt to install the Armory package. Missing dependencies will be given in the error output. Locate the first dependency package, and save it to the armory directory. Repeat step (2) until no errors are generated.
Conclusions
Armory can be installed on a variety of offline Debian-based systems. Specific procedures illustrating the installation of Armory on Tails 1.3 and Ubuntu 14.04 were presented. Extension to other Linux varieties using a generalized procedure should be feasible.Mid-Century September 1st, 2010 Mid-Century is a computer enclosure inspired by the television show Mad Men. I was motivated by a challenge from a design blog to build something in the mid-century modern style and this is my response. The idea was to create a caricature of early-Sixties furniture fashion and somehow have it fit into an alternative universe where desktop computers were used in a 1960's Mad Men office. Could this have been Don Draper's PC? The enclosure is made from a combination of red oak plywood and birch plywood with a red oak veneer. The legs are solid red oak. The plywood panels were hand sawn and the taper in the legs are hand carved. The color is natural red oak that is finished with Danish Oil and semi-gloss brushing lacquer. For me, mid-century modern means long, thin legs and floating tabletops. These are meant to give an airy appearance to the design. It also means stark minimalism with vast expanses of wood with no fasteners showing. The actual computer case is a slightly modified Silverstone TJ08 micro ATX tower. The case is easily removed by pulling it out from the back of the enclosure. The Silverstone case has vent ducts cut into the top and bottom to align with the external enclosure's vent openings. Specific inspiration for Mid Century came from this mid-Sixties teak Danish-designed desk that I spotted for sale on ebay. I have spotted several more since then so I'm thinking that it must have been a popular item. This is the specific photo I was working from. A great feature of this desk is that it has a built-in bar cabinet that faces out into the office. I thought this tied in nicely to the whole Mad Men thing I grew up surrounded by this type of furniture and my favorite piece was a Curtis-Mathes stereo console that my parents purchased in 1962. For me, mid-century modern conjures up memories of woven cane speaker cloth framed in wood. It also conjures up images of geometric-paneled room dividers. I combined the two ideas into this grille design. The grille is made from 92 pieces of wood glued together into three layers and painted with a color that is suppose to simulate nicotine-stained ivory. This is a construction photo showing the placement of twin 140mm fans at the bottom of the enclosure. At the top of the enclosure is an exhaust vent made from solid red oak. Additional photos Toss in a little bourbon and my first edition Ian Fleming Thunderball. Thanks for looking. Back to Main Gallery Speciial thanks to my friends at the following companies for their continued support.Twenty seven-year-old Akayed Ullah, who attempted to suicide bomb (I say attempted because he survived after injuring himself and four other people) the New York City subway system during rush hour Monday morning, was an immigrant from Bangladesh. He came to the United States in 2011 through family chain migration.
“DHS can confirm that the suspect was admitted to the United States after presenting a passport displaying an F43 family immigrant visa in 2011. The suspect is a Lawful Permanent Resident from Bangladesh who benefited from extended family chain migration," Homeland Security Press Secretary Tyler Houlton confirmed.
During the daily briefing Monday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders reiterated President Trump's plans to end chain migration into the United States.
"The president’s policy has called for an end to chain migration, and if that had been in place that would have prevented this individual from coming to the United States. So the president is aggressively gonna continue to push forth responsible immigration reform, and ending chain migration would certainly be a part of that process,” Sanders said. "We know that the president’s policy calls for an end to chain migration, which is what this individual came to the United States through, and if his policy had been in place, then that attacker would not have been allowed to come in the country.”
President Trump has repeatedly called for the end to chain migration. He did so again last month after an Islamic terrorist from Uzbekistan drove a truck into pedestrians and bicyclists in New York City, killing nearly a dozen people.To ban or not to ban laptops? Millions of global travelers are anxiously awaiting the answer to this question. Since the U.S. government received credible intelligence that ISIS had developed the capability to conceal explosive devices within laptops, tablets and other large electronic devices, these devices have been banned, as of late March, from airline cabins for flights originating from ten Middle East and North African airports and traveling to the United States. However, the Trump administration has been hinting that the ban could be extended to European airports as well. This prospect has led many journalists, security experts and travel writers to speculate on the repercussions of such an act, such as lost airline revenue, lost productivity, and the increased risk for corporate espionage. Here’s how business travelers can maintain some control over sensitive intellectual property and business intelligence while traveling.
To ban or not to ban laptops? Millions of global travelers are anxiously awaiting the answer to this question. Since the U.S. government received credible intelligence that ISIS had developed the capability to conceal explosive devices within laptops, tablets, and other large electronic devices, these devices have been banned, as of late March, from the airline cabins of U.S.-bound flights originating from 10 airports in the Middle East and North Africa. However, within the last week the Trump administration has been hinting that the ban could be extended to European airports.
This prospect has led many journalists, security experts, and travel writers to speculate on the repercussions of such an act, such as lost airline revenue (business travelers may opt to fly less if they cannot catch up on work while in the air), inefficient use of a business traveler’s time (if they can perform tasks only on a smartphone), and the overall inconvenience of sacrificing more space for electronics in one’s checked luggage. Aside from another terrorist group disrupting world-wide travel operations at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, the other big winners from an increased ban could be foreign intelligence services.
How could spies benefit, should the electronics ban be expanded? According to statistics published by the National Trade and Tourism Office, 1.9 million people, earning an average salary of $152,868, traveled to Europe on business in 2015. The Global Business Travel Association found that half of these travelers “preferred to stay connected and get work done during flights.” This led to a further study, which concluded that $500 million in workable/billable hours would be lost if these businesspeople were denied access to their large electronic devices. Of course, they can work on smartphones, but that solution has obvious limitations.
Half a billion dollars in lost productivity sounds like a big number. And it is. But it’s nothing compared to how much is stolen from U.S. businesses each year through economic and industrial espionage. That number, per the FBI, is nearly $500 billion. In today’s globalized business environment, the craft of spying has never been more lucrative. For intelligence collectors, the idea of forcing travelers to become separated from their large electronics is like winning the lottery.
It has been well documented, particularly by the U.S. Congress’s own investigation into intellectual property theft, that foreign intelligence services from countries such as China, Russian, Iran, North Korea, France, and Israel are a genuine threat to business travelers. Much of this theft occurs while American business travelers are operating overseas. Covert hotel intrusions (where laptops’ and smartphones’ memory can be discretely cloned), electronic intercepts and eavesdropping, and email monitoring are all common, and easily performed, techniques used by governments to collect public- and private-sector intelligence. This collection can be used for a nation’s competitive economic advantage, in terms of minimizing research and development time, bypassing patent laws, gaining an unfair advantage for cost proposals, obtaining leveraging over an opponent prior to a negotiation, as well as blackmailing employees into revealing corporate secrets.
It may seem incomprehensible to an unseasoned international traveler that while they are sipping champagne in the business lounge, a member of another nation’s intelligence service is riffling through their luggage looking to exploit sensitive corporate information on a laptop. But is it really that hard to believe? Many of us have unpacked in our hotel room and found a flier in our luggage that reads, “This bag has been searched by TSA.” Why do people find it inconceivable that an intelligence operative could be in the baggage loading area downloading your hard drive? Or uploading hard-to-detect spyware? Furthermore, it may not be a foreign intelligence service that compromises your intellectual property and business intelligence. There are many corporate competitors and thieves out there just looking to earn some extra profits. If you’ve ever had something stolen out of your suitcase, you’ll understand the ease of access these people have to your personal belongings.
Still not convinced that putting your laptop in your checked luggage is a problem? Consider the legend around Air France. One of the most notable cases (or myths, depending on whom you ask) involved Pierre Marion, the former director of the French intelligence service (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE). On more than one occasion Marion confessed publicly to spying on American business travelers during the late 1980s and early 1990s for the purpose of France gaining an economic advantage. When large technology contracts were suddenly being lost to French firms, it was rumored that the business class cabin of Air France flights were bugged with covert listening devices (as were all the seats on the Concorde).
To justify the action, Marion was quoted as saying: “This espionage activity is an essential way for France to keep abreast of international commerce and technology. Of course, it was directed against the United States as well as others. You must remember that while we are allies in defense matters, we are also economic competitors in the world.”
Imagine if the DGSE now had access to the cargo hold containing all of the laptops of all business travelers onboard a flight. Don’t forget that the majority of airlines in the Middle East and Europe are stated owned, making it much easier for governments to interfere.
I don’t want to sound overly conspiratorial. The likelihood of an everyday passenger’s device being exploited is still relatively low. However, for some, what they carry on their laptop is just too important to put at risk.
For those who are already experiencing the regulations of putting their electronics in their checked bags, particularly on flights between serious business hubs like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Riyadh, there are some precautions you can take. The following is a list of suggestions to maintain control over your sensitive intellectual property and business intelligence:
As a general rule, don’t carry anything on your computer that you wouldn’t want to see splashed across the front page of the New York Times.
Thoroughly delete any sensitive files prior to becoming separated from your laptop. This includes wiping the hard drive, as deleted files can be recovered from a cloned device.
Use an encrypted hard drive that can be carried on a USB, which essentially separates the brains of your computer from its body.
Perform a virus scan prior to and immediately after your business trip.
Consider developing an internal code language, where names, places, dates, and dollar amounts are disguised as something else.
If you’re flying back to the United States from the Middle East or Europe, and you absolutely cannot be separated from your device, consider flying back over the Pacific Ocean.
While it is perfectly understandable for the United States and the Trump administration to want to take every precautionary measure to ensure the safety of airline passengers, they must remember that for every security action taken, there is often an equal — or greater — reaction that will occur within the equation. Should the laptop ban be extended to Europe, increased physical security measures may give way to greater economic and industrial espionage vulnerabilities.Police are still sorting out what really happened inside a home in western Pennsylvania on Monday night, but the disturbing details are beginning to emerge as police continue to question the main suspect in the fatal shooting - the victim's wife.
According to TribLive.com, 38-year-old Teresa Drum of Frazer, Allegheny County, first claimed her husband shot himself during the time she called 911 amid an alcohol-fueled argument over the fact that she had drunk his last beer.
But before she made the 911 call at around 10:30 p.m., police say the husband, Dennis Drum Sr., 42, was already shot dead, a bullet in his forehead in a bedroom, TribLive.com reports.
And Teresa Drum is accused of texting a picture of his dead body to a friend, then taking a shower to "rinse off" before dialing 911.
Later under questioning, Teresa Drum allegedly told detectives she and her husband had been fighting about a casserole she burned that night, leading to a storm of insults and cursing, TribLive.com reports, adding:
She said her husband was sitting on the edge of the bed and she was standing over him when he pulled the gun from a holster. She said she put her finger on the gun's trigger, along with his, and it went off.
She also admitted to drinking seven beers since 5 p.m. that night.
Man burns to death lighting cigarette at Pa. mall
Background from TribLive.com:
Dennis Drum was found lying in a fetal position, a gun in his right hand and a bullet in his forehead.
Teresa Drum showed paramedics her cellphone and produced a picture she had taken at 10:20 p.m. of her husband lying as first responders had found him.
Teresa Drum said she took the picture because she didn't know what to do, court documents state. She sent the picture to a friend, who told her to call 911.
Police said that, in the picture taken 11 minutes before the 911 call, no gun can be seen around Dennis Drum or in his right hand.
Teresa Drum is charged with criminal homicide.
At last report, she was being held in the Allegheny County Jail without bail.
The couple's two children, who were in the house at the time of the shooting, are now with other family. Their ages were not immediately released.A pilot of a small plane died in a crash near Willcox Thursday.
According to the Cochise County Sheriff's Office, the pilot was the only person known to be onboard.
A nearby rancher who saw the crash says, "I saw the place and it didn't sound right. I looked up to the mountain and it was going in circles."
The scene of the plane crash is very remote. Tonight on @kgun9 you'll hear from a rancher who describes what he saw. pic.twitter.com/PM0tUeQFRs — Jennifer Martinez (@Jennymartineztv) October 19, 2017
The crash was north of Interstate 10 near milepost 355, between Bowie and Willcox.
KGUN9 spoke with a man who heard the plane crash and quickly sprung into action.
Officials with Cochise County say NTSB and the FAA have taken over the investigation and should arrive at the scene on Friday.
Follow News Reporter Jennifer Martinez on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.The FHP arrested a driver and his passenger in a road rage incident for throwing bottles at another vehicle on I-4.
Late Wednesday night, dispatchers received a call from a driver who reported people inside another vehicle were throwing objects at her while both traveling westbound on I-4 in Polk County. The incident began in Lakeland near mile marker 33 and continued for another 11 miles to Plant City.
The female driver told dispatchers she heard a gun shot after glass bottles were thrown at her car.
Officers with Lakeland Police conducted a traffic stop of the suspect vehicle at mile marker 22 on I-4.
According to the arrest affidavit, officers found a bag of Ecstasy shoved under the driver's seat and a loaded semi-automatic gun under the cushion of the rear right seat.
Police also found a bag of marijuana hidden inside the driver's butt.
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Jason Guaba arrived on scene and spoke to the alleged victims. He then interviewed the driver and two passengers inside the suspect vehicle. There was also an infant in the vehicle at the time of the incident.
After concluding his investigation Trooper Guaba arrested the driver, 23-year-old Nabil Subhai Hasan, and one of his passengers, 23-year-old Derrick Alan Innocent. Both men were taken to Orient Road Jail for booking.
WATCH | LATEST NEWS VIDEOS
Both Hasan and Innocent are facing four felonies charges: two counts of Throwing a Deadly Missile into an Occupied Vehicle, Felon in Possession of a Weapon, and Possession of Cocaine with Intent to Sell. They were also arrested for Misdemeanor Possession of Marijuana.Stefani is not just a DJ but also Founder and President of Evil Teen Records and Hard Head Productions and Management. The company's roster includes Gov't Mule, Warren Haynes, Soulive, Eric Krasno, The Revivalists, Mountain Jam Festival, and The Warren Haynes Christmas Jam. She also produced Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh's There And Back Again.
Stefani Scamardo | email Weekdays 10 am - 4 pm ET Stefani is not just a DJ but also Founder and President of Evil Teen Records and Hard Head Productions and Management. The company's roster includes Gov't Mule, Warren Haynes, Soulive, Eric Krasno, The Revivalists, Mountain Jam Festival, and The Warren Haynes Christmas Jam. She also produced Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh's There And Back Again.
Jonathan Schwartz | email Weekdays 4 pm - 10 pm ET Saturdays and Sundays 6 pm - 12 am ET Schwartz has been a part of the Jam_ON family since its inception. When we let "The General of Jam" out of the studio, he's out seeing live music or dancing to his favorite Grateful Dead live CDs with his two daughters.The Ravenswood 'hood, already home to a craft beer bar, Fountainhead, and a brewery, Begyle, could see the arrival of even more beer courtesy of a brewpub called Band of Bohemia.
Led by a team that includes an Alinea sommelier, Craig Sindelar, and a Half Acre brewer, Michael Carroll, the proposed brewpub currently is in its early planning stages.
Construction of the new bar and restaurant would require a zoning change in the area, from M-1 (Limited Industrial District) to C1-2 (Neighborhood Commercial). The office of Alderman Ameya Pawar (47th) said he supports the change.
Because plans haven't been finalized yet, Sindelar said he and his team would prefer not to release too many details on the upcoming project; however, he clearly envisions Band of Bohemia to raise expectations of what brewpub food can be.
"It will be an upscale, contemporary style of brewpub leaning toward the Michelin-star mindset," he said. "We'll be mainly focused on dinner, with service probably six nights a week."
With Sindelar's experience working at three-Michelin-star Alinea and Carroll's expertise in Belgian beer styles, there could be a European twist to the pub. Sindelar said more details will be forthcoming as plan progress.
kbernot@tribune.com | @redeyeeatdrink
Want more? Discuss this article and others on RedEye's Facebook page.A startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal.
According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles’s Union Station metro and at Denver international airport.
Evolv uses the same millimetre-wave radio frequencies as the controversial, and painfully slow, body scanners now found at many airport security checkpoints. However, the new device can complete its scan in a fraction of second, using computer vision and machine learning to spot guns and bombs.
Homeland Security: 'be patient' as airport lines reach extreme lengths Read more
This means individuals can simply walk through a scanning gate without stopping or even slowing down – like the hi-tech scanners seen in the 1990 sci-fi film Total Recall. A nearby security guard with a tablet is then shown either an “all-clear” sign, or a photo of the person with suspicious areas highlighted. Evolv says the system can scan 800 people an hour, without anyone having to remove their keys, coins or cellphones.
“The importance of it being fast can’t be overstated,” said Aaron Elkins, an AI professor at San Diego State University, who is developing his own AI security technology. “Any place you currently see a metal detector would probably consider an upgrade.”
Millimetre-wave scanners are useful because they can identify both metallic and non-metallic items, such as 3D printed guns and explosives. But they have also attracted criticism because scanners were able to capture realistic images of people’s bodies beneath their clothes.
“We never build an image that would enable anyone to see anatomical details, so there’s no naked peepshow in the first place,” says Michael Ellenbogen, Evolv’s CEO. “None of the raw data is stored and none of the data we do keep is traceable to an individual.”
Evolv claims that no human sees what the scanner is looking at. The system uses solid state micro-antennas to steer radar beams over anyone walking through the gate, and to pick up the reflections. That data is then fed to an AI system that has been trained to spot distinctive scattering patterns from all kinds of objects, including firearms, suicide bomber vests and even knives. The scanner also has a camera that takes a photo of each person passing through, enabling facial recognition.
The Evolv scanner. Photograph: Evolv Technology
Because it promises to be faster and cheaper than existing millimetre-wave scanners, the new device could bring airport-level screening to venues that were previously difficult to secure.
“Transportation is a very soft and attractive target,” said Alex Wiggins, the executive in charge of security for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “Given the recent large-scale attacks at transit facilities in Europe, we need to see if there is technology that can screen large number of peoples and focus in on weapons and explosives.”
The three locations named in Evolv’s FCC application process upwards of 300,000 people every day, although Denver airport said its pilot project with Evolv had yet to be finalised. The test in LA is due to run in November for three or four days, and will involve thousands of members of the public.
“We want to see how finely these [scanners] can be tuned, and what size of weapons and explosives they can detect,” says Wiggins.
Evolv was spun out in 2013 from the Seattle-based firm of Intellectual Ventures, considered by some a patent troll but by its founder Nathan Myhrvold as a hi-tech invention factory.
Evolv received $11.8m in funding from investors, including a sizable chunk from Bill Gates, the ex-Microsoft billionaire. The company recently raised another $8m.
Evolv has also benefited from close links with the US government, perfecting its technology with the help of a contract from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). According to documents previously filed with the FCC, Evolv’s scanner was tested last year at the DHS’s Transportation Security Laboratory in New Jersey, and the FBI’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
But public tests will be invaluable, said Elkins. “What was a really high-performing detection algorithm in the lab can get tripped up in the chaos of the real world,” he said. “People will go through with ice cream cones and sunglasses and backpacks.”
Evolv’s Ellenbogen admits that luggage could be a problem. “We’re looking at what people can carry through the system versus what has to be separately inspected,” he said. “Our intent is for people to be able to walk through while carrying all the things they would normally carry.”
Another issue that worries both Wilkins and Elkins is false positives – when people are incorrectly flagged as carrying something dangerous. “If too many people are falsely checked, they have to turn down the sensitivity and just flush people through,” Elkins said. “Then it starts to not really be useful.”
The biggest problem, however, could be the very artificial intelligence that makes Evolv’s scanner so attractive.
“One of the hazards of algorithmic, as opposed to human, detection, is that an attacker who can reverse-engineer a machine can almost certainly find a way to make dangerous objects appear benign,” said Ari Juels, a computer science professor at the Jacobs Institute at Cornell Tech.
“Countermeasures may be possible, but the research community does not yet have a good sense of how to construct them.”
• This article’s headline was amended on 26 October to clarify that Evolv’s technology is not designed to replace existing airport security screeningEight watts. That's with processor and SDRAM running full tilt. Add the 8" LCD monitor at 12 Watts and a folding solar panel and you have a complete off-grid Linux puppy for £499. It was developed for the third world as "a collaborative, open source project of vast possibilities and a highly focused process to rapidly produce and distribute affordable computer appliances for people without reliable access to power. "
That may be so, but it would work fine right here- my wall-warts suck more than 8 watts, let alone the computers.
Designed for Rural Africa
Works in places other computers don't.
* During peak performance, the E1 consumes just 8W of power, 4% of what a typical (200W) desktop uses. Runs off a car battery or a cheap solar panel.
* Keep Working During Power Cuts! A UPS that will keep a standard desktop running for 15 minutes will power an E1 for 6.5 hours!
* Everything is stored on a CF card, which can be instantly removed to ensure security of your information.
* Efficient web browser for slow Internet connections.
* Discounted 5-Pack for rural schools available, with low-power displays, solar panel, and battery.
Every application you need and as fast as XP
Puppy Linux is pre-installed. Completely Stable and Fast!
* Practically identical interface to Windows, no learning curve required!
* Office-compatible - create/modify/save Excel and Word files, or even PDFs.
* Spreadsheet program opens in 3 seconds.
Works Off-the-Grid, Available with LCD, Solar Panel
For aid workers, meteorologists, field engineers, and people on the move.
* Ultra-portable version: E1 with 8" Display, foldable solar panel, and lightweight battery.
* Fits in laptop bag, takes 5 minutes to set up.
* Display and E1 run for 3.5 hours on a charge. Can recharge by car.
With Linux getting as developed as it is, one isn't sacrificing much to work on such a machine. It is no OLPC, its not for kids, but it would work for everyone else. They see it primarily as a development platform:
" Our aim is to position the E1 desktop as a platform around which all sorts of applications can be developed. The E1 has the benefits for developers of a standardized spec, a low price, and a Linux operating system.
As a company, our expertise lies in the hardware engineering involved in creating a general purpose handheld and providing reliable email. Rather than attempt to develop software for areas outside our core strength, we would rather partner with NGOs, universities, government ministries, independent programmers, etc. and supply development kits so that great apps can be written for healthcare workers (such as recording vaccinations), farmers (delivering critical information such as crop price and weather in areas without GSM access), and education (interactive content for primary schoolers or paperless tests that can be relayed immediately). "
::Aleutia via ::Sustainable DesignDrew Angerer/Getty Images
Sixteen Democratic senators are asking regulators to examine the use of A.T.M.-style cards to pay hourly employees.
In a letter on Thursday, the senators urged Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Seth D. Harris, the acting secretary of the Labor Department, to “take swift action to protect American workers.”
Across the country, a growing number of companies are doing away with paper paychecks and, in some instances, direct deposit, to offer prepaid cards.
The problem, though, according to consumer lawyers and employees, is that in the vast majority of cases, using the cards can generate large fees — 50 cents for a balance inquiry and $2.25 for an out-of-network automated teller machine, for example. For part-time and low-wage workers, the fees, which can be difficult to escape, quickly devour much of the money deposited on the cards.
Worried about drawing unwanted scrutiny that might threaten their jobs, some employees say they are reluctant to request another option. Other employees say that while there is a choice, they are automatically enrolled in the payroll-card programs. Getting out, these employees say, can be difficult and confusing.
Card issuers and employers note that payroll cards are a valuable tool for low-wage workers. They also say the fees on the cards are usually lower than those charged by check-cashing services — often the only other option for people who do not have bank accounts. The card providers and employers also note that there are free ways for employees to gain access to their pay.
The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association, a trade group that represents the prepaid industry, said it urged its members to clearly outline any fees associated with the cards to ensure that employees understand every aspect of the card.
“We strive to ensure we set a high bar with our best practices for our members,” said Judith E. Rinearson, a lawyer with the trade group.
The surge in payroll cards and the problems associated with them was the subject of a front-page article in The New York Times last month.
In their letter, the lawmakers referred to the article in The Times, noting that it had been jarring to learn from the article that “some workers incur so many fees in the course of using their payroll cards that their net income ends up below the minimum wage.”
The senators, including Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, asked the regulators to examine whether workers understood the fees associated with the cards. The lawmakers also asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to make a systematic study of the fees, according to the letter.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who helped create the new consumer protection agency, also signed the letter.
Mr. Manchin said, “Americans work hard every day and their pay must be protected from high fees, unfair choice and improper commissions. It is clear that prepaid payroll cards must be investigated further.”
The most vexing aspect of the cards, the lawmakers said, was that employees might be “coerced or inappropriately pressured into using them.” Employees, the letters says, “should have the right not to use such a card and to instead receive their pay via a paper check or direct deposit.”
To address the issue, the lawmakers asked the |
depleted American manufacturing, and piled-on American private and public debt to the point of a Minsky moment and serious crises.Planetary scientists know that volcanoes have crackled on the surface of Venus for much of the planet's history. Now, using data from the Venus Express spacecraft, an international team of researchers has found new evidence that some of those Venusian volcanoes may still be active today.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — An international team of scientists has found some of the best evidence yet that Venus, Earth’s nearest neighbor, is volcanically active.
In combing through data from the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission, the scientists found transient spikes in temperature at several spots on the planet’s surface. The hotspots, which were found to flash and fade over the course of just a few days, appear to be generated by active flows of lava on the surface.
“We were able to show strong evidence that Venus is volcanically, and thus internally, active today,” said James W. Head, a geologist at Brown University and co-author of a paper describing the new research. “This is a major finding that helps us understand the evolution of planets like our own."
The research is published online in Geophysical Research Letters.
The hotspots turned up in thermal imaging taken by the Venus Express spacecraft’s Venus Monitoring Camera. The data showed spikes in temperature of several hundred degrees Fahrenheit in spots ranging in size from 1 square kilometer to over 200 kilometers.
The spots were clustered in a large rift zone called Ganiki Chasma. Rift zones are formed by stretching of the crust by internal forces and hot magma that rises toward the surface. Head and Russian colleague Mikhail Ivanov had previously mapped the region as part of a global geologic map of Venus generated from the Soviet Venera missions in the 1980s and U.S. Magellan mission in the 1990s. The mapping work had shown that Ganiki Chasma was quite young, geologically speaking, but just how young wasn’t clear until now.
“We knew that Ganiki Chasma was the result of volcanism that had occurred fairly recently in geological terms, but we didn't know if it formed yesterday or was a billion years old,” Head said. “The active anomalies detected by Venus Express fall exactly where we had mapped these relatively young deposits and suggest ongoing activity.”
The latest finding is consistent with other data from Venus Express that have hinted at very recent volcanic activity. In 2010, infrared imaging from several volcanoes seemed to indicate lava flows from thousands to a few million years old. A few years later, scientists reported transient spikes in sulfur dioxide in Venus’ upper atmosphere, another potential signal of active volcanism.
The observation of hotspots by Venus Express, combined with the geologic mapping from Venera and Magellan, make a strong case for a volcanically active Venus, Head says.
“This discovery fits nicely with the emerging picture of very recent activity in Venus’ geologic history,” he said. “These remarkable findings were the result of collaborations spanning many years and many political borders. They underscore the importance of international collaboration in exploring our solar system and understanding how it evolves.”
The work was led by Eugene Shalygin and Wojciech Markiewicz of the Max Planck Institute. Additional co-authors were Alexander Basilevski (Russia’s Vernadsky Institute and Brown University), Dima Titov (European Space Agency) and N.I. Ignatiev (Russia’s Space Research Institute).Residents angry after urban military training shakes neighborhood with explosions ahead of Jade Helm 2015
By Alex Thomas
(INTELLIHUB) — A ten-day US Army urban military training exercise has begun in Flint, Michigan with explosions rocking neighborhoods and scaring residents who had no idea what was actually happening.
With less than three hours between a city press release and the beginning of the exercise, residents were left in the dark about the urban military training until the last possible moment. Most had no idea what was happening as their homes shook from the force of the simulated explosions.
“It was like a big huge explosion, it shook my whole house, it shook the ground.”
“I mean it was loud, it blew up the whole sky or whatever, it was like four or five big bangs,” local resident Annette Humphrey told WNEM News.
According to mlive.com, a city press release on the training said, “Elements of the U.S. Army are conducting training June 1-12 in designated parts of southeast Michigan, including the Flint area.”
The urban training, conducted at a closed junior high school and complete with sounds you would normally only hear in a warzone, will include the use of helicopters and simulated ammunition on top of detonations like the ones already felt by residents.
A statement from the military confirmed, without a doubt, that the training is to prepare soldiers for deployment in an urban setting which in military PR doublespeak means to prepare them for use in an American city near you.
The training, “will give personal the upper hand when they go into urban combat.”
Why all the urban military training?
The training in Michigan is merely the latest example in a long line of urban military training that has either been conducted or announced within the last 3 months.
From military training with local police for domestic house to house raids to Marines openly practicing for the internment of American citizens, training to take on the American people has hit previously unseen levels.
With so much news being released by the alternative media in regards to the plans for martial law one has to wonder why are we all of a sudden seeing this publicly happen now?
While there has absolutely been plans for martial law after some sort of massive civil disturbance dating back at least 60 years, in the past the military would either train away from the public or put huge effort into insuring that any training the public did see was clearly training for overseas deployment.
Now, day after day, month after month, we see dozens and dozens of reports from mainly local mainstream news outlets that detail some sort of urban training going on in their area without ever mentioning that similar training is happening throughout the country.
Simply put, if there wasnt something big planned for the near future why would all this training be clustered in a few month period rather than spread out as they have done over the years? (every summer there is an increase in domestic military training but nothing in the recent past like what we are seeing now)
Officials WITHIN Pentagon fear Obama martial law plans
Millions of people read the independent (some say conspiracy theory orientated) alternative media and while not all of those readers believe everything they read, the sheer amount of evidence brought forth so far indicates that there are tens of thousands of people who are, in varying degrees, worried about the military being used against the civilian population.
If this is true, then one would imagine that there are at least a small minority of people who work within different government agencies that are also worried about this now public plan.
There have been various whistleblowers throughout the years who have shared their worry and now, after a stunning report by a mainstream news outlet, we have confirmation that at least some of the people who work in the Pentagon are worried about what they see as Obama’s plan to use the military against the people.
In the viral Washington Times report, an anonymous Department of Defense official revealed their belief that a DoD Directive outlining military support to civilian authorities was literally the latest step towards the President using military force against the American people.
Read Directive No. 3025.18 – “Defense Support of Civil Authorities” here
“This appears to be the latest step in the administration’s decision to use force within the United States against its citizens,” said the defense official.
According to the report, another anonymous US Official also claimed that President Obama considered using the military during the Bundy Ranch standoff but eventually decided against it.
This revelation destroyed the outright lies put out in over 200 mainstream news articles in the last 2 months that have claimed that only far right “conspiracy theorists” are worried about things like Jade Helm and martial law when in reality officials within the Pentagon (and most likely every single government agency) are themselves stressed over what they see as an undeniable buildup to using military force on America streets.
The major questions that remain include what will cause the initial call for troops on the streets and when/if this will actually happen. Unless we have a major whistleblower those questions will likely remain unanswered until it is too late.
Conclusion
To end on a more optimistic note, it is a good sign to see a defense official risk it all and give the above quote to a mainstream news outlet.
Hopefully, there are many more like he or she and they will come together and stop this from happening before it gets so out of control that there is no turning back.
Residents expressing their frustration over urban training is also noteworthy as it shows that when these plans for martial law start to directly affect the people, the people will respond.
Photo Credit: YouTube.com
About the Author
Alex Thomas is a reporter who has worked in the alternative media for over three years. His work has been featured on numerous news outlets including Infowars and RT. Alex is an exclusive weapon of Intellihub.
Read more articles by this author here.
Feel free to post this article in part or in full, leaving the byline and all original links intact.Camponotus pennsylvanicus worker Liveworker
The black carpenter ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) is a species of carpenter ant native to central and eastern North America.
Appearance [ edit ]
C. pennsylvanicus can be distinguished from other carpenter ant species by the dull black color of the head and body, and by whitish or yellowish hairs on the abdomen. All castes of this species (including the major and minor workers, queens, and males) are black or blackish. Colonies' workers are not all the same size (polymorphism). The queens and the largest workers (also called super majors) are quite large and are some of the largest ants found on the North American continent. As with all ants, the antennae are elbowed. Workers usually have 12 antenna segments. Alates typically have yellowish wings.
Behavior [ edit ]
Black carpenter ants are known to forage up to 100 yards or 91.4 metres (to one d.p.) in search of food. Workers are most active at night. They do establish chemical (pheromone) trails. The ants produce crackling sounds that can often be heard near a large nest. A large colony can contain thousands of individuals. The black carpenter ant does not sting, but the larger workers can administer a sharp bite, which can become further irritated by the injection of formic acid, which they produce. Workers tend aphids, with the smaller workers collecting honeydew and transferring it to larger workers that carry it back to the nest. In addition, foragers feed on dead insects and plant juices.
Range [ edit ]
The black carpenter ants range is almost everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains in woodlands, forest edges and suburban communities.[1]
Control measures [ edit ]
In their natural environment, carpenter ants nest in dead trees and other dead wood. This enhances decay, which has ecological benefits. However, the ant achieves pest status when a colony invades the wood of a house or other structure, damaging its structural integrity.[2]
Since they favor moist wood as a habitat, any condition that promotes moisture should be eliminated to prevent infestation. The easiest of these is keeping gutters clear so water does not run down the side of the structure or gain entry. Moist wood is much easier to chew. The ants do not eat the wood, but remove it to create galleries for their activities. The galleries run parallel to the grain, as they are created in the softer, nonlignin portions of the timber. The galleries have a sandpaper-like feel, due to fecal remnants, but the mud tubes produced by termites will not be present.
References [ edit ]Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the US more money than its war on Vietnam in the 1970s [AFP]
As the United States takes up the decision to lift its self-imposed debt ceiling, we would do well to remember why America's public debt is as large as it is, and how it matters. With the rise of the Tea Party, Republicans may rail against raising the debt ceiling, but they are likely to back down in the end, because, among other things, debt-funded wars – say, in Afghanistan and Iraq – are easier to defend than pay-as-you-go wars that voters must finance up front with taxes.
Indeed, the looming US debate underscores a more general point: since time immemorial, war has been a double-edged sword. Human societies have slaughtered and oppressed one another on the scale of Mother Nature's worst scourges. But wars have also brought beneficial change, because mobilising people for fighting also mobilizes them for politics.
History is replete with examples of war expanding the voice of those who provided the resources to fight. Ancient Athens became a "democracy" – literally, government by the people – when Kleisthenes organized ordinary fisher folk and farmers into a mass rabble capable of defeating Sparta-backed oligarchs. Their political freedom was secured by Athens' reliance on labor-intensive naval warfare against the Persians and other enemies.
In Rome, the army's sit-down strike in the fifth century BC opened politics to the lower classes. Common warriors were, explicitly and famously, the decision makers among Norsemen and in Swiss Alpine cantons in the early Middle Ages.
'Benefits' of war
Medieval European cavalries later put political power into the hands of the wealthy, who could afford to support horses and their groomsmen, but the return of mass armies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries often turned the tables. Local militias achieved prominence and power in the Netherlands, beginning in 1568 during the long struggle against the Spanish Habsburgs, though they were again sidelined when the threat passed in the late seventeenth century.
Even then, European monarchs were forced to convene estates when they needed money to fight, forcing a dialog about the purposes and costs of war. And "revolutionary" war against Britain in the eighteenth century helped secure democratic principles in the US Constitution and encouraged a wider franchise. Napoleon’s armies, unleashed by the French Revolution’s mass political awakening, set off paroxysms of counter-mobilization that fueled the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848.
Modern democracy, with its mix of universal suffrage and property rights, looks remarkably like a compromise born of centuries of military competition among constitutionally evolving states, according to which the general public supplies the manpower to fight and moneyed interests supply the capital to train and equip the troops.
As a result, democracies are likelier than non-democracies to win wars, because they mobilise their societies more fully, and because citizens, who bear the costs, have the electoral power to stop politicians from fighting wars that are reckless and unnecessary.
Public support lacking
America's extended conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, are different. Together, they have already cost more than America's long war in Vietnam, but they have not increased public vigilance or political accountability at home. Indeed, the younger generation of Americans has greeted military action abroad with a yawn.
What accounts for the stark contrast between the mass protests against the Vietnam War and the muted public reaction to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
To some degree, fear of terrorism might shield US leaders from the need for accountability. But eight in ten Americans think that terrorist attacks are unlikely, and many voters believe that involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq will increase rather than limit America’s vulnerability to terrorism.
More likely, Americans take these wars lying down because the costs are not experienced by the average citizen. For one thing, technology-intensive warfare substitutes machines for soldiers, reducing the number of American casualties. Volunteer soldiers – including many non-citizens – and mercenary units for manpower reduce even further the reasons for voters to care.
Debt and GDP
Moreover, the US is paying for these wars with debt. The government funded World War II partly with war bonds, but it also instituted the first general income tax in American history, increasing tax revenue from $8.7bn in 1941 to $45bn in 1945. This would have been impossible for an unpopular war. To finance today’s wars, by contrast, the US government has not only avoided raising taxes, but has actually cut them on an enormous scale, with the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 now extended at least through 2012.
By 2009, the US budget deficit had climbed to more than 10 per cent of GDP, thanks to increased expenditures and plummeting tax revenues during the recession. Overall public debt, to which each year’s deficit adds another hefty dollop, is projected to exceed 100 per cent of GDP in 2011, up from around 40 per cent in the late 1970’s.
Countercyclical spending and tax policy are widely acceptable to experts and taxpayers alike, but deficit spending on wars is known to be a paltry way to stimulate the economy. It does, however, buy political time for US administrations to continue prosecuting ill-considered and expensive wars with little domestic scrutiny. With the US government’s access to global debt markets reducing the need to raise taxes, foreign governments now own nearly one-third of the US government’s $14 trillion debt.
We will not know for some time whether the US public debt is sustainable. We do know, however, that until now governments have had to subject themselves to increased political oversight when they needed manpower or money to fight wars. Lacking democracy’s most effective brakes on unpopular wars, the US has become relatively free to get itself mired in unwelcome foreign adventures.
John Ferejohn, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, currently teaches at New York University Law School. Frances Rosenbluth is Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
This article was first published by Project Syndicate.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.Under the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stipulates that gasoline and diesel refiners must blend a certain amount of “renewable fuel” into their products or face penalties.
The vast majority of the biofuel being produced now is corn-derived ethanol, on which the RFS places a cap of 15 billion gallons by 2015. So to satisfy the federal mandate that 36 billion gallons of biofuel be blended into the overall supply by 2022, the U.S. biofuels industry will have to produce a substantial amount of other types of biofuels—especially cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from wood chips and grasses.
But in 2007, Congress vastly overestimated the government’s ability to create a market for cellulosic biofuels, which remain much more expensive to produce than corn ethanol. There was no commercial production of cellulosic fuel in 2010 or 2011—even though the 2007 law originally called for 100 million and 250 million gallons, respectively, for those years (the requirements were subsequently scaled back to around 6.5 million gallons for each year). The chart above shows the actual biofuel production, so far, compared to future mandates.
In 2012, the EPA posits—based on its analysis of the six facilities scheduled to come online this year—that the fledgling industry will have the capacity to produce nearly 10.5 million gallons, compared to the original goal of 500 million. The chart above shows a breakdown, by company and facility, of the EPA’s projections for 2012 cellulosic biofuel production.
Several more facilities should begin commercial production in 2013, but it’s hard to believe that the industry will come even close to producing a billion gallons—the goal for that year, set by Congress in 2007. And the 2022 mandate of 36 billion total gallons of biofuel—16 of that cellulosic—is looking more unrealistic every year.With the myriad species of thug life that hung out there, the fast food shop at the corner of Commerce and Griffin streets developed a nickname all its own: CrackDonald's.
This very urban Mickey D's was Exhibit A in the average person's case against ever setting foot in downtown again--ground zero in the Dallas Cowboys parade riot of 1993, the spot in front of which a crazed homeless man shot a police officer to death in 1988 while a crowd looked on.
Not that the McDonald's was to blame for any of this chaotic, even deadly, street life, what with dozens of bus lines converging within blocks of its glass doors, and a nearby Greyhound station serving as a pipeline for trouble.
Continue Reading
Nevertheless, as a former manager recalls, even the counter help inside looked a little dangerous in their gold jewelry and mismatched uniforms. Things got to be so bad a few years ago that gang members began eyeing a percentage of the burger money, says James Oby, a former manager who now works for a sister store in Lancaster. "You couldn't sell anything without them wanting in on it," Oby says. "Everybody wanted it as their turf."
But that was before Ludwig von B. and his boys, the Dead European Males, began sweeping out the joint with their violas, glockenspiels, and flYgelhorns.
Just over a year ago, management set out speakers and began playing a mix of watered-down Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, Haydn, Chopin, Scarlatti, and the like. The music was piped into the store and onto the surrounding sidewalks and heavily trafficked stone-and-concrete Commerce Street plaza.
Baroque, classical, rococo, or romantic, you name the period, it ended up working like punkicide. As one loose-limbed guy with a stylized gait and baggies down his butt put it as he hustled by the shop last week: "I HATE that shit."
Although the cops say other factors are at work--a change nine months ago in DART bus lines that moved downtown's west transfer station is perhaps the biggest--the drop in police calls to the restaurant's address since it turned on the classical is fairly astounding.
In the two-year period from April 1, 1994, to April 1, 1996, just before the concert barrage began, records show that police were called to the store's address 782 times--an average of 391 times a year.
In the year since, that has dropped to 146 calls--and the cops say a lot of those calls are actually coming from the pay phones outside Downtown Corny Dog in the 900 block next door.
The same trend holds true with arrests. They went from 115 a year in the 1994-1996 period to 36 in the past year.
"At first I thought it was a joke," says Oby, recalling his response to business manager Mike Hom's idea of using the music. "Now I think there's a thousand percent improvement in the way the customer perceives the store."
As for the hoodlums, he says, "They don't want to stay in an atmosphere that is a little too upbeat. You wouldn't hang in front of Neiman Marcus.
"You don't walk or act the same way when there's classical music on," says Oby, who's been working in fast-food franchises all over town since the early '70s. "It's just the way it makes you feel."
Says James Jackson, 16, who stopped in the restaurant between buses last week, "It's elevator music...very uncool."
With several homeless shelters in the area, McDonald's #4777 remains home to a certain number of guys looking to stay out of the elements by nursing two-hour cups of coffee, not to mention kids playing hooky. But in terms of clearing up what was once one of Dallas' most visible command posts for undesirables, the music clearly has worked.
On a recent afternoon, there was no hangin', no chillin', no dealin'--just office workers, commuters, school kids, and conventioneers queuing up for their Mcburgers and fries.
Muzak, the Seattle-based company which supplies the sound, has been marketing some of its fare as anti-loitering music since the early '90s, when several 7-Eleven outlets began using it to discourage teen loitering. A Vancouver, British Columbia, convenience store owner is generally credited with starting the trend, using a particularly effective blend of Perry Como and Barry Manilow.
What Mickey D's downtown is getting is Muzak's "Light Classical" program, which is beamed from Seattle to Dallas via an uplink in North Carolina.
"It's meant to be soothing," says Todd Berna, an account executive in the company's Dallas sales office. According to a sales brochure, a computer mixes the music, which is based on a "light, non-symphonic sound."
"Loud, boisterous, as well as solemn, grave works are avoided," the brochure states. In other words, no Mahler or Wagner here--no highs or lows, just a lot of middle movements. Picking parts of works, the soporific soundtrack runs through a Brandenburg Concerto, then a little Blue Danube Waltz, then on to 10 or 15 other condensed pieces every hour.
"Old man's music" is how 22-year-old Duwayne Evans describes it as he waits on a customized double cheeseburger. "It's nothing you feel comfortable with."
Berna, with Muzak, says "we probably could get them to hang out all day" with Muzak's "Urban Beat" program, which includes artists such as Dr. Dre., Ice Cube, and Heavy D--not your father's Muzak.
Lt. Jeff Cotner, commander of the Dallas Police Department's Central Business District unit, says the McDonald's management has been committed for several years to making its high-profile corner safe and attractive. Besides the music, they've put up lights and kept the area litter-free. It's called "crime prevention through environmental design," Cotner explains. "Basically it means doing things to your surroundings that enhance safety versus lending itself to criminal opportunities." Loitering in the plaza in front of the restaurant went down, for instance, when the parking lot across the street installed fences and landscaping that stopped people from cutting through mid-block, Cotner says.
As for the music, says Cotner, "They wanted to bring down the intensity of that corner. I think of it as soothing, relaxing music."
Which is just what Martin Roth says it was doing to him one day last week as he picked at his extra-large fries. "I never used to come in here," says the Houston businessman who has clients in Dallas. "For some reason it feels safer now."
When told about the music, a smile flickered across his face, as if civilization had struck a blow. "Well that's great. I have [season] tickets to the symphony.It wasn't what Canada hoped to deliver to the 45,420 roaring fans at Olympic Stadium, but a 1-1 draw with the Netherlands was enough.
Ashley Lawrence scored early, only to see Canada concede a goal to substitute Kirsten Van De Ven in the 87th minute as the teams closed out group stage play at the FIFA Women's World Cup on Monday night in Montreal.
Canada finished first in Group A with a win and two draws and will begin single-game knock-out play Sunday in Vancouver against an opponent still to be determined. China was a second in the group while the Netherlands, with a win, a loss and a draw, was third.
"All in all, top of the group, five points, we're off to the west coast, this was the plan," said Canada coach John Herdman. "We'd love to have another three points in the bag but, job done, we're happy."
By finishing first, the Canadians will play all their remaining games in either Vancouver or Edmonton, greatly reducing the travel they may have faced by finishing second or third.
Canada, ranked eighth in the world, went for the win against the 12th-ranked Dutch by putting a mostly attack-oriented lineup on the field. It produced Canada's first goal from open play in three group stage games, but they also conceded their first goal of the tournament.
Herdman made four lineup changes, looking for offence from a Canadian team whose only goal in the opening two games was on a penalty.
They got the early pressure and Lawrence scored 10 minutes in on a play that started with a throw-in deep in Dutch territory. The ball deflected to Sophie Schmidt, who slipped it to Lawrence for a shot that went in off goalkeeper Loes Geurts' knee.
Substitutions
It was after making substitutions in the second half, mostly to shore up the defence, that the Dutch caught the Canadian defence off guard and equalized.
In the 87th minute, a turnover allowed Manon Melis to slip the ball to Van De Ven, who was all alone at the edge of the area to score.
"The tough decision, if I could have it back, was the fullback," Herdman said of his 81st minute substitution of midfielder Sophie Schmidt, who took a nasty knock along the sidelines, with Rhian Wilkinson. "With Wilkinson, we wanted to make sure we shored up that side and put [Josee] Belanger into the attack.
"We just got caught out in the transition."
Schmidt was shaken up. Herdman said it will help that Canada has six days before its next game to help her recover.
Canada's changes had Moscato, Kaylyn Kyle, Adriana Leon and Jessie Fleming replacing Lauren Sesselmann, Desiree Scott, Melissa Tancredi and Jonelle Filigno. Tancredi and Scott went in for Kyle and Fleming in the 61st minute.
China secures knockout berth
Wang Shanshan scored on a perfectly timed header and China benefited from a questionable called penalty to earn a 2-2 draw in the Women's World Cup against New Zealand on Monday.
With the draw, China advances to the knockout stage as the second team from Group A.
New Zealand (0-2-1) went up 1-0 on a goal by Rebekah Ashley Stott in the 28th minute, but China tied the game on a penalty kick by Wang Lisi. The penalty came after New Zealand's Betsy Hassett was called for a hand ball in the penalty box, though replays showed the ball hit her chest and head. China (1-1-1) went ahead 2-1 on Shanshan's goal in the 60th minute, with New Zealand tying the game five minutes later on a goal by Hannah Wilkinson.
Germany dominates Thailand
Lena Petermann scored twice in three minutes and top-ranked Germany trounced Thailand 4-0 Monday to advance to the round of 16 in the Women's World Cup.
Melanie Leupolz put Germany ahead 1-0 in the 24th minute by heading in a corner kick.
The 29th-ranked Thai hung within a goal behind a brilliant performance from keeper Waraporn Boonsing. But the Germans finally made it 2-0 on Petermann's header in the 56th minute — a feat she repeated two minutes later.
Sara Daebritz later closed the scoring by tapping the ball into an open net.
Germany finished atop its group with a goal differential of plus-14.
Norway moves on
Ada Hegerberg scored twice to secure Norway's berth in the knockout stage of the Women's World Cup with a 3-1 win over Ivory Coast.
Norway (2-1-0) moves on as the second team from Group B behind Germany, and it will play the second team from Group F on June 22.
Hegerberg scored the opening goal for Norway in the 6th minute, beating Ivory Coast goalkeeper Cynthia Djohore at the near post. Hegerberg added her second with a left-footed kick in the 62nd minute, and Solveig Gulbrandsen put Norway up 3-0 in the 67th minute.
Ange Nguessan scored the only goal for Ivory Coast (0-3), a booming right-footed blast from well outside the penalty box in the 71st minute.The verdict is out. Ban or no ban, India is watching more porn than ever. In 2015, India knocked out Canada to grab the third position - after the US and Britain - in visiting one of the world’s largest adult websites Pornhub.
In its annual review of how people around the world watch porn, Pornhub found that while the US added 11 seconds to their average time spent on watching porn, India - at 9 minutes 30 seconds - recorded a higher average time with a one-minute increase in the duration of each visit.
“More and more, we are finding that our users are opting for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets when they visit Pornhub,” the website noted.
PornHub received 21.2 billion visits in 2015 - 40,000 visits every minute or 2.4 million per hour.It is being called the biggest guns bust in the history of Brooklyn, New York — and its connections to Virginia run deep.
Twenty-four people were arrested in the sting, 22 from Virginia. They are accused of trafficking 217 guns bought in the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas then sold on the streets of Brooklyn.
One suspect, 21-yea- old Antwan Walker, was heard on a police-recorded phone call bragging about easily buying guys in the Commonwealth.
"There's no limit to how many guns I can go buy from the store... they might start looking at me, but in Virginia, our laws are so little, I can give guns away," Walker said.
Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring says the case makes it clear the Republican-controlled state legislature needs to pass stricter gun laws.
“It was shameful," Herring said. “It's time that legislators be held accountable for it, because right now they are too beholden to the gun lobby and they're not taking the safety of their constituents seriously enough."
But for many who own or sell guns, like NOVA Firearms in McLean, more laws are not the answer.
"There are enough state laws and federal laws that are in place," Salesman Tom Jenkins says more laws punish law abiding gun owners, not criminals. “If someone has criminal intent they will buy the gun or get the gun whichever way they want to and then dispose of it illegally."By Robert Romano
In the midst of a major battle, you do not abandon your post.
That is the message Republican voters, evangelical leaders and conservatives have for Republican establishment leaders in Washington, D.C. who were tripping over themselves to abandon Donald Trump in the wake of the embarrassing decade-old hot mic video of him bragging about his sexual exploits and coming on to married women.
A flash poll by Politico/Morning Consult found what anybody who remembers the failed Bill Clinton impeachment effort, wherein he lied under oath about having sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which is that nobody actually cares about the sexual exploits of rich and powerful men.
74 percent of Republican voters in the poll said they thought that party officials should stand by Trump despite the video revelations. Just 13 percent said they should abandon him. In the meantime, a coalition of prominent evangelical Christian leaders rallied behind Trump, including Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., who appeared willing to look past Trump’s past indiscretions.
Perkins told BuzzFeed News in an email: “My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values, it is based upon shared concerns about issues such as: justices on the Supreme Court that ignore the constitution, America’s continued vulnerability to Islamic terrorists and the systematic attack on religious liberty that we’ve seen in the last 7 1/2 years.”
Republicans and conservatives rallying around Trump came after a miasma of elected Republican leaders in Congress dumped support for Trump: Sen. John Thune (R-N.D.) called for Trump to withdraw from the race, along with Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and many others. My own local Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) threw Trump under the bus.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to support Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) cancelled a scheduled event with Trump in Wisconsin.
Oh sure, they say they want Republican Indiana Governor Mike Pence to somehow step in, ignoring the fact that it’s basically impossible for anybody but Trump to appear on every state’s ballot, meaning, as noted by national radio host Mark Levin on Monday, that it would result in Republicans and Pence losing in a “massive landslide.”
Apparently, they’d rather lose the White House for four to eight years to Hillary Clinton — and all the consequences that come with that — than to keep fighting. Even as their own voters are rallying to Trump.
Apparently these “leaders” have no idea what animates their own followers. Ryan was booed by some at his event, with some Trump supporters chanting “shame, shame” after the event as he left the stage. Trump campaign manager Kelly Ann Conway chastised Ryan on CBS This Morning on Sunday, saying, “Speaker Ryan of course took to the stage in Wisconsin at his event and faced some boos from the crowd because those who were expecting to see Donald Trump tell us that many of us don’t want to support him and we’re going to take the case directly to their voter.”
Undeterred, Ryan took to a conference call to members of the House on Monday, telling his members he was done defending Trump, that Hillary Clinton was likely to win and would instead focus his efforts on retaining the House majority.
Which, how does he expect to do that, precisely? If Trump supporters become dispirited and don’t turn out to the polls, if they’re not fired up for the general election, Republican members of Congress could fare quite poorly. Ryan is taking the enormous risk of demoralizing the GOP base of voters he needs be out in full force in November with all this loser talk. And he expects to retain the majority?
Put simply, without highly motivated Trump voters showing up in November enthused, for example, by his strong performance in the second presidential debate where he took Hillary Clinton to task on a number of issues, Republicans simply cannot win the House and Senate.
Turnout is always higher in presidential election years precisely because of the White House contest. The Republican National Committee (RNC) even appeared to temporarily suspended mail operations that would assist Trump over the weekend. Who ever heard of a national party abandoning its own nominee in October even for a short time? The committee’s most important job is winning the White House. It’s unseemly. By Monday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was denouncing the coup, saying on a conference call with party members, “Nothing has changed in regard with our relationship. We are in full coordination with the Trump campaign. We have a great relationship with them. And we are going to continue to work together to make sure he wins in November.”
But only after Trump delivered a strong second debate performance against Hillary Clinton, Robert Costa reported, tweeting, “In calls this morning, many Rs privately want |
think, so the antics of these clowns mostly fly below the radar - just like talk radio.
John McLaughlin is the former Jesuit priest who cared so deeply about God, he quit the order rather than give up his speechwriting gig with Richard Nixon.
Pat Buchanan, a good friend of McLaughlin's and the Nixon speechwriter who got him the job, is a product of Jesuit schools and presents himself as a Catholic so conservative, he still goes to the Latin Mass. He has occasional lapses in which he actually tells the truth, but these are so few and far between, it's not worth mentioning. Pat is generally is so willing to distort reality, it's a given. If Pat vehemently tells you the sky is blue, stick your head out the window and check.
Monica Crowley, another Nixon employee, is a Fox News "analyst" - i.e. someone paid to twist and mold the truth into something to inflames passions against Democrats. (By the way, her sister, Dr. Jocelyn Crowley, is married to Hannity's former co-host, Alan Colmes.) Apparently she's pretty good at distorting truth:
Crowley was accused of plagiarism in 1999 for an article she authored titled "The Day Nixon Said Goodbye" that appeared in the The Wall Street Journal. After accusations of plagiarism from at least one reader, an acknowledgement of "striking similarities" between Crowley's article and an article by Paul Johnson titled "In Praise of Richard Nixon" in the October 1988 issue of Commentary Magazine was published. A Journal editor stated, "Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article." Crowley acknowledged the similarity between the pieces, and said "there are clear similarities in the language. I have wracked my brain, and I can honestly tell you that I have not read [Johnson's article]." An article in Slate Magazine detailed five specific passages in Crowley's article that contained identical language and phraseology to Johnson's piece, and concluded that "it just isn't possible for Crowley not to have read Johnson's article."
There is something called "The Ten Commandments," and Christians generally agree that it's important. John, Pat, Monica and their ilk simply ignore any of those commandments that are politically inconvenient ("Thou shalt not bear false witness") or they apply them selectively ("Thou shalt not kill" only applies to fetuses, and not Iraqi children). They dig out obscure parts of the Old Testament they insist mean Jesus condemned gay people, and yet they still eat shrimp and lobster - condemned in the same book of the Bible.
We already know they will do or say anything that will further their political cause and erode ours.
So spare me the wide eyes and crocodile tears. No one's suggesting we off old people, and they know it. They're just so shameless and cynical, they couldn't resist.
Everyone knows if liberals really believed in killing people when they're no longer productive, people like McLaughlin and Buchanan wouldn't be here.The 70th Annual Tony Awards surged in the ratings Sunday night to deliver the show’s best overnight numbers in more than a decade.
According to CBS, the ceremony had a 8.7 million viewers, up 35 percent from last year. That marks the biggest overnight score for the perpetually ratings-challenged telecast in 15 years (usually around 7 million tune in). Among adults 18-49, the telecast had a 1.6 rating.
The viewership surge was likely because of Broadway sensation Hamilton. The musical from creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda scored 11 total Tonys during the ceremony, falling just shy of the all-time record. The telecast also included tributes to the Orlando, Florida mass shooting that left 50 dead at a gay nightclub on Sunday morning.
CBS’ Late Late Show host James Corden acted as host of the Tonys.
See our rundown of the Tony’s best moments last night.Adelaide has broken its membership record for the fourth consecutive season.
This year’s tally hit 68,000 just days before the Club’s women’s team plays in the inaugural AFLW Grand Final and the men kick off their season against premiership fancy GWS.
It eclipses the record mark of 67,874 achieved in 2016 and is testament to the intense passion among the supporter base.
The Crows also hold the title for the highest average home match attendances, not just in the AFL but in Australian club sport. The number of 11-game Members who have access to all Crows home games continues to be among the League’s top echelon.
Crows CEO Andrew Fagan described Members as the driving force behind the Club and game in general.
“To break the record yet again is a remarkable achievement and demonstrates the loyalty and enthusiasm of our supporters,” Fagan said.
“Our Members are the backbone of the Club and underpin everything we do and aspire to achieve.
“They always turn out in large numbers and make themselves heard at games across the country, and most recently have got right behind our women’s team.
“We are fortunate and always grateful for their support not just on match days but also in the way in which they engage across our digital platform and with our community initiatives.”
The Club still has 3-game membership packages available from $99 for adults and $30 for juniors.
There are also tickets available for Sunday afternoon’s game against the Giants at Adelaide Oval.EU Referendum: the end of the Norway option? 27/06/2015
Follow @eureferendum
Barely, if at all, mentioned by the legacy media this week was a report issued
This, we think, must be taken with Bertelsmann Stiftung Fundamental Law.
Putting all these sources together, together
As the Bertelsmann "Fundamental Law" points out, though, associate membership could also cater for the needs of Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, "seeking to improve on their present unsatisfactory arrangements". Presumably, this will also include Liechtenstein, pulling all four EFTA countries into the Greater European Union, to total 32 countries.
The attraction for the "NILS" countries is that they add MEP and Council representation to their current EEA/bilateral arrangements, removing the oft-repeated complaint of lack of voting power or "influence" over Single Market laws.
The "inner circle" will comprise members of the eurozone, which will sole access to the "inner Council", with European Parliament sessions set up to deal exclusively with eurozone business.
Of immediate concern to the UK referendum campaign is that Mr Cameron will, at the eleventh hour, offer association as a form of "rebranded" EU membership, pointing out that the offer will also be available for the NILS countries.
In this scenario, both the Swiss and Norway options will disappear, leaving the "no" campaign seriously bereft of viable exit plan options. Potentially, this could be very damaging, especially as the "WTO option" is guaranteed to bring the UK economy to a halt.
However, in anticipation of this problem, and to address perceived weaknesses in the Norway option, we have been doing some rebranding of our own. Specifically, we've been looking at the "shadow EEA" option, our fallback in the event that the UK's application to rejoin EFTA fails or if the UK is blocked from staying in the EEA.
As the
However, there is a further option, not dissimilar to the line taken by the Australian government
A full harmonising commitment would be akin to the shadow EEA agreement, only made unilaterally. As such, it would not need assent from EU member states. Given that commitment, the UK would then be in a very strong position to insist on access to Single Market, invoking WTO non-discrimination rules.
Add the MRA agreement, and an agreement on tariffs, and then a bilateral agreement on programme participation and there is an almost exact equivalence with EEA Agreement.
Carried out under the aegis of Article 50, the negotiations would be given a formal framework. As long as the UK did not seek preferential access to the Market, on better terms than were available to a full member, there would seem to be no serious obstacles to an agreement.
Inevitably, though, this requires some agreement from EU Member States. Yet, it is posited by WTO advocates that the "no" campaign cannot promote an option which relies on bilateral agreements.
This is based on the experience of the Scottish referendum, when Alex Salmond was confronted with the question of which currency an independent Scotland might use. He was unable to offer a solution in the event that the UK authorities refused to permit continued participation in sterling. It is thus held that the "no" campaign cannot afford a similar refusal.
However, any comparison with the situation pertaining to the UK's exit negotiations is flawed. Not least, the negotiations are taking place within a treaty framework.
Within this framework, not only does Article 50 require Member States to negotiate with the departing state, Article 3 of the
Furthermore, the EU Treaties themselves exist within the framework of the
Any idea that the EU, within the framework of Article 50, as reinforced by the separate Articles within the Treaties, and further reinforced by international law, would refuse to negotiate on basic issues of trade, and not strive in good faith to reach an agreement, simply does not lie within the realm of practical politics. And, should there clear breach of EU treaty obligations, those breaches might well be a remedy through proceedings in the ECJ. Barely, if at all, mentioned by the legacy media this week was a report issued on Tuesday - the so-called Five Presidents' Report on completing Europe's economic and monetary union.This, we think, must be taken with other indicators, and details emerging from the European Council, together with the Council conclusions, Mr Cameron's own comments on the referendum timing and thePutting all these sources together, together with the views of the Commission President, and the idea of the Prime Minister brokering associated membership status with the EU now looks even more plausible. The "colleagues" plan to launch the treaty process that will allow this in late 2017, the moment the UK's referendum is over. Completion is scheduled by 2025 at the very latest.As the Bertelsmann "Fundamental Law" points out, though, associate membership could also cater for the needs of Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, "seeking to improve on their present unsatisfactory arrangements". Presumably, this will also include Liechtenstein, pulling all four EFTA countries into the Greater European Union, to total 32 countries.The attraction for the "NILS" countries is that they add MEP and Council representation to their current EEA/bilateral arrangements, removing the oft-repeated complaint of lack of voting power or "influence" over Single Market laws.The "inner circle" will comprise members of the eurozone, which will sole access to the "inner Council", with European Parliament sessions set up to deal exclusively with eurozone business.Of immediate concern to the UK referendum campaign is that Mr Cameron will, at the eleventh hour, offer association as a form of "rebranded" EU membership, pointing out that the offer will also be available for the NILS countries.In this scenario, both the Swiss and Norway options will disappear, leaving the "no" campaign seriously bereft of viable exit plan options. Potentially, this could be very damaging, especially as the "WTO option" is guaranteed to bring the UK economy to a halt.However, in anticipation of this problem, and to address perceived weaknesses in the Norway option, we have been doing some rebranding of our own. Specifically, we've been looking at the "shadow EEA" option, our fallback in the event that the UK's application to rejoin EFTA fails or if the UK is blocked from staying in the EEA.As the Flexcit plan stands, if this happens, we have the UK seeking to negotiate a bilateral agreement to adopt the entire Single Market acquis. The UK would adopt the same mechanisms for the incorporation of new laws, so that there would be no divergence once the agreement was in place.However, there is a further option, not dissimilar to the line taken by the Australian government in 1997. Then, it signed a joint declaration on EU-Australian relations, followed two years later by a Mutual Recognition Agreement. The scope exists for the UK to do likewise, or to make a unilateral declaration, up to and including a commitment to full regulatory harmonisation (which already exists).A full harmonising commitment would be akin to the shadow EEA agreement, only made unilaterally. As such, it would not need assent from EU member states. Given that commitment, the UK would then be in a very strong position to insist on access to Single Market, invoking WTO non-discrimination rules.Add the MRA agreement, and an agreement on tariffs, and then a bilateral agreement on programme participation and there is an almost exact equivalence with EEA Agreement.Carried out under the aegis of Article 50, the negotiations would be given a formal framework. As long as the UK did not seek preferential access to the Market, on better terms than were available to a full member, there would seem to be no serious obstacles to an agreement.Inevitably, though, this requires some agreement from EU Member States. Yet, it is posited by WTO advocates that the "no" campaign cannot promote an option which relies on bilateral agreements.This is based on the experience of the Scottish referendum, when Alex Salmond was confronted with the question of which currency an independent Scotland might use. He was unable to offer a solution in the event that the UK authorities refused to permit continued participation in sterling. It is thus held that the "no" campaign cannot afford a similar refusal.However, any comparison with the situation pertaining to the UK's exit negotiations is flawed. Not least, the negotiations are taking place within a treaty framework.Within this framework, not only does Article 50 require Member States to negotiate with the departing state, Article 3 of the Consolidated Treaties requires the Union to, "contribute to … free and fair trade". Article 21 requires that the Union, "work for a high degree of cooperation in all fields of international relations, in order to … encourage the integration of all countries into the world economy, including through the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade".Furthermore, the EU Treaties themselves exist within the framework of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which requires the parties to act in "good faith". Then "good faith" in itself is "almost certainly" a principle of customary international law, and indeed is a principle of WTO law.Any idea that the EU, within the framework of Article 50, as reinforced by the separate Articles within the Treaties, and further reinforced by international law, would refuse to negotiate on basic issues of trade, and not strive in good faith to reach an agreement, simply does not lie within the realm of practical politics. And, should there clear breach of EU treaty obligations, those breaches might well be a remedy through proceedings in the ECJ.
The whole rationale for discarding Flexcit, and instead going for the WTO option, is fundamentally flawed. This is especially so as the WTO option also requires bilateral agreements to make it work, essentially making it a theoretical construct, with no basis in reality.
Thus, we aver that stage one of Flexcit offers as reasonable an assurance of an amicable exit settlement as could be anticipated, and one which will secure the UK's continued participation in the Single Market, with or without the EEA.
But since we now offer not one but three mechanisms for securing exit, we feel it would no longer be appropriate to call stage one the Norway option. Nor would we even to claim that this is a preferred option. In terms of our rebranding, what we now suggest calling it the "Market Solution", reflecting the outcome that we seek and would almost certainly be able to secure.
Whether or not, Mr Cameron therefore comes up with the idea of associated membership, we will still have something better.Trendy Sydenham cafe Hello Sunday dominated the 2016 Christchurch Hospitality Awards last night, winning over both its industry peers and the public outside.
The awards were held at a flash event at the Art Gallery. Hello Sunday, which is housed in a former Sunday school at 6 Elgin St, was named the city's best as part of The Press People's Choice section, which is voted for by the public.
It also won the cafe of the year title in an industry-only vote, and also took out the "supreme establishment" award for getting the most votes in that sector.
STACY SQUIRES/FAIRFAX NZ Hello Sunday dominated the Christchurch Hospitality Awards winning best cafe awards from inside and outside the industry.
Two other people's choice awards went to Baretta for best bar and Costas Taverna for best restaurant.
The other bar finalists were Smash Palace and Dux Central; the other restaurant finalists were Dux Dine and Harlequin Public House; and the other cafe finalists were C1 Espresso and Mrs Hucks.
READ MORE:
* Top restaurants for 2015
* Top cafes for 2015
* Great coffee is not enough
The awards are known as the Chevrons and the categories within the hospitality industry voting sections were: Crew members of the year; suppliers of the year, new talent of the year; establishments of the year.
Supreme winners announced in each of those areas respectively were: best barista Zhen Xu "Q" (Supreme Crew Member), best beverage supplier Three Boys Brewery (Supreme Supplier), best new establishment O.G.B (Supreme New Talent) and cafe of the year Hello Sunday (Supreme Establishment).
Other awards "of the year" were: bartender, Charles Gillet from the Poplar Social Club; manager, Joel Christian from The Monday Room; chef, Giulio Sturla from Roots; sales rep, Chris Mansfield from Hancocks; specialty supplier, Canterbury Cheesemongers; goods and services wholesaler, Southern Hospitality; caterer, Eaton Drink Co; pop-up establishment, Fine Fare Kitchen; emerging hospo professional, Nick Inkster of OGB; central city establishment, Boo Radley's; regional establishment, The Bicycle Thief; restaurant, The Monday Room; bar, Boo Radley's.
A major volcanic eruption in Japan threatening the safety of tens of thousands of people is possible within the next three decades, say experts who have used new techniques to identify a buildup of magma in one of the country’s most active volcanoes.
When nature puts on a happy face: Hawaiian volcano erupts into smile Read more
In a study published on Tuesday in the Scientific Reports journal, a team that included experts from Bristol University and the Sakurajima Volcano Research Centre in Japan said the new techniques showed a “substantial growing magma reserve” inside Sakurajima, located just off the coast of Kagoshima city, in south-west Japan.
The team said the magma buildup could trigger a repeat of the volcano’s deadly eruption of 1914, which killed 58 people and caused widespread flooding in Kagoshima, home to more than 600,000 people.
Dr James Hickey, the lead author of the study, said the team had found a new way to map the natural “plumbing system” inside volcanoes that could improve authorities’ ability to predict eruptions and issue earlier evacuation guidance.
“What we have discovered is not just how the magma flows into the reservoir, but just how great the reservoir is becoming,” Hickey said. “We believe that this new approach could help to improve eruption forecasting and hazard assessment at volcanoes not just in this area, but worldwide.
“We know that being forewarned means we are forearmed and providing essential information for local authorities can potentially help save lives if an eruption was imminent.”
Sakurajima is about 30 miles from two nuclear reactors that were restarted last year, as Japan resumed its nuclear power programme after the March 2011 Fukushima meltdown.
In 2013 the 1,117-metre-high Sakurajima – a popular tourist attraction – spewed ash as far as Kagoshima and sent rocks flying into populated areas, causing damage but no major injuries. Dramatic footage taken in the early evening in February last year showed the volcano erupting in a fiery blast before sending lava flows down its slope. It last erupted in July, sending ash 5,000 metres into the sky.
There are scores of active volcanoes in Japan, which sits on the Pacific “ring of fire” where a large proportion of the world’s quakes and eruptions are recorded. Mount Fuji, Japan’s most famous volcano – and its highest peak – is active but has not erupted since 1707. In September 2014, a major eruption on Mount Ontake in central Japan killed 57 people.
Aftermath of Indonesia's volcanic eruptions – in pictures Read more
The British and Japanese research team focused their study on Aira caldera – a vast, submerged crater that stores magma and feeds it into nearby Sakurajima, causing almost daily eruptions.
They found that the caldera – a cauldron-like volcanic depression – was supplying Sakurajima with about 14m cubic metres of magma every year, enough to fill Wembley stadium in London three and a half times over.
The magma is entering the volcano at a faster rate than it can be released through small, frequent eruptions, leading the researchers to conclude that a much bigger eruption is possible within the next three decades.
“The 1914 eruption measured about 1.5 km cubed in volume – a massive event,” Hickey said. “From our data we think it would take around 130 years for the volcano to store the same amount of magma for another eruption of a similar size – meaning we are around 25 years away.”For the first time in years, the New York primary is critical in a presidential race, so you can imagine the disappointment when scores of voters ran into problems at the polls. Stefan Holt reports. (Published Tuesday, April 19, 2016)
A top New York City official announced an audit of New York City's Board of Elections Tuesday, just as hundreds of voters reported problems at polling locations and at least one instance of possible voter fraud.
New York City comptroller Scott Stringer said Tuesday his office would look into management and policies at the city's elections board after it was revealed this week that more than 125,000 Democratic voters were purged from the rolls in Brooklyn ahead of Tuesday's primaries and special elections.
"The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient," Stringer said in a statement.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he supported the audit, and pointed to issues Tuesday — especially in Brooklyn — as evidence for the need of reform. He called on the Board of Elections to restore the voters who were removed from the rolls.
"It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists," de Blasio said.
Meanwhile, the state Attorney General's office said its voter hotline received the most calls in its history Tuesday.
The hotline received 562 calls and about 140 emails from voters as of 5 p.m. The most common complaints were from voters who were told they weren't registered to vote or that they couldn't participate in a party's presidential primaries. Other complaints ranged from lack of privacy, unclear instructions and accessibility issues.
Among the most serious issues was a report of alleged voter fraud. NBC 4 New York received a tip from a voter who said that poll workers were attempting to "trick" Democrats into picking for Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
City Board of Elections Director Mike Ryan told NBC 4 New York that it is investigating the claim.
"All issues related to the voting process gives us concern," he said.
Other voters reported everything from confusion to long lines spurred by everything from broken polling machines to locked-up voter rolls.
At Bishop Ford High School in Brooklyn's Windsor Terrace neighborhood, voters were asked to vote by affidavit or come back later in the day because pollsters were unable to find a book with voters' names and party affiliations.
The book was eventually found, but several voters had to cast ballots via affidavit.
One woman said she and her husband were frustrated to find that they couldn't cast ballots normally.
This this was our first time voting in New York so it's a little frustrating," the woman said. "I just filled out an affidavit but it won't be counted for some time I guess."
Voters at other precincts reported similar problems. Pete Harris took to Twitter after his name didn't show up in the rolls at his Upper West Side, even though he registered with his party in 2014.
New York primary voters head to the polls
New York primary voters head to the polls in New York's primary election. (Published Tuesday, April 19, 2016)
"My name wasn't on the list and I had to vote affidavit. Was told 'this is happening to tons of people today," he tweeted.
In Brownsville, Brooklyn, another voter tweeted that she got to her precinct location 10 minutes before polls open but couldn't cast a ballot for more than two hours because workers didn't have keys to the machines or ballots.
She eventually voted, but claimed that only Republicans were able to cast ballots for part of the morning.The MG driver has picked up just five points from the round, seeing his lead in the rookie Jack Sears Trophy cut to 24 points.
"It’s very frustrating but, again, they are incidents that are out of my control and it’s people driving into me," Sutton said.
"It’s becoming a joke as this is meant to be the pinnacle of British motorsport and, at the moment, it isn’t; we’re not putting on a good show.
"I will be the first person to hold my hands up and apologise if I do something wrong and am at fault, and will accept any penalty that comes my way, but there are people who are getting away with things that I have been penalised for and I don’t feel that is right.
"To get one DNF because of someone else is bad enough, but two is kick up the backside."
Harrison: No lessons learned from Snetterton
Sutton was not the only Triple Eight driver to run into trouble at Knockhill, with teammate Josh Cook parking his car on the side of the circuit in race three after a hit from one of his rivals.
The duo's team boss Ian Harrison, who had suggested some of the current BTCC drivers "just aren't good enough" after the Snetterton crashfest, was once again dismayed by the driving standards.
"Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything to you last time out, and I guess I have to wait and see what penalties are handed out by the organisers, but the fact is that we have a 50 percent finishing rate this weekend and it is because of other people driving into our cars," Harrison said.
"I have yet to see someone get a yellow or a red card for their driving and nothing has changed; it’s exactly the same as it was at Snetterton.
"Teams and mechanics have worked hard to get cars ready for this weekend but there are some drivers on the grid who don’t seem to respect, or aren’t bothered, by that fact. Maybe it doesn’t interest them or they don’t see it as their problem; I don’t know.
"There is no consideration for the long game and they just seem to look for instant gratification that comes from overtaking someone in a position where they can’t overtake at this corner on this lap, rather than thinking ahead and planning their move.
"We knew coming here that it was a circuit that hasn’t been kind to our MG in the past, but the championship seems to be at the stage where if you aren’t inside the top 10, you are at serious risk of not finishing through no fault of your own.
"Going to Rockingham, we have to make sure we qualify well so that we are in a position where we can actually race with people."
Matt Salisbury / TouringCarTimesPhoto credit: The Goldwater
Xi Jinping needs to tread carefully when he meets Trump. I hope that Xi Jinping likes wheaties, because he is going to need them this week as he faces Trump on his home turf in Mar-A-Lago.
President Xi of China is facing a tough Communist Party conference at home, and his reputation, so far stellar with his people, is at stake in this meeting of the two powerful world leaders.
For those of a romantic bent, Xi's embrace of globalization and militant stance in the South China Sea is perfectly suited to face off against Donald Trump's populist, nativist message of Western defiance in the face of Chinese provocation.
This narrative of East against West is particularly stirring in the face of North Korea's recent saber-rattling, and a martial direction towards solving these problems would certainly satisfy many of the more hawkish conservatives among us. Left unsaid is the certainty that an apocalyptic tone will certainly resonate with some on the fringes, and of course the Left will use this as a club to finish off Trump, this time for good. And somewhere, floating above it all, President Donald Trump carefully considers his next move on the glowing, semi-transparent four dimensional chessboard hovering in the air in front of his gilded throne.
Xi is seated before him, in a comfortable chair on an equal level, but Trump narrows his eyes. He knows that Xi is on the hotseat. At the 19th Party Conference, there is expected to be a shakeup. Xi needs to impress senior party officials, and these officials want what is best for China, not what is best for Xi.
If he does not make a favorable impression at this meeting, his shining political career may come to an end. And Donald Trump has a lot to hold Xi's feet to the fire about. An article on Bloomberg's online website states that "Trump has repeatedly blasted China for stealing American jobs, militarizing the South China Sea and failing to do more to stop North Korea. He threatened to use the One-China policy regarding Taiwan as a bargaining chip to get better trade terms before eventually relenting in a February phone call with Xi."
To China, Donald Trump is a wildcard. They do not want war or strife any more than we do, and everyone loves a good deal. So they will most likely approach this meeting with an eye towards mutual understanding and smoothing over of some trade details. And there have already been overtures towards Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, now a senior advisor to President Trump.
If we can get along with China, it benefits everybody. But only time will tell how such possible sticking points as Taiwan might affect the outcome of this meeting. In the end, what the Chinese want should make us all breathe a sigh of relief: They want to make a good deal with the Don and then go home.
SOURCE: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-05/trump-asked-lots-of-questions-on-air-force-one-general-saysThe popular YouTube host Jon Jafari’s voice has been removed from the upcoming video game Yooka-Laylee following his incendiary and false claims about race and immigration in the U.S. earlier in March.
Jafari, known online as JonTron, sparked outrage after his tweets and comments in a March 13 debate with streamer Steven Bonnell repeatedly centered on his concern about declining white populations in the U.S. At one point, Jafari told Bonnell he could be open to the ideal of immigration, saying that if immigrants “assimilated, they would enter the gene pool, eventually.”
The controversy reached Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic, which had hired Jafari to do voice work on the game in 2015. Playtonic told GamesIndustry.biz on Thursday that it had removed Jafari from the game “in light of his recent personal viewpoints.”
“Playtonic is a studio that celebrates diversity in all forms and strives to make games that everyone can enjoy,” the developer said. “As such, we deeply regret any implied association that could make players feel anything but 100% comfortable in our game worlds, or distract from the incredible goodwill and love shown by our fans and Kickstarter backers.
The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now
Yooka-Laylee, which will be available for most gaming platforms including Playstation 4, XboxOne and the Nintendo Switch, will be released next month.
Jafari did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com.A Late-August Trip to Lake Tahoe in 2013
Towards the end of August 2013, Lake Tahoe was in the path of smoke from the Rim Fire that was burning to the south near Yosemite. There was another fire closer to the Lake Tahoe Basin to the west - the American Fire - but its smoke was blown mainly to the north. I was on a late August trip to the Lake to enjoy the famously clear waters with my family. Dense and consistent smoke filled the Tahoe Basin for most of the trip, creating a fog-like obstruction that blocked the spectacular view of the many peaks that circle the lake. This is a short memoir of this experience at one of the most spectacular Alpine lakes in the world.
Living 22 miles east of San Francisco, I am used to and appreciate the fog that envelops us, keeps us cool, and obscures our views of the area. On a recent trip to Lake Tahoe, smoke took the place of the fog and instead of drizzle, very fine specks of ash rained down on the North Shore. It was like being near a constantly burning campfire, complete with itchy eyes, a stuffy nose, and a serene red glow.
Reno schools were closed, jet ski rentals ceased, and people with certain sensitivities to airborne particulates were advised to stay inside with the air-conditioner running. To escape the smoke, some of us went to make pottery at the Northstar Village and the rest went to the Incline Bowl over in Nevada. Both places were fairly empty; only one other person was making pottery and just three other occupied lanes in Incline.
Back at the beach, the smoke created rare and spectacular conditions for photography, including red skies and orange-tinted waves. I have tried to capture in pictures how the Lake looked and felt on and around the 23rd of August 2013.
Although not related to the fire and smoke, I have also included a couple of pictures that attempt to show the drop in water level between August 2012 and August 2013. Much more beach was visible and small "ponds" were scattered around the newly exposed sand. Some of the ponds were cut off from the Lake and some were still connected. The ponds that were not connected were filled with algae and a strange rainbow colored substance that created patterns that one might expect to find on another planet (see photo below). Reflections in the ponds also made for interesting photos, some of which are shown on this page.
By Michael MorrisThe U.S. men's national team kicks off 2018 World Cup qualifying Friday night in St. Louis on the heels three straight losses on U.S. soil. On that note, let's jump right into this week's 'Bag:
If the USMNT doesn’t get the needed results in first WCQs, how hot of water could [Jurgen] Klinsmann be in?
@DRock_18
Well, there was what I would call “an informed rumor” (i.e., multiple connected sources, but without direct knowledge) going around that Klinsmann has been told by U.S. Soccer that he’s out if he doesn’t get six points this week at home against St. Vincent and the Grenadines and away at Trinidad and Tobago. But that was denied to me by everyone I spoke to with direct knowledge of the situation (Then again, none of those people would want that out there anyway).
Put it this way: Three points at home against tiny St. Vincent on Friday in St. Louis has to happen. St. Vincent is No. 129 in the FIFA rankings (the U.S. is No. 33), and the six-game semifinal round of World Cup qualifying offers little margin for error, especially against minnows.
Tuesday’s game at Trinidad and Tobago (ranked No. 54) is the hardest of this six-game round, and based on current form it’s not hard at all to imagine the U.S. failing to get three points.
T&T had a pretty good Gold Cup (tying champion Mexico 4-4 in the group stage) and tied El Tri again 3-3 in a September friendly. Port-of-Spain will not be a cakewalk.
What six teams do you like to come out of CONCACAF fourth round qualifying into the Hex?
@SoccerPharaoh
So here are the three semifinal-round groups, from which the top two teams will advance to the 10-game Hexagonal:
Group A: Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Canada.
I’m trying to imagine a scenario in which El Salvador and Canada would have a chance against two teams that have become World Cup regulars, and I just can’t do it.
Advancing: Mexico and Honduras.
Group B: Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica.
I’m not going to pick the chalk in every group here, and this group is the most evenly balanced of the three. World Cup quarterfinalist Costa Rica has been up and down since Brazil 2014, but I think the Ticos will still advance. Any of the other three have a shot too—don’t sleep on Haiti, which can play—but I’m going to go with Jamaica, which made the Gold Cup final and has added some firepower through players with Jamaican relatives.
Advancing: Costa Rica and Jamaica.
Group C: USA, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Guatemala.
Man, the U.S. got a sweetheart draw here, which (this being soccer) probably means it won’t end up being as easy as everyone expects.
Advancing: USA, Trinidad and Tobago.
Why did Klinsmann drop Clint Dempsey for qualifiers?
@uswntob1n7
Do we see Dempsey return to USMNT or is this the beginning of the end of the Dempsey Era?
@Sikorskijr
When you see that Clint Dempsey has scored nine goals in 10 games this year for the U.S., you’re probably scratching your head that he was dropped by Klinsmann for the first two World Cup qualifiers.
But such was the coaching staff’s distaste for Dempsey’s performance against Mexico in the CONCACAF Cup that the decision was made not to bring him in. Does it mean Dempsey, 32, is done with the national team? Not necessarily. He’d like to play in the Copa América Centenario, and he’d like to break Landon Donovan’s career U.S. goals record of 57 (Dempsey is currently on 49). I also think there could come a time when Klinsmann decides he needs Dempsey’s goal production.
What are the pros/cons of NYCFC hiring Patrick Vieira?
@there |
can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave* to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris.
Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they articulate an agenda?
The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word — REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.
This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind.
“The world can’t continue on its current path and survive,” Ketchup told me. “That idea is selfish and blind. It’s not sustainable. People all over the globe are suffering needlessly at our hands.”
The occupation of Wall Street has formed an alternative community that defies the profit-driven hierarchical structures of corporate capitalism. If the police shut down the encampment in New York tonight, the power elite will still lose, for this vision and structure have been imprinted into the thousands of people who have passed through park, renamed Liberty Plaza by the protesters. The greatest gift the occupation has given us is a blueprint for how to fight back. And this blueprint is being transferred to cities and parks across the country.
“We get to the park,” Ketchup says of the first day. “There’s madness for a little while. There were a lot of people. They were using megaphones at first. Nobody could hear. Then someone says we should get into circles and talk about what needed to happen, what we thought we could accomplish. And so that’s what we did. There was a note-taker in each circle. I don’t know what happened with those notes, probably nothing, but it was a good start. One person at a time, airing your ideas. There was one person saying that he wasn’t very hopeful about what we could accomplish here, that he wasn’t very optimistic. And then my response was that, well, we have to be optimistic, because if anybody’s going to get anything done, it’s going be us here. People said different things about what our priorities should be. People were talking about the one-demand idea. Someone called for AIG executives to be prosecuted. There was someone who had come from Spain to be there, saying that she was here to help us avoid the mistakes that were made in Spain. It was a wide spectrum. Some had come because of their own personal suffering or what they saw in the world.”
* Correction: An earlier version of this column said JPMorgan Chase gave a donation “a few days ago.” JPMorgan’s website says its gifts to the New York City Police Foundation, which together add up to “the largest [gift] in the history of the foundation,” began arriving last year. “After the circles broke I felt disheartened because it was sort of chaotic,” she said. “I didn’t have anybody there, so it was a little depressing. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
“Over the past few months, people had been meeting in New York City general assembly,” she said. “One of them is named Brooke. She’s a professor of social ecology. She did my facilitation training. There’s her and a lot of other people, students, school teachers, different people who were involved with that … so they organized a general assembly.”
“It’s funny that the cops won’t let us use megaphones, because it’s to make our lives harder, but we actually end up making a much louder sound [with the “people’s mic”] and I imagine it’s much more annoying to the people around us,” she said. “I had been in the back, unable to hear. I walked to different parts of the circle. I saw this man talking in short phrases and people were repeating them. I don’t know whose idea it was, but that started on the first night. The first general assembly was a little chaotic because people had no idea … a general assembly, what is this for? At first it was kind of grandstanding about what were our demands. Ending corporate personhood is one that has come up again and again as a favorite and. … What ended up happening was, they said, OK, we’re going to break into work groups.
“People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10 p.m. This was a major concern. There were tons of cops. I’ve heard that it’s costing the city a ton of money to have constant surveillance on a bunch of peaceful protesters who aren’t hurting anyone. With the people’s mic, everything we do is completely transparent. We know there are undercover cops in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it’s like, what are you trying to accomplish? We don’t have any secrets.”
“The undercover cops are the only ones who ask, ‘Who’s the leader?’ ” she said. “Presumably, if they know who our leaders are they can take them out. The fact is we have no leader. There’s no leader, so there’s nothing they can do.
“There was a woman [in the medics unit]. This guy was pretending to be a reporter. The first question he asks is, ‘Who’s the leader?’ She goes, ‘I’m the leader.’ And he says, ‘Oh yeah, what are you in charge of?’ She says, ‘I’m in a charge of everything.’ He says, ‘Oh yeah? What’s your title?’ She says ‘God.’ ”
“So it’s 9:30 p.m. and people are worried that they’re going to try and rush us out of the camp,” she said, referring back to the first day. “At 9:30 they break into work groups. I joined the group on contingency plans. The job of the bedding group was to find cardboard for people to sleep on. The contingency group had to decide what to do if they kick us out. The big decision we made was to announce to the group that if we were dispersed we were going to meet back at 10 a.m. the next day in the park. Another group was arts and culture. What was really cool was that we assumed we were going to be there more than one night. There was a food group. They were going dumpster diving. The direct action committee plans for direct, visible action like marches. There was a security team. It’s security against the cops. The cops are the only people we think that might hurt us. The security team keeps people awake in shifts. They always have people awake.”
The work groups make logistical decisions, and the general assembly makes large policy decisions.
“Work groups make their own decisions,” Ketchup said. “For example, someone donated a laptop. And because I’ve been taking minutes I keep running around and asking, ‘Does someone have a laptop I could borrow?’ The media team, upon receiving that laptop, designated it to me for my use on behalf of the Internet committee. The computer isn’t mine. When I go back to Chicago, I’m not going to take it. Right now I don’t even know where it is. Someone else is using it. But so, after hearing this, people thought it had been gifted to me personally. People were upset by that. So a member of the Internet work group went in front of the group and said, ‘This is a need of the committee. It’s been put into Ketchup’s care.’ They explained that to the group, but didn’t ask for consensus on it, because the committees are empowered. Some people might still think that choice was inappropriate. In the future, it might be handled differently.”
Working groups blossomed in the following days. The media working group was joined by a welcome working group for new arrivals, a sanitation working group (some members of which go around the park on skateboards as they carry brooms), a legal working group with lawyers, an events working group, an education working group, medics, a facilitation working group (which trains new facilitators for the general assembly meetings), a public relations working group, and an outreach working group for like-minded communities as well as the general public. There is an Internet working group and an open source technology working group. The nearby McDonald’s is the principal bathroom for the park after Burger King banned protesters from its facilities.Caucuses also grew up in the encampment, including a “Speak Easy caucus.” “That’s a caucus I started,” Ketchup said. “It is for a broad spectrum of individuals from female-bodied people who identify as women to male-bodied people who are not traditionally masculine. That’s called the ‘Speak Easy’ caucus. I was just talking to a woman named Sharon who’s interested in starting a caucus for people of color.
“A caucus gives people a safe space to talk to each other without people from the culture of their oppressors present. It gives them greater power together, so that if the larger group is taking an action that the caucus felt was specifically against their interests, then the caucus can block that action. Consensus can potentially still be reached after a caucus blocks something, but a block, or a ‘paramount objection,’ is really serious. You’re saying that you are willing to walk out.”
“We’ve done a couple of things so far,” she said. “So, you know the live stream? The comments are moderated on the live stream. There are moderators who remove racist comments, comments that say ‘I hate cops’ or ‘Kill cops.’ They remove irrelevant comments that have nothing to do with the movement. There is this woman who is incredibly hardworking and intelligent. She has been the driving force of the finance committee. Her hair is half-blond and half-black. People were referring to her as “blond-black hottie.” These comments weren’t moderated, and at one point whoever was running the camera took the camera off her face and did a body scan. So, that was one of the first things the caucus talked about. We decided as a caucus that I would go to the moderators and tell them this is a serious problem. If you’re moderating other offensive comments then you need to moderate these kinds of offensive comments.”
The heart of the protest is the two daily meetings, held in the morning and the evening. The assemblies, which usually last about two hours, start with a review of process, which is open to change and improvement, so people are clear about how the assembly works. Those who would like to speak raise their hand and get on “stack.”
“There’s a stack keeper,” Ketchup said. “The stack keeper writes down your name or some signifier for you. A lot of white men are the people raising their hands. So, anyone who is not apparently a white man gets to jump stack. The stack keeper will make note of the fact that the person who put their hand up was not a white man and will arrange the list so that it’s not dominated by white men. People don’t get called up in the same order as they raise their hand.”
While someone is speaking, their words amplified by the people’s mic, the crowd responds through hand signals.
“Putting your fingers up like this,” she said, holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers, “means you like what you’re hearing, or you’re in agreement. Like this,” she said, holding her hands level and wiggling her fingers, “means you don’t like it so much. Fingers down, you don’t like it at all; you’re not in agreement. Then there’s this triangle you make with your hand that says ‘point of process.’ So, if you think that something is not being respected within the process that we’ve agreed to follow then you can bring that up.”
“You wait till you’re called,” she said. “These rules get abused all the time, but they are important. We start with agenda items, which are proposals or group discussions. Then working group report-backs, so you know what every working group is doing. Then we have general announcements. The agenda items have been brought to the facilitators by the working groups because you need the whole group to pay attention. Like last night, Legal brought up a discussion on bail: ‘Can we agree that the money from the general funds can be allotted if someone needs bail?’ And the group had to come to consensus on that. [It decided yes.] There’s two co-facilitators, a stack keeper, a timekeeper, a vibes-person making sure that people are feeling OK, that people’s voices aren’t getting stomped on, and then if someone’s being really disruptive, the vibes-person deals with them. There’s a note-taker — I end up doing that a lot because I type very, very quickly. We try to keep the facilitation team one man, one woman, or one female-bodied person, one male-bodied person. When you facilitate multiple times it’s rough on your brain. You end up having a lot of criticism thrown your way. You need to keep the facilitators rotating as much as possible. It needs to be a huge, huge priority to have a strong facilitation group.”
“People have been yelled out of the park,” she said. “Someone had a sign the other day that said ‘Kill the Jew Bankers.’ They got screamed out of the park. Someone else had a sign with the N-word on it. That person’s sign was ripped up, but that person is apparently still in the park.
“We’re trying to make this a space that everyone can join. This is something the caucuses are trying to really work on. We are having workshops to get people to understand their privilege.”
But perhaps the most important rule adopted by the protesters is nonviolence and nonaggression against the police, no matter how brutal the police become.
“The cops, I think, maced those women in the face and expected the men and women around them to start a riot,” Ketchup said. “They want a riot. They can deal with a riot. They cannot deal with nonviolent protesters with cameras.”
I tell Ketchup I will bring her my winter sleeping bag. It is getting cold. She will need it. I leave her in a light drizzle and walk down Broadway. I pass the barricades, uniformed officers on motorcycles, the rows of paddy wagons and lines of patrol cars that block the streets into the financial district and surround the park. These bankers, I think, have no idea what they are up against.Augur’s smart contracts are currently written in Serpent, a low-level programming language that pre-dates the widely-used, higher-level Solidity language. This past May, we hired Zeppelin Solutions to perform a formal security audit of the Serpent compiler. After two months of review, Zeppelin has published their audit results. [1]
The most hair-raising finding in Zeppelin’s audit report is a previously-unknown buffer overflow vulnerability in the Serpent compiler. This, combined with Serpent’s un-enforced types and a bug in Serpent’s computation of memory addresses, caused a non-loss-of-funds vulnerability in the REP token contract. The vulnerability allows someone to increase the token creation timestamp, indefinitely disabling transfers of the token. For a technical breakdown of the vulnerability, please read Zeppelin’s analysis.
Over the past two weeks, Augur and Zeppelin have been working around-the-clock on a strategy to migrate REP to a new, secure contract. The new REP contract is written in Solidity, and is derived from OpenZeppelin’s ERC20 token contracts, which have undergone extensive security audits. Today, at 10:01 AM PST, the Augur team intentionally triggered the vulnerability, increasing the creation timestamp by about 31 billion years. The old Serpent REP contract is now frozen: REP transfers can no longer be carried out using the old contract.
Right now, we are copying all REP balances to the new Solidity REP contract. If you are a REP holder, there is nothing you need to do! As soon as the REP migration is complete, your REP balance will be exactly as it was before the migration. The REP migration should only take a couple hours, if all goes well.
Serpent REP Token Link // Solidity REP Token Link
We notified exchanges, wallets, and block explorers on 2017 July 27 at 10:00am PST. The Augur and Zeppelin teams are currently working with them to update their software to use the new REP contract.Roy Hodgson has launched a spiky and impassioned defence of his England players, arguing they do not deserve the criticism that is coming their way and accusing the media of exaggerating the team’s deficiencies in light of what happened in the World Cup.
Hodgson, as angry as at any time in his England tenure, spoke out in response to the reaction to the 1-0 defeat of Norway at Wembley and was particularly annoyed at having to answer a question about the fact his team had managed only two shots on target, describing the statistic as “fucking bollocks”. The England manager believes the disappointments of the summer have led to unfair analysis, adding to the negativity swirling around a team whose first game since the World Cup was played in front of a half-empty stadium, with their lowest crowd since Wembley reopened in 2007.
England’s performance has led to scrutiny of Hodgson’s decision to revert to a 4-4-2 system and the form of Wayne Rooney, who scored the decisive goal from the penalty spot but has started the season slowly. Hodgson believes the striker struggled with the pressures of being the team’s new captain, something Louis van Gaal has also said at Manchester United, but the national team manager was still aggrieved about what he perceived to be undue negativity.
“I am entitled to [be annoyed], aren’t I? When you have questions like: ‘You had only two shots on target …’ We can’t get rid of the baggage, we can’t change the fact we had a bad World Cup, we can’t play those games against Italy and Uruguay again, but I think you will have to give me the entitlement at least.
“If we had played badly, if a lot of players had had really poor performances, if the quality of our passing and our movement was nothing like I wanted to see and if our defending wasn’t as compact, aggressive and organised as it was for large periods, I would be the first to say so. But I am not going to say it’s not that, just because we had a bad World Cup.
“You have seen an England team dominate for 45 minutes against a good opponent. You have seen us work very hard to create chances, you have seen players get in behind defenders in wide areas and miss crosses and, yes, I am not terribly happy about that. I would have liked the crosses to be a little bit better. I would have liked two of three of those shots to get past the blocking player and whizz past the goal. I would have liked Daniel Sturridge’s magnificent effort, from that wonderful [Raheem Sterling] pass, not to land on the roof of the net.
“I saw a ten-to-15-minute period in the second half when I thought we were nowhere near what I wanted to see. I thought we lost the aggression in our defending and we didn’t attack anywhere near as well. Joe had to make a good save from a corner, and Norway almost scored again from a Gary Cahill back pass. But we saw a different system then. We changed it around and I saw some very positive moments.
“John Stones, who has played hardly any games recently for Everton, stepped out at right-back and gave a very strong performance and when Chambers came on he did well, too. Henderson and Wilshere, in my book, were excellent. Delph came in to play his first game and showed some very good things going forward and, of course, Sturridge was excellent throughout. All I’m saying is I want to judge every game as it is.
“Welbeck came on and showed his potential, so there were a lot of good things but the bottom line is this: before the World Cup, with all the euphoria, we were getting 75,000 people to see us play Peru. Now we have 40,000 to see us play against a much more difficult opponent. I can’t put that right because I can’t turn the clock back, but what I can do is analyse what I have seen and judge that through my eyes and not because someone is telling me: ‘Well, you had only two shots at goal’ because, for me, that is absolute fucking bollocks, I’m sorry.”
Hodgson, who has arranged for the psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters to talk to his squad on Friday at St George’s Park as they prepare for England’s first Euro 2016 qualifier in Switzerland on Monday, went on to cite some of the players who were missing through injury. Jack Colback and Ben Foster have both had to withdraw from the original 22-man squad and Hodgson has decided not to bring in replacements before the team fly to Basel.
“The fact of the matter is that we haven’t got many more. There are four or five very good players who are not here through injury: Chris Smalling and Luke Shaw in defence, and Ross Barkley and Lallana in central midfield. There is Jon Flanagan, who we like and hope to see back soon, and of course the longer-term injuries with [Jay] Rodriguez.
“I am talking to people here who have followed England for many years, and follow the Premier League football every week, and there is no chance of pulling wool over the eyes of people who know what top-class players look like. But I will continue to say, so long as they continue to give performances like that, some of these players are top, top players in the making. But they are players in the making. You can’t play five games for England, be a regular in the Liverpool team for six or seven months, and be David Beckham. You can’t come in like Phil Jones after all the injuries and nail down a place in the central defence of Manchester United and become John Terry. You can’t be Jack Wilshere, who has lost all that football through injury, and all of a sudden be Bryan Robson.
“Let’s be fair about these things, that is all I am asking. But also, allow me to be excited by what they can do and allow me when they do play well to stand in front of an assembled press conference and say: ‘I think they did well’ even though there might be some cynicism out there. Maybe it wasn’t as good [as you wanted], fine. That is up to you, just as long as you don’t expect me to go down the same route.”It was only when the government subsequently issued a media release that its real intent became clear.
This was not going to be a banking royal commission but a "Royal Commission into the alleged misconduct of Australia's banks and other financial service entities".
The terms of reference, it transpired, were heavily aimed at the industry super funds set up by employers and unions in the 1980s to wrest superannuation out of the control of the big life offices and companies that would use their employees' superannuation funds as piggy banks to prop up their share price.
True target revealed
As if the humiliation of having to set up a royal commission in the first place – or face everyone else in the parliament, including some of its own backbench setting up a commission of inquiry which it would not control – was not enough, the government decided to engage in a bit of payback.
If Labor – not to mention a few of its own backbenchers – were forcing it to hold a banking royal commission into the banks, the government was going to spread the damage to the industry super sector.
Someone probably thought it was a smart move.
Advertisement
But it will only sharpen the impression that the government is firmly on the side of the banks in one of the last great battles where blind ideological prejudice and suspicion outweigh any semblance of rational policy thinking.
Not only did the government consult with the banks on the terms of reference, it set the banking inquiry up to take aim at the only other part of the financial sector that poses a competitive threat to the banks.
"Let's be very clear," says David Whiteley, the chief of the industry funds lobby group, Industry Funds Australia, "all of the scandals and the community concern and mistrust are with the banks.
"In the last two years the major banks and AMP have paid out an estimated $545 million in refunds, compensation and fines," he says.
"Industry super funds have not had to pay a single dollar. Industry super funds have nothing to hide. The public knows the problems are in the banking system."
A dark, irrational blot
The ideological battles in Australian politics have changed in recent decades. Where once most of the big political struggles could be fairly confidently and neatly split into labour versus capital, the new arguments tend to be more subject specific, as the policy differences between the major political parties have diminished in the general embrace of market forces and the universal quest for the swinging voter.
Advertisement
Think of climate change as the classic example of a boutique ideological debate rather than one which has deep roots in the history and culture of the mainstream political parties.
But a few dark, irrational blots remain in the national policy debate.
One of the more spectacular examples of these outliers is superannuation.
Industry super funds have grown into a financial behemoth over the past 30 years, and are now worth half a trillion dollars.
They regularly outperform private sector funds (for example, 10.3 per cent over five years compared to 8.2 per cent for retail funds), charge much smaller administration and management fees, and, most importantly, deliver higher returns to their 5 million members,
Their presence provides one of the few counterweights to a banking sector so dominated by just four institutions that the four big banks represent one-third of the value of the Australian Stock Exchange.
Advertisement
They have not been plagued by any major scandals and they fought for years against the system of commissions paid to financial advisers which have got banks into so much trouble in recent years.
No wonder the government hates them so much.
What? How does this make any sense? Well, it doesn't.
But the Coalition's antipathy to the industry funds remains a serious factor in distorting the policy discussion about superannuation and one of the great policy power plays still at work in Australian politics, as this week's events have demonstrated.
This antipathy has consciously and repeatedly seen the Coalition – when in government – stymie attempts to lift the superannuation guarantee charge to the 12 per cent originally projected to deliver a proper retirement income to Australians.
There have been repeated attempts to undermine the competitiveness of industry super funds and an obsession with ridding their boards of ex union officials.
"Let's be very clear," says David Whiteley, the chief of the industry funds lobby group, Industry Funds Australia, "all of the scandals and the community concern and mistrust are with the banks. Luis Enrique Ascui
'It's inimicable to society'
Advertisement
And the obsession, according to one of the former Liberal politicians who has "jumped the fence" in the last decade and become involved in industry super, has also stopped an obvious and sensible collaboration between the massive funds and government on one of the most pressing issues facing Australia: infrastructure.
"No, the phone doesn't ring," says Peter Collins, former NSW Liberal government Treasurer, and now chairman of both the industry fund Hostplus and the industry association, Industry Super Australia.
He is quite clear that federal Coalition MPs and ministers – unlike some of their state counterparts – have an ideological objection to super that blinds them to all argument.
"Sometimes I feel we live in an alternative universe where the federal government talks up the need to build infrastructure, and where we talk about investing in infrastructure but we are rarely called in to be asked whether we are interested in investing in some of these projects."
Yet industry super funds now own most of Australia's airports and ports, and large slabs of electricity and gas infrastructure.
Garry Weaven, the chairman of the industry funds' funds management body, IFM Investors, doesn't think the super funds have been discriminated against on infrastructure deals as such.
"I don't think I'd say cut out," he says. "What I would say is the federal Liberal government certainly hasn't taken an opportunity to engage with the super industry in a meaningful way and that's because a large part of the party really doesn't like super and certainly not industry super.
"But to ignore the opportunity and carry through with the biases of the right wing rump is very bad policy.
Advertisement
The government has set up royal commission up to take aim at the only part of the financial sector that poses a competitive threat to the banks: industry super funds. Lukas Coch
"It's just stupid to continue to find ways to undermine the most successful parts of super. It's inimicable to society, and to retirement incomes, and ultimately to the budget deficit. The lower the contributions to super funds the higher the deficit to fund pensions," he notes.
"With compound interest there is a path into very big numbers."
A 'Chicago racket'
But the suspicion runs deep.
When unions first agreed in the mid 1980s to forego a 3 per cent pay rise and instead see the funds paid into compulsory superannuation, the then Opposition leader described it as representing "all that is rotten with industrial relations in Australia".
It showed the government and the trade union movement "playing the employers of Australia for mugs," John Howard said, describing it as a "Chicago racket".
As prime minister, Howard refused to honour a deal to increase super by a further 3 percentage points.
Advertisement
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating – who regards the superannuation industry as one of his legacy issues, charges that Howard's decision has cost much of the Baby Boomer generation a viable retirement income.
People then in their 40s and 50s completely missed the lift in the international equity market between 2003 and 2008, he says.
Garry Weaven: "It's just stupid to continue to find ways to undermine the most successful parts of super." Photo: Josh Robenstone
"Howard's decision to deny that 3 per cent superannuation tax cuts of 1995 has probably cost a Baby Boom person maybe $120,000 or thereabouts in what they could have accumulated in super from that period," he says.
"You know if a Labor government had done anything like this you would never hear the end of it."
The Coalition's view was not much different in 2012 when, contemplating a further rise in the compulsory superannuation contribution, the then leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, described industry funds as little more than a "gravy train" for union officials to sit on the boards.
Two years later, and now in government, the Coalition broke an election commitment when it again stopped compulsory super being lifted above 9.5 per cent.
More recently, the Liberal Party machine has been targeting payments made by the super funds to unions, claiming $50 million of payments have gone to unions over a union as a sign of "brazen" political ties between the industry funds and unions.
Advertisement
In fact, the constitution of industry funds explicitly rules out their shareholders obtaining dividends or profits from them.
The payments nominated by the Liberal Party are overwhelmingly director's fees paid to organisations whose employees act as directors of the industry funds. The same arrangement applies to employees of employer groups who are also involved in the funds.
Most significantly, though, the government has had two pieces of legislation looming that are squarely targeted at the union funds.
Howard refused to honour a deal to increase super by a further three 3 percentage points. Sitthixay Ditthavong
The first relates to governance – and arguments about the need to get more independent directors on to the industry fund boards based on an ASX standard of what constitutes an independent director.
"The Commonwealth Bank's board is almost entirely comprised of independent directors," an industry fund director observes dryly.
Default funds the next big battle
But the real point of battle – until this week's royal commission announcement – has been over the so-called default fund issue.
Advertisement
That is, the question of where compulsory super contributions made by an employer on behalf of an employee go if the employee doesn't nominate a particular fund themselves.
Historic links between particular industrial awards and industry funds mean they have been the winners from arrangements in the past.
Productivity Commission draft recommendations earlier this year were designed to remove the ability of unions and employers to leverage workers into their jointly controlled industry funds, but also the ability of banks to tempt employers to leverage workers into bank funds by offering employers sweetheart banking deals.
And this goes to the heart of the political battle over superannuation. Not only does it have the lingering Coalition resentment and suspicion of union attachment, the banks have been lobbying fiercely to get a bigger share of the superannuation savings pool.
Now, the government has put the powers of a royal commission to the task of helping them achieve just that.There’s a fantastic new resource available for After Effects users – a free three-hour in-depth tutorial on After Effects CS5. This introductory course covers a broad range of topics: learning the basics of compositing and animation, how to use keyframes as well as spatial and temporal interpolation, using parenting to group animated elements together, how to use masks and layers, introduction to effects, importing Photoshop documents into AE, syncing transitions to music, creating a master composition, how to render out your finished video to a standalone file, and more. The program is hands-on and includes downloadable sample files to follow along with for creating a motion graphic title sequence.
The free class is broken out into seven easily-digestible parts, and has already earned a five-star rating from viewers. It’s “learn by doing” and although the lessons are geared towards After Effects CS5, most of the concepts (though not all the product features or speed) apply to earlier versions such as CS4 or CS3. By the time you’re through, you’ll be able to make your own stunning motion graphic title sequence for a film using your software.
If you don’t already own After Effects CS5, it’s a phenomenal release and you can easily download the free 30-day trial from Adobe to get started with the training. (Note that After Effects CS5 requires a 64-bit system, so if you don’t have that yet, you may have to go with the free trial of After Effects CS4 instead… Then, if and when you’re ready to buy, you can get both of them together with a single purchase.)
Elsewhere, After Effects CS5 is garnering some great reviews – see what OSNews (“a very strong release“), Videomaker (“a must-have upgrade“) and Renderosity (“a solid release“) have to say about it…
If you’re new to After Effects, you may also want to read Getting Started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, & CS5.5) with a ton of tips from Adobe’s documentation lead Todd Kopriva. The free extensive “After Effects Basics” sessions from Andrew Devis are another fantastic resource.
Also see here for a comprehensive set of Adobe CS5 tutorials for all products.In May 2014, a modestly budgeted horror film about a character in a children’s book that comes to life and scares the bejeezus out of everybody – especially the audience – slithered into Australian cinemas. It cost just over $2m and played on a small number of screens. Some critics murmured it was rather good, but it made tuppence at the box office and disappeared as quickly as it arrived.
Then something strange happened. The film – director Jennifer Kent’s spine-chilling debut The Babadook, an experience so brilliantly insidious watching it feels like ingesting slow-acting poison – became an international sensation. The Brits loved it (in its opening weekend in the UK the film made more than double its entire theatrical run at home). The Americans loved it. The French loved it.
Horror stalwarts such as Stephen King and William Friedkin dished out gushing accolades. “Deeply disturbing and highly recommended,” said King. Friedkin, director of 1973 classic The Exorcist, went further: “I have never seen a more terrifying film.”
The manner in which The Badadook achieved success – snubbed locally and embraced abroad – crystallises the take-home message of Australian film in 2014: that international audiences loved them and Australian audiences didn’t see them.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Babadook – an experience so brilliantly insidious, watching it feels like ingesting slow-acting poison. Photograph: IFC Films/Courtesy Everett Col/REX
Kent’s creepy crawly ultimately made its way out of the red, but plenty of other quality releases won’t. This story of Australian cinema is both exciting and sobering. It’s about how artists can do everything right from a creative perspective and still land with a crash and a thud and no measure of success by the conventional metrics (the box office). It’s also a reminder that the cream doesn’t necessarily rise to the top, and anyone who suggests big crowds is a measure of artistic worth can be rebuffed with one word: Transformers.
In the same week that The Babadook opened in Australian cinemas, the Cannes film festival lauded Rolf de Heer’s new film Charlie’s Country. The veteran Dutch-born writer-director received rave reviews and a standing ovation. More significantly, star David Gulp |
his friend has a prosthetic leg and couldn't defend himself.
Body defended his friend, chased the man and had him pinned against a car when police showed up with their guns drawn, he said. He said he tried to tell the officers his version of events but was arrested anyway.
Body, a Good Neighbor Ambassador for the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, is one of 13 members of the Cleveland Community Police Commission, an entity created by the city's consent decree with the federal government.
The commission's goal is to have people who live and work in Cleveland make recommendations on how best to make changes to the Cleveland's police department.
He said the incident will help him inform his decisions that he makes on the commission.
"Being on the commission brings a lot of negative attention," he said. "But maybe this will help. We talk a lot about bias-free policing and showing concern for the average citizen."
Body has been convicted of six misdemeanor cases since 2008, including for carrying a concealed weapon, aggravated theft, having an open alcohol container in his car and drunken disorderly conduct.
If you want to comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.The driver lineups for works-supported teams Black Falcon, HTP Motorsport and HARIBO Racing Team – which form the foundation of Mercedes-AMG’s eight-car assault on the 2017 Nürburgring 24 Hours in the SP9 class – have been set. Included are a mixture of Mercedes-AMG drivers, DTM drivers and Nordschleife experts. three Mercedes-AMG Performance Teams will be on the grid.
Last year’s winners, Mercedes-AMG Team Black Falcon and Mercedes-AMG Team HTP Motorsport will be present with two cars each, while the HARIBO Racing Team Mercedes-AMG will be running one car. Thus, five Mercedes-AMG GT3 will be competing in the classic endurance race at the legendary Nordschleife of the Nürburgring with extended factory support.
With Maro Engel and Edoardo Mortara, the high-class driver line-up for the 24-hour race includes two drivers from the ranks of the current Mercedes-AMG Motorsport DTM Team. Other seeded drivers for the classic race are Uwe Alzen, Lance David Arnold, Nico Bastian, Dominik Baumann, Maximilian Buhk, Yelmer Buurman, Adam Christodoulou, Maximilian Götz, Christian Hohenadel, Thomas Jäger, Manuel Metzger, Stefan Mücke, Dirk Müller, Edward Sandström, Jan Seyffarth and Renger van der Zande. The starting numbers of the cars have yet to be determined.
In addition to the five Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the Performance Teams, Black Falcon, HTP Motorsport and Customer Racing Team Landgraf each plan to run one additional Mercedes-AMG GT3 as Customer Racing entries.
Full lineups:
Mercedes-AMG Team Black Falcon: Yelmer Buurman, Adam Christodoulou, Maro Engel, Manuel Metzger
Mercedes-AMG Team Black Falcon: Maro Engel, Thomas Jäger, Dirk Müller, Jan Seyffarth
Mercedes-AMG Team HTP Motorsport: Dominik Baumann, Maximilian Buhk, Edoardo Mortara, Edward Sandström
Mercedes-AMG Team HTP Motorsport: Nico Bastian, Dominik Baumann, Christian Hohenadel, Stefan Mücke
HARIBO Racing Team Mercedes-AMG: Uwe Allen, Lance David Arnold, Maximilian Götz, Renger van der ZandeSmoking, of course, damages the lungs and blood vessels, and contributes to an array of health problems, but nicotine — the calming chemical that cigarettes deliver — might actually be good for the aging brain.
Smokers, for example, are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease — a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists because smoking contributes to cardiovascular disease, which strongly increases the risk of Alzheimer's.
But closer investigation revealed that smoking doesn't confer the protection; nicotine does.
A study of Alzheimer's patients showed that those who wore nicotine patches were better able to remember and pay attention than those who didn't. Another study showed that nicotine boosted cognitive function in older people who didn't have Alzheimer's, but were showing signs of age-related mental decline.
Nicotine also seems to protect against Parkinson's disease, in which the death of cells in a small area of the brain results in tremors, impairing movement and as well as cognitive difficulties.
So what's going on? How does the dreaded addictive component of cigarettes produce health benefits?
For starters, nicotine by itself isn't very addictive at all, according to Dr. Paul Newhouse, the director of Vanderbilt University's Center for Cognitive Medicine. Nicotine seems to require assistance from other substances found in tobacco to get people hooked.
"People won't smoke without nicotine in cigarettes, but they won't take nicotine by itself," said Newhouse, who has done extensive research into beneficial effects of nicotine on the brain. "Nicotine is not reinforcing enough. That's why FDA agreed nicotine could be sold over the counter. No one wants to take it because it's not pleasant enough by itself. And it's hard to get animals to self-administer nicotine the way they will with cocaine."
Nicotine is chemically similar to acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that declines in Alzheimer's disease. Drugs such as Aricept help people with Alzheimer's by boosting brain levels of acetylcholine. Apparently, nicotine binds to the receptors in the brain normally occupied by acetylcholine, which benefits people who need more, but it has no apparent effect on those who don't.
"Nicotine doesn't appear to enhance normal people," Newhouse said, "but in people who show some degree of cognitive impairment, nicotine appears to produce a modest but measurable effect on cognitive function, particularly in areas of attention and, to some extent, memory."
Newhouse and his colleagues are testing nicotine to see if it improves other cognitive problems like the mental fogginess known as "chemo brain" that afflicts cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. They've also started a study of adults with Down syndrome, who almost always develop Alzheimer's disease by the time they reach middle age. Even people with HIV, which appears to cause accelerated cognitive decline, may benefit.
What makes nicotine especially attractive as a treatment is the fact it causes virtually no side effects, according to Newhouse.
"It seems very safe even in nonsmokers," he said. "In our studies we find it actually reduces blood pressure chronically. And there were no addiction or withdrawal problems, and nobody started smoking cigarettes. The risk of addiction to nicotine alone is virtually nil."
Tom Valeo writes on health matters. He can be reached at [email protected]Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
A public charter school in Louisiana is getting national attention for requiring female students to take pregnancy tests if they are suspected of being pregnant and, if they are, forcing them to leave school. The ACLU of Louisiana sent a letter to the Delhi Charter School on Monday arguing that the policy is unconstitutional and “in clear violation of federal law.”
Delhi is a kindergarten through 12th grade public school in a town by the same name in northeastern Louisiana. Its “student pregnancy policy” states that the school seeks to ensure that students “exhibit acceptable character traits”—and in order to do so, allows the school to force any “suspected student” to take a pregnancy test. Here’s the policy:
If an administrator or teacher suspects a student is pregnant, a parent conference will be held. The school reserves the right to require any female student to take a pregnancy test to confirm whether or not the suspected student is in fact pregnant. The school further reserves the right to refer the suspected student to a physician of its choice. If the test indicates that the student is pregnant, the student will not be permitted to attend classes on the campus of Delhi Charter School.
Any student who is pregnant will be forced to go on home study. The policy goes on to state that any student who refuses to take a pregnancy test “shall be treated as a pregnant student” and also put on mandatory home study.
“I am not aware of anything else like this,” said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “This so blatantly illegal and discriminatory. This is about as draconian as anything I have ever seen.” Esman said the policy is not new, but had been brought to the ACLU’s attention this summer.
In the letter to the school, the ACLU argues that the policy violates the Title IX federal protections against educational discrimination on the basis of sex as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
School administrators did not respond to requests for comment via email and telephone at press time.About
This is a deck of playing cards that makes you go hehehehheheheeheh. It includes a simplistic back design, which is perfect for cardistry and flourishing, and a more complex face, using a child-like art style.
The back features a simplistic, black and white design with a :^) emoticon. The back is mirrored, meaning that the cards from the back will not look different, even if it's facing a different way. I'm using a 325 gsm stock, and a linen finish, printed by USPCC, so if you like bicycle cards these are perfect for you.
The cards are hand drawn by yours truly.
The Jacks share a common theme of faces, heads and people.
Diamonds: Head, holding man
Clubs: Man, inside a head
Hearts: A lot of faces
Spades: Man, holding head
The Queens share a theme of Dogs.
Spades: Flying dog
Clubs: Dog with pants
Diamonds: Hot dog
Hearts: Big doggo with three smol puppers
The Kings have a theme of different people that have given me a thought of "wowowowo! theyre cool!"
Hearts: Rflegendary, a Twitch streamer
Spades: Captain Yoo si jin, from the korean drama, Descendants of the Sun
Diamonds: Bob ross, painter from The Joy of Painting
Clubs: Gordon Ramsay, a cool chef
The Jokers has a dog sleeping on a bed, representing my dog Bella, sleeping on my bed.
Each of the aces have their own distinctive personalities
Spades: Anime
Diamonds: m'lady
Hearts: My little pony
Clubs: Furry animals
Add $12 per additional deck at the checkout. This is just for when the bulk perks are gone, but you still want more decks, its a lot more affordable to get a bulk perk though, get your costco mentality on :^).
2550 funded = custom stickers
If there's any questions, feel free to comment. I'll reply as soon as possibleThis article is about the structure. For the networking company, see Unisphere Networks
Seen in summer 2010
Coordinates:
The Unisphere is a spherical stainless steel representation of the Earth, located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in the borough of Queens, New York City. The sphere, which measures 140 feet (43 m) high and 120 feet (37 m) in diameter, was commissioned as part of the 1964 New York World's Fair.[1] The Unisphere is one of the borough's most iconic and enduring symbols.
Commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age, the Unisphere was conceived and constructed as the theme symbol of the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair. The theme of the World's Fair was "Peace Through Understanding" and the Unisphere represented the theme of global interdependence. It was dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe".
Construction [ edit ]
[2] Unisphere under construction in the 1960s.
A crane eases the last segment of the Unisphere into place to complete the structure
After World War II, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park reopened after having been closed for a long time, maintaining landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke's site plan, as did the 1964 New York World's Fair, “Peace through Understanding."[1] Robert Moses was president of the World's Fair Corporation, which leased the park from the city and issued $29.8 million in bonds. The Unisphere was initially conceptually designed by the landscape architect in aluminum with metallic mesh continents; it underwent a further refined industrial design in stainless steel by industrial designers at Peter Muller-Munk Associates, and with engineering and fabrication by American Bridge Company, a division of US Steel. Built within 110 days,[3] the Unisphere is the world's largest globe. It measures 120 feet (37 m) in diameter, rises 140 feet (43 m), and weighs 700,000 pounds (317,515 kg), though some sources say the Unisphere weighs 900,000 pounds (408,233 kg), including its 100 short tons (91 t) inverted tripod base. The sphere is constructed of Type 304L stainless steel. The continents on the sphere are fabricated with a special texture-pattern by Rigidized Metals Corporation, based in Buffalo, New York.[4] Developed for this architectural project, the pattern's name of "1 UN" stands for "1 Unisphere."
During the 1964 fair, dramatic lighting at night gave the effect of sunrise moving over the surface of the globe. Additionally, the capitals of nations were marked by lights. One of these lights is placed at the location of the Kahnawake Indian Reservation, which the Mohawk ironworkers requested to be placed there to honor their labor.[5]
Built on the structural foundation that supported the Perisphere of the 1939 World's Fair, the Unisphere is centered in a large, circular reflecting pool and is surrounded by a series of water-jet fountains. The 96 fountainheads arranged in pairs are designed to obscure its tripod pedestal. The effect is meant to make the Unisphere appear as if it is floating in space.[6]
Three large orbit rings of stainless steel encircle the Unisphere at various angles. These orbit rings are believed to represent the tracks of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, and Telstar, the first active communications satellite. In fact, the early design was to have a ring for each of a dozen satellites in place at the time of the Fair. This proved impractical, not only in the number of satellites, but also in the height of their orbits and the fact that geostationary satellites had no orbit path. As a result, a symbolic number of three was chosen for aesthetic reasons.[7]
Rehabilitation [ edit ]
In 1989, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation announced a multimillion-dollar rehabilitation of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Among the projects was a complete restoration of the Unisphere. Begun in late 1993 and completed on May 31, 1994, the project included numerous structural repairs and removal of years' worth of grime accumulation on the steel. The fountains, shut off since the 1970s, were replaced, and new floodlighting installed. On May 10, 1995, the Unisphere was given official landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.[1]
The Unisphere's fountain reopened on August 12, 2010, after a $2 million restoration of its pumps, valves, and paintwork.[8] In addition, other sites say the globe and its surroundings, including its reflecting pool and fountains, were renovated at a cost of $3 million.[1]
Structural foundation [ edit ]
The marshy soil of Flushing Meadows needed special consideration during the original 1937 Perisphere construction for the 1939 World's Fair. The Perisphere, and subsequently the Unisphere, which used the same platform, employed a foundation of 528 pressure-creosoted Douglas fir piles of 95 to 100 feet (29 to 30 m) in length. Before construction of the Unisphere, three piles were tested for structural integrity and all were found to be sound throughout their entire length.[9]
In popular culture [ edit ]
The then-newly built Unisphere during the 1964–1965 World's Fair Close-up of Africa
The Unisphere was climbed in 1976 by George Willig (the so-called "Human Fly" who would later climb the World Trade Center), and Jerry Hewitt as part of a short film called The Third Stone, directed by NYU Film student, Paul Hornstein. Every year at least three people are taken to local hospitals for injuries from trying to climb the Unisphere.[citation needed]
The Beastie Boys, Depeche Mode, and The B-52's all have been photographed in front of the Unisphere for promotional purposes.[10]
A climactic scene in the movie Men in Black (1997) was set and filmed here. A crucial plot point in Iron Man 2 (2010) depended on the structure.
In season 6 of Law & Order: Criminal Intent an episode has the victim found under the Unisphere.[11]
The 1989 movie Black Rain begins with a shot of the Unisphere.[12]
Kevin James and Leah Remini appear at the Unisphere in the opening credits of American sitcom The King of Queens.
In Season 1 Episode 4 of Flight of the Conchords, Brett and Jermaine perform the song "If You're Into It" in front of the Unisphere.
In the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, the Unisphere appears in Liberty City as the Monoglobe in Meadows Park. It also appears in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (2009), where it is destroyed in a mission by protagonist Huang Lee.
The Unisphere appears on the cover of Danger Danger's album Revolve.
The Unisphere appears in the music videos "Mo Money Mo Problems" by Notorious BIG and "Award Tour" by A Tribe Called Quest.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe movies Iron Man 2, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Spider-Man: Homecoming uses the Unisphere for the Stark Expo.
Similar globes elsewhere [ edit ]
A similar metal globe is at the front gate of Leisure World, Maryland.[13]
A similar globe is placed on the Constitution Avenue outside the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad, Pakistan
See also [ edit ]NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. to give 2015 RIT commencement address Retired Marine Major General and astronaut has headed the agency since 2009
Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden Jr.
Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden Jr., head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, will be the keynote speaker for Rochester Institute of Technology’s 130th commencement celebration.
Bolden will speak at the Academic Convocation, set for 10 a.m. May 22 in the Gordon Field House and Activities Center.
RIT President Bill Destler said the university is honored to have Bolden addressing its graduates.
“Decorated Marine, astronaut, innovative administrator—Maj. Gen. Bolden has a list of career accomplishments that our graduates should find inspiring,” Destler said. “We look forward to hosting him on campus for our commencement celebration.”
Bolden, a native of Columbia, S.C., earned an appointment to the U.S. Navy Academy after graduating high school. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical science and was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He went on to become a naval aviator, flying more than 100 combat missions in North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the early 1970s.
Bolden earned a Master of Science degree in systems management from the University of Southern California in 1977, and was assigned to Naval Test Pilot School. While working at the Naval Air Test Center’s Systems Engineering and Strike Aircraft Test Directorates, he tested a variety of ground attack aircraft until his selection as an astronaut candidate in 1980.
Bolden’s NASA astronaut career included technical assignments as the Astronaut Office Safety Officer; Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations; Special Assistant to the Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston; Chief of the Safety Division at Johnson (where he oversaw efforts to return the shuttle to flight safely after the 1986 Challenger accident); lead astronaut for vehicle test and checkout at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; and Assistant Deputy Administrator at NASA Headquarters. After his final shuttle flight in 1994, he left NASA and returned to active duty with Marine Corps operating forces as the Deputy Commandant of Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.
In 1997, Bolden was assigned as the Deputy Commanding General of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the Pacific, serving as Commanding General of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward in support of Operation Desert Thunder in Kuwait. He was promoted to his final rank of major general in July 1998 and named Deputy Commander of U.S. forces in Japan. He later served as the Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, Calif., from 2000 to 2002. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2003.
Bolden’s many military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in May 2006.
In 2009, he was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 12th Administrator of NASA, where he leads a nationwide team to advance the missions and goals of the U.S. space program. Under Bolden’s leadership, NASA accomplished an unprecedented landing on Mars with the Curiosity rover, launch of a spacecraft to Jupiter, enhancing the nation’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites, continued progress toward the 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and last December launched and recovered the Orion deep-space crew module, the first human-rated spacecraft to be developed for flight beyond low Earth orbit by any nation in more than 40 years.
At the Academic Convocation, Destler will confer degrees upon some 3,500 undergraduate and graduate students. The event kicks off RIT’s two-day commencement celebration. For more information, go to the RIT commencement page on the university’s website.KCLU special projects reporter John North produced "Medical Marijuana and the Cannabis Controversy."
(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. - April 9, 2012) KCLU will broadcast a locally produced documentary on medical marijuana at noon and 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 12.
After it airs, the segment will be available at www.kclu.org.
KCLU special projects reporter John North produced "Medical Marijuana and the Cannabis Controversy." The hour-long documentary features doctors, researchers and patients, including a man who received medical marijuana from the United States government for 30 years. North interviewed residents and officials from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties as well as national experts.
In 1996, California became the first state in the nation to approve the use of medical marijuana. Today, the estimated number of medical marijuana patients in the state has grown to more than 1 million.
In the 16 years since California voters approved the Compassionate Use Act, 15 states and the District of Columbia have approved similar laws allowing the use of marijuana as medicine and 18 states have pending legislation. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 73 percent of Americans support medical marijuana.
However, the federal government still classifies marijuana as a dangerous, illegal drug with no therapeutic value and compares it to heroin, LSD and Ecstasy. While patients hail the benefits of medical marijuana, opponents say the laws are no more than an effort to legalize the drug.
North, a former Los Angeles radio reporter, received the 2011 John Swett Radio Award for Media Excellence for his KCLU documentary "K-12: On the Edge," which explored the state's school funding crisis. His documentary "Not in My Backyard," which examined the problems California is facing in monitoring paroled sexual offenders, received awards from the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California, the Associated Press Television and Radio Association and the Radio Television Digital News Association.
KCLU is the National Public Radio station serving Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. It broadcasts at 88.3 FM in Ventura County and 1340 AM and 102.3 FM in Santa Barbara. The station is operated as a community service of California Lutheran University.Wade Barrett is in Canada doing a number of media appearances with Rogers the WWE broadcast partners in Canada. Barrett gave an update on his condition and according to him he is 4-6 weeks away from returning to the ring. When he returns he claims to want to go after Dolph Ziggler and the Intercontinental title he never lost. While when asked who he would like to be paired with at Wrestlemania he said he would like to be paired with Sheamus.Barrett was hoping to have made a faster recovery and be part of the WWE’s current tour in Europe. Raw is going to be in Liverpool on Monday in Barrett’s homeland of England.In terms of what type of Bad News Barrett will we see when he returns if it is up to Wade it seems he would prefer to remain a bad guy. He was looking on his way to a babyface turn prior to being injured back in June. All this comes from an interview on the Aftermath show on Sportsnet 360. The interview begins at the 15:18 mark.Barrett also appeared on the radio on Sportsnet Fan 590 on there fun segment “name that wrestler” featuring former I-C Champions.The three Russians — as well as unnamed others — had been directed to collect intelligence on potential United States sanctions against the Russian Federation and on efforts by the United States to develop alternative energy resources, the complaint said.
Evgeny Buryakov, 39, was arrested in the Bronx on Monday, the authorities said. He was ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge. In a brief phone interview, his federal public defender, Sabrina Shroff, declined to comment on the charges except to say that she had argued for bail because her client was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.
Mr. Buryakov’s LinkedIn profile says he works for the Russian bank Vnesheconombank, which is on the United States sanctions list. He had been in this country under “nonofficial cover,” sometimes referred to as NOC. Mr. Buryakov would get assignments from the other two defendants: Igor Sporyshev, 40, a trade representative of the Russian Federation in New York; and Victor Podobnyy, 27, an attaché to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. Mr. Sporyshev and Mr. Podobnyy would analyze Mr. Buryakov’s work and report back to Moscow, the authorities said.
Mr. Sporyshev and Mr. Podobnyy, who were protected by diplomatic immunity, are no longer in the United States, the government said. As employees of the Russian government, they were exempt from notifying the United States attorney general of their intelligence work, the authorities said. But the government said they were not permitted to conspire with Mr. Buryakov, who was not registered as an agent of Russia working here.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted physical or electronic surveillance of Mr. Buryakov and Mr. Sporyshev in over four dozen brief meetings between March 2012 and last September. In one conversation, which occurred inside the S.V.R.’s New York office, Mr. Podobnyy and an unidentified S.V.R. agent were recorded talking about Mr. Sporyshev’s “cover” position.The technology is not meant to be used this way, but artificially intelligent virtual assistants are increasingly being used by lonely men and bored teenagers as companions for sexually explicit conversations.
Ilya Eckstein is the chief executive of Robin Labs, an Israeli firm that created Robin, a virtual assistant for giving drivers traffic advice and directions. The technology behind Robin is offered as white-label voice recognition personal assistants for other services, for example, the assistant interface for Audi and Volkswagen's in-car infotainment systems, or the virtual assistant for Waze's GPS navigation app.
Although the technology is meant to be purely informative, Robin Labs noticed that a large proportion of the conversations that users were having with its virtual assistant seemed to be sexually explicit in nature.
"There are guys who talk to Robin 300 times a day. This happens because people are lonely and bored. It's mostly teenagers and truckers who don't have girlfriends. They really need an outlet – to be meeting people and having sex, but I'm not judging," Eckstein told The Times.
"It's a symptom of our society. As well as the people who want to talk dirty, there are men who want a deeper sort of relationship or companionship."
Over the last two years, the number of artificially intelligent PAs and bots capable of talking back has exploded on mobile apps and operating systems, and on Facebook's Messenger alone there are now over 11,000 chat bots available offering a wide range of different information services.
Why would you want to talk to something that isn't real?
It's hard to pinpoint exactly why these men want in-depth conversations with a virtual assistant that is essentially a computer, but maybe it has something to do with the fact the avatars have a female personality and voice.
Eckstein thinks some people, particularly teenagers, ask provocative questions for fun in a bid to push the limits and elicit outrageous responses, as evidenced by the YouTube videos published by US vlogger Shane Dawson. Dawson's "Making Siri Talk Dirty" video has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube, while the second instalment "Making Siri Talk Dirty 2" has passed two million views.
However, Eckstein also thinks that other people want to establish a relationship with a partner so badly that they just keep interacting until they get the response they want, even if it's all powered by artificial intelligence.
Microsoft has observed users of the Cortana virtual assistant behaving in a similar way, so in 2015 it built in new responses to shut down any attempts at questioning the virtual assistant about her sex life.
"If you say things that are particularly a**eholeish to Cortana, she will get mad," Microsoft's Deborah Harrison told the audience at the Re•Work Virtual Assistant Summit in San Francisco in February 2015, according to CNN Money. "That's not the kind of interaction we want to encourage."CAIRO — King Salman of Saudi Arabia met Friday with top political leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the most striking example yet of the new king’s willingness to work with Islamist organizations long considered foes.
Analysts with close ties to the Saudi royal family said the meeting appeared to reflect King Salman’s determination to rally as much of the Arab world as possible against Iran, the kingdom’s chief rival, at a time when the Saudis fear that Iran will emerge empowered by its deal with Western powers to lift economic sanctions in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.
The meeting was held in Mecca and included Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s political leader who lives in Qatar. It was a startling reversal from the approach of the previous king, Abdullah, who had led a campaign to roll back or eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates around the region. Hamas is both an offshoot of the Brotherhood and a client of Iran.
But the new king has signaled that he is even willing to work with Brotherhood-style Islamists in his efforts to counter Iran, and analysts suggested Salman might be attempting to pry Hamas away from Tehran.David Koch resigned from the Organ and Tissue Authority's advisory council on live television. Credit:Seven Network Koch, who was until Wednesday the chairman of the Organ and Tissue Authority's advisory council, was responding in part to reports on two of his own network's programs, Seven News and Today Tonight, which ran segments on Tuesday night that Koch said were highly critical of the reform of Australia's organ and tissue donation system. Koch told viewers that the segments had presented figures that were selective, which had "really, really annoyed" him. One statistic presented was that Australia ranked 19th in world organ donation rates, behind countries such as Croatia, Latvia and Estonia. However, Koch said that overlooked the fact that Australia's donation rank had risen from 32nd to 19th since the Organ and Tissue Authority was launched in 2009.
Rural Health Minister Fiona Nash welcomed the tribunal's decision. Credit:Andrew Meares That jump in the ranks was the equivalent of those experienced by world leaders such as Spain and the United Kingdom in their first six years of reforms, he said. Further, the segments claimed that the organ donation system had cost $250 million, which one professor claimed was money that was not well spent. However Koch said the $250 million figure was spread over six years, and was offset by the vast savings transplants made for the country's hospital systems. The extra kidney transplants alone had saved hospitals $25 million a year, he said. Koch then directed his anger at Sharelife, a donation advocacy group which he said "basically want to take control of the reforms and take control of the money".
"How do I know? I should know, because I used to be part of Sharelife until I left because I was actually sick of them criticising, rather than doing anything," Koch said. The ABC reported on Wednesday that Senator Nash had ordered the review of Australia's organ donation system because the $250 million in recent investments has not led to the intended rise in transplant numbers. Koch said he had invited Senator Nash to appear on Sunrise to discuss the system, but she had declined. "The most disappointing thing for me is that the politician in charge of donations, her, Fiona Nash, has not supported the Authority's program and caved in to this rich lobby group and started yet another expensive inquiry into it. It's an absolute disgrace," he said. Sharelife director Brian Myerson, whom Koch mentioned by name in Wednesday morning's segment, said he was prepared to debate the Sunrise presenter publicly over Australia's organ donation system.
Asked for his response to being called a "rich lobbyist", Mr Myerson said he would be disappointed if Koch knew about his financial position. "I just think it's very sad that he has chosen to attack the people rather than sticking to the facts," said Mr Myerson, who had a combined kidney and pancreas transplant almost 16 years ago. "I've watched many, many people die while waiting for organs and, as a result, I believe we need to improve our organ donation rate in line with the leading countries in the world," he said. "That's simply what Sharelife stands for: that Australians deserve the same access to transplants as those in Spain and Croatia and Belgium and Portugal, and I can list a whole lot of countries, and there's no reason that Australians shouldn't have that access." He said he "absolutely" welcomed the review announced by Senator Nash.
"We really need to know what is going on," he said. "We're achieving 16.1 donors per million, and going down. The leading countries do 35, and Spain did 36 last year. What's the reason we are so far behind the leading countries?" Senator Nash responded: "I note the resignation of David Koch from his position as advisory board chairman of the Organ and Tissue Authority following the announcement of an independent review aimed at improving organ donation rates in Australia. "The review has been welcomed in a media statement from the Organ and Tissue Authority. The Organ and Tissue Authority was informed of the review more than a week ago and had input into the terms of reference. "Mr Koch's unexpected resignation is a loss to the organisation. The review is seeking to establish if there is anything else we can do to improve organ donation rates in Australia and save lives.
"It is always unfortunate to lose people of Mr Koch's calibre from such a good cause. I acknowledge the great contribution Mr Koch has made to support increased rates of organ donation in Australia and would welcome his input into the review.". Follow us on Twitter Like us on FacebookHall of Fame quarterback Steve Young is on hand for the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament up in Lake Tahoe, and like everyone else, he is making the media rounds. On the way to his tee time Friday morning, he stopped at the KNBR booth to chat briefly with Murph & Mac.
Young got a chance to discuss the changes in Santa Clara, and he is excited by the hiring of Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch. The hosts asked Young if they had been in touch, and he confirmed they had. He went to discuss how they understand what the 49ers do thanks to their connection with Mike Shanahan.
“So, I think that the great news, and people say, ‘oh, that’s self-serving,’ but I truly don’t believe it is. We have a history, maybe top four organizations with a history like this in the league. And we are now going to try to use all of that to inspire the guys on the field today. That’s a smart thing to do. Those guys are cousins to the original 20 years. John understands it because he was in Denver, Kyle understands it because … his dad was here. So they know what it’s supposed to feel like, they know what it’s supposed to look like, and I think they’ve completely embraced it. “John especially has just said, ‘We are, the first thing these players are going to hear about is what we used to be like, what the standard is. What we expect everyone to be a 49er, what is a 49er?’ Like when I’m in Pittsburgh, and I’m in the tunnel, and they’re introducing all the guys, all the players from the past. They might even have a lousy defense, they might be bottom half of the league, but they draw on it. It’s like, it’s incrementally helpful to draw on it. And I think these guys are going to do all they can to draw on it.”
Young seems to be a particularly big fan of Lynch. Murph said Lynch seemed like Young’s type of guy, and Young explained what he likes about Lynch.
I really admire John, as a human being, as a leader, as somebody who’s going to be very open, transparent — players that leave, even the guys that get cut, I’m sure will say, ‘Welp, I got cut. I didn’t make the team, but they respected me. They gave me —’ You think, oh that’s obvious, everybody does that. Everybody treats people well. Everybody does the right thing. No, not everybody. And so, the truth is, we got a culture now that’s gonna feed excellent. Now, you gotta have great players, but at some point they gotta put that locker room back together, where they have those five to seven to nine to ten great leaders in the locker room. And then it doesn’t matter what play you call, it doesn’t matter what defense you run, you’re gonna play well.
It is not surprising to hear praise for Lynch. He’s got the kind of personality that rubs off well on others. His work in the media will |
is currently useless, or else you’d be done - and the only thing useful, which is what you don’t know.
Nurse is here. Gotta go. BYEA new study by a Dallas-based researcher suggests that Louisianians pay a greater percentage of their annual income for insurance than people in any other state.
As The Advertiser reports, Jeffrey Chu of consumer website nerdwallet.com says the average Louisianan pays $7,300 a year for homeowners, health, life and auto insurance on average, or about 18.1% of their median annual earnings of $40,423—the highest percentage in the country. New York follows, at 17.4%, while Florida, 17.1%; Rhode Island, 16.7%; and New Jersey, 15.8%; rounded out the top five.
Along with the nation’s overall highest insurance costs, Chu says, Louisiana’s average cost of $1,742 for homeowners insurance is the second highest in the U.S. And Chu’s research also shows Louisiana consumers pay dearly for their auto insurance: $2,264, on average. That’s third-highest in the nation behind Michigan at $3,096; and Rhode Island at $2,513.
Christine Berry, associate professor of risk management at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, says the threat of storms affects homeowners and auto insurance rates, especially in south Louisiana. Rates in the central and northern reaches of Louisiana are similar to those in the rest of the country, she says.
“The wind (hurricane) exposure definitely is the biggest driver for the higher rates for homeowners,” she said in an emailed response to Daily Advertiser questions. “People forget that not all cars are driven away when there is a severe storm. Flood is covered by comprehensive auto insurance so that is another big factor (related to storms). But auto insurance rates are also driven by a high population density in parts of South Louisiana and high claims payments (liability).”
On average, Americans pay about 12% of their annual income on insurance of all types—about $5,261. Average annual U.S. costs for homeowner’s insurance is $1,034; health, $2,823; life, $304; auto, $1,100.
Read the full story.If you love birds, then Uganda is the place for you. If you have a fetish for all things ornithological (awesome word), then this country should definitely be on your hit-list. If the fluttering of bird-wings produces a fluttering of your heart-strings, and if the squawking of unusual avian life causes your jeans to inexplicably tighten, then read on... Now the WTF is not really a big bird nerd - never been one of those people who spends hours on end peering up trees with camera poised, hoping to snap a once-in-a-lifetime shot of some rare feathered creature that looks identical to all the others except for some imperceptible feature that sets it apart as rare & special. I'm not one to knock others for having different interests though, so go ahead & do your thing you crazy bird-watching bastards. And if that is your thing, then in case you haven't gathered already, Uganda is a country which will have you gleefully rubbing your hands together like a kid in a candy store, and likely getting a bad case of RSI in your index finger from snapping so many goddamn photos in quick succession. Even the WTF couldn't resist taking a few pics, and on that note I present to you a selection of the amazing birdlife that awaits you in Uganda...
Pied Kingfisher
To start things off may I present to you the Pied Kingfisher - just like the kingfishers you might have seen at home except in monochrome. Personally I think the plain black & white makes it quite dazzling. These things can hover in the same place above the water for extended periods of time waiting for prey to surface, which is pretty fucking badass. You may think the place you live is a bit of a hole, however these guys actually do live in holes, visible in the cliff behind this specimen. This photo was taken in Queen Elizabeth National Park, but you can see these little dudes in pretty much any wetland area.
Red-Throated Bee Eater
Next up we have the Red-Throated Bee-Eater, AKA the Gay Pride Bird. Actually being gay is illegal in Uganda, and apparently punishable by death. And that's not cool at all. These birds are though, and they can be seen in north-western Uganda, particularly around the Murchison Falls area.
Hadada Ibis
This is a Hadada Ibis, characterised by it's cranked out eyes which make it look like it's been up for three days on a meth binge. These tweaky-looking bastards can be seen all over the place, this photo was taken on one of the islands in Lake Bunyonyi in the far south-west of the country.
Black Headed Weaver
This looks like what would happen if Big Bird from Sesame Street mated with a sparrow (as painful as that sounds) however it is in fact a Black Headed Weaver. These little dudes are all over the place, so you'll definitely have the chance to snap a pic.
Yellow Billed Stork
I reckon this thing looks like the lonely kid at school who everyone used to pick on & steal his lunch money, there's just something a bit sad & pathetic about him standing there on the side of the river all alone. Awwww. However, he is in fact a Yellow Billed Stork, and I snapped this pic on the Kazinga Channel in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Grey Crested Crane
Sorry for the blurry pic, this was taken out the window of a moving vehicle during a safari so a bit tricky to hold the camera still. But I did have to include this photo as this is Uganda's national bird, the Grey Crested Crane - it appears on Uganda's flag & on their money, and is considered to be quite a big deal around these parts. In fact, during two separate periods in Uganda's history, totalling more than 7 years, Uganda was ruled by a parliament where Crested Cranes made up the powerful majority, and they were not kind to their human underlings.
African Fish Eagle
The African Fish Eagle - majestic as fuck.
Goliath Heron
I'm pretty sure this is a Goliath Heron, not 100%, but it sorta makes sense since a) it looks like a heron and b) it is fucking massive. So yeah, all in all some pretty strong evidence pointing to the correct identification of this as a Goliath Heron.
Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill
This crazy looking critter is an Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill, at least I think it is, the only bit that's confusing me is that it's called a ground hornbill, but as you can see this one is in a tree. Still, what's in a name? An Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill by any other name would still look pretty fucking weird (Shakespeare FTW).
Marabou Stork
And finally, the prize for the most goddamned ugly bird in existence goes to this freak of nature, the Marabou Stork. Seriously this thing looks like some sort of evil bad-guy from a kids cartoon wearing a cloak who's been doing all upper body / no legs at the gym. You will see these freaky fuckers all over Uganda, from the capital Kampala out into rural areas. At 1.5m in height they're pretty hard to miss, and they can generally be observed standing around like the one in this pic, plotting the demise of humanity.Sonic the Hedgehog Publisher: Shogakukan Country of origin: Japan First issue date: 1992 Last issue date: 1994
Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ) is the name of a manga series based on the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series during the early 1990s. It was not released as a stand-alone product, but was instead serialized in several magazines published by Shogakukan, aimed at Japanese elementary school children.
Publications
The manga series was featured in the following magazines. Each series was intended to be read independently, with storylines sometimes continuing from issue to issue, but no shared continuity between the different magazines.
Sonic the Hedgehog Book and Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Mega Drive Official Guide Book, both published by Shogakukan, also featured exclusive Sonic the Hedgehog manga written and drawn by Sango Morimoto. Sonic the Hedgehog Book's manga featured characters and concepts from the serialized stories, whereas Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Mega Drive Official Guide Book's manga only featured characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 video game.
Story
Sonic the Hedgehog. The cast of the manga
The series follows the adventures of Nicky, a young, bookish-looking hedgehog who through some manner is able to transform into the actual hero of the story, Sonic the Hedgehog. When being the blue hedgehog, he is joined by Miles "Tails" Prower, his protégé, and the two work together to stop Dr. Eggman and whatever evil schemes may be up his sleeve.
While the escapades of Sonic were the highlight of the strip, his alter-ego Nicky was provided with his own full cast of supporting characters. Nicky lived in Hedgehog Town, a setting similar to modern day Japan, along with his family and friends. His parents were named Paulie and Brenda (Paulie, the father, dressed in clothing reminiscent of a fighter pilot), and he also had a little sister, Tania (named Anita in Sango Morimoto's stories). Outside of his home life, Nicky's best friend was a pudgy hedgehog named Little John, and he also had a girlfriend, named Amy. This character would later appear in the video games as Amy Rose, albeit not in the same function.
The first page of the story "Save Little John", chapter #6 of Shogaku Rokunensei's Sonic serial. From the September 1992 issue.
Whilst Sonic would frequently be threatened by Dr. Eggman, Nicky's main antagonist was the biggest delinquent in town, a lizard named Anton Veruca. Anton lived in a cave on the outskirts of Hedgehog Town with his family - younger brothers Mud, Hud and Tod, younger sister Migu, father Hogi and the scariest of the Veruca family, his mother Vera. Anton and his siblings would do nothing but try and cause trouble for Nicky and his friends, but they would always get their comeuppance once Sonic arrived on the scene. An early version of Charmy Bee was also featured in the comic, although it is unknown what role he played, beyond being a friend toward Sonic.
Except for Tails, nobody knows that Nicky is actually Sonic the Hedgehog, including himself.
History
Development
The Sonic the Hedgehog manga is thought to have been the first Sonic-related storyline created outside the direct influence of Sega, giving its writers a freedom that the games would not be otherwise able to traverse. The overall concept for the series, its premise, setting and characters, were developed by Kenji Terada, a well known anime script writer and scenario writer for the first three Final Fantasy video games. Although Terada is credited for the original story concept in every issue, the only stories he wrote directly were the Sonic no Daibouken illustrated prose adventures in Shogaku Yonensei.
Although the manga series was an initiative lead by Sega of Japan's marketing team, with the aim increasing Sonic's appeal to a young audience, the Sega design team was involved in the production process, with Naoto Ohshima and others being involved in the creation of the characters[1] (such as Amy and Charmy Bee).
The other writers and artists of the manga, incuding Sango Morimoto, Hirokazu Hikawa and Koichi Tanaka, created their own stories based upon the concepts and characters developed by Kenji Terada and Sega. Because of this, they all shared common elements, such as Nicky, Amy, Anton Veruca and Hedgehog Town. However, there were some discrepancies, most noticeably in Sango Morimoto's comics, which included oddities such as Amy sporting a ponytail, Nicky's little sister being named Anita rather than Tania and a radically different design for Charmy Bee.
Legacy
Little is known about this manga series, as copies of the original strips are extremely rare. Unlike the Dash & Spin series published years later by Shogakukan, the strip was never collected into book volumes, remaining exclusive to the original magazines.Duct tape is cloth or scrim-backed pressure-sensitive tape usually coated with polyethylene. Powdered aluminum pigment gives traditional duct tape its silvery gray color. Duct tape, as most know it, is traditionally gray or black, but today it comes in multiple colors.
How It Got Its Start
During World War II, Revolite, at the time a division of Johnson & Johnson, developed an adhesive tape made from a rubber-based adhesive that was applied to a durable “duck cloth” backing. The tape was water resistant.
A mother of two soldiers fighting in the war named Vesta Stoudt worked in a factory that tested the tape for the company. Vesta soon realized that there were many practical uses for the tape and she had one use in particular in mind.
She wrote to then President Roosevelt in 1943 asking that the Army look into using the tape to seal ammunition cases during that period. She knew from her son’s accounts that the ammo cases allowed moisture inside, thus creating problems with their ammunition.
A team headed by Revolite’s Johnny Denoye and Johnson & Johnson’s Bill Gross were asked to help develop the new adhesive tape in the beginning for sealing ammo cases. The tape was designed to be ripped by hand and not cut with scissors.
Duct tape got its start as “duck cloth” which had a multitude of uses from shoes to electrical applications. Electrical cables were wrapped in duct cloth to prevent corrosion and the cloth was sewn into to shoes and clothing to make them stronger.
The Melvin A. Anderson Company of Cleveland, Ohio, acquired the rights to the tape in 1950. It was typically used in construction to wrap air ducts, thus, the name “duct tape” became part of the vernacular in the 1950s, along with other tape products that were colored silvery gray like tin ductwork.
The duct tape you know today is not suitable for duct work, because it does not hold up well under heat. There is tape however, designed specifically for wrapping/sealing duct work (ShurTech Brands, n.d.).
Duct tape today, is made with a variety of tightly woven fabrics to provide strength. The threads or fill yarn, as it’s called, may be cotton, polyester, nylon, rayon, or fiberglass. The fabric is very thin gauze called “scrim” which is laminated to a backing of low density polyethylene.
Duct tape has been a staple in the military for decades, and it is often referred to as “riggers’ tape”, “hurricane tape”, or “100-mph tape”. Duct tape was and is supposed to withstand up to 100 mph winds, thus the name. It was used during the Vietnam War to repair or balance helicopter rotor blades.
Enough of the Science and History behind It: On To Survival Uses
1.) Fire Starter
Lay out a short piece of duct tape adhesive side up and scrap your magnesium bar over the adhesive to collect the magnesium shavings. Once the tape is well coated roll the tape into a cylinder and store in a pill bottle or some other container. You can make dozens of these fire starters up ahead of time.
One or both ends of the cylinder can be ignited with a match or lighter, and it will burn for several minutes, allowing you to ignite dry or damp tinder, or you can slice a hole in it to ignite the magnesium scrapings with a spark in the absence of matches or lighters.
Duct tape itself is combustible and you can ignite it with a spark from a Ferro rod, flint, and steel or ignite it with a match as you would tinder. Cut into small strips and pull the strands apart to create a surface for oxygen.
2.) Cordage
Cut the duct tape into strips and twist into cordage and the strength of the cordage is related to how wide the strips are when you twist them.
3.) Arrow Fletching
The simplest method is to cut two strips about four inches long. Lay your shaft on the adhesive side of one and then lay the other over the shaft lining up with the other piece of tape. Then cut at an angle on each side to create the Fletching. You can get creative with the tape, but remember you are in a survival situation so do not make it too complicated. Simple Fletching will work.
4.) Create a Sling for Your Injured Arm
You can put two long strips of tape together by placing adhesive side, to adhesive side to create a long strip that can be shaped into a sling. Where the elbow rests place additional pieces to create a pocket for the elbow, so it stays in place. Make it long enough to tie off behind your head or in some cases you may need to secure the limb to the body tight by wrapping tape around the lower chest or stomach.
Use duct tape to attach splints to legs, fingers, and arms.
5.) Snow Goggles
You have to protect your eyes from light reflecting off snow and one way of doing this is to cut two strips long enough to cover both eyes with some overlap. Put the two pieces together adhesive side, to adhesive side and put up to your eyes. Using a pencil, marker or by carefully pricking to mark where to cut small slits for the eyes. Once you have cut the eye holes, attach cordage to each end, and tie around your head.
6.) Restrain Someone
Use duct tape to retrain hands and legs of any person.
7.) Repair Gear, Equipment
Use to repair holes in tents, shoes, clothing, and backpacks and so on. Duct tape is only a temporary fix and it will leave behind a residue that can be very difficult to get rid of. Cover larger rips in clothing by placing a piece on the inside and outside of the tear making sure the tape sticks to the sides of the cloth and to each other.
8.) Fly Catcher
Sprinkle sugar or honey on the strip and hang like any fly strip around the tent or campsite to keep flies and certain other flying insects away from your food and body. You can just hang the strips without adding sugar or honey if you fear you may attract more than you catch. Insects will stick to the tape as they try to make their way inside your tent or shelter.
9.) Wound Closure
Use like a butterfly bandage except do not let the tape touch the wound. Cut into strips. Place cotton or another type bandage between the wound and tape however. Use the tape to draw the cut closed, by attaching one end to dry skin on one side, and then pull the wound closed and attach the other end of the strip of tape to dry skin on the other side. Learn a bunch of other medical uses for duct tape check out Duct Tape 911.
10.) Trail Markers
You can buy duct tape in various colors and orange tape would be ideal for marking trails. Cut into strips and hang from limbs or even wrap around limbs instead of making blaze marks on live trees.
Additional Uses
Tape together Mylar Blankets to create an emergency shelter or use for sleeping bag covers, or make a ground cover by filling a Mylar blanket/tarp with pine boughs, leaves or grasses and tape the ends and sides together
Tape a fixed bladed knife to a sapling to create a spear
Temporarily repair a water bottle, make sure the area is dry and clean before applying the tape, this does not mean the bottle will not leak, but it will reduce the loss of your precious water supply
Reinforce or make grommet holes so you can attach cordage to light material. Fold over a piece wherever you plan to attach cordage to keep the material from ripping. Material such as Mylar blankets, plastic sheeting, and thin canvas, for example. Put the hole through the duct tape
Cover sharp ends of frayed cable/wire and tape over frayed ends of rope to prevent more unraveling
If using glass or sharp pieces of Chert for cutting, tape one side to protect your fingers/hands
Tape loose fishhooks ends if you do not have a proper storage container, to keep the hooks from stabbing you or ripping gear or clothing
Lay a piece of duct tape out, adhesive side up, to secure small screws from knife handles, eyeglasses or any other piece of gear or equipment to the adhesive as you work, to keep from losing the part (s)
Wrap up wood curls/sawdust in the tape to create even more fire starters
Make a temporary knife sheath using cardboard and duct tape or just use duct tape
As stated earlier the uses for duct tape are endless. For today however, we concentrated on what we thought might be some of the more important uses in a survival situation. The uses really are only limited by your imagination.
ShurTech Brands. (n.d.). Retrieved 2015, from http://www.duckbrand.com/about'SNL': McKinnon's Kellyanne Conway goes full 'Fatal Attraction' on Jake Tapper
Kellyanne Conway did not take that breakup well. (Photo: Kylie Billings/NBC)
First, Kate McKinnon's Kellyanne Conway was Roxie Hart from the musical Chicago.
This week, she channeled Glenn Close's Fatal Attraction character, breaking into the home of her unrequited love, CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
"I just want to be part of the news," the lingerie-clad Conway told a terrified Tapper, a week after his network declined the White House's offer to make her available for his Sunday morning show State of the Union after that infamous "Bowling Green massacre" segment.
Kellyanne Conway is *not* going to be ignored by @jaketapper. #SNLpic.twitter.com/ttdTYjBOUY — Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) February 12, 2017
When he said he didn't want her back on if she was going to keep lying, she desperately pinwheeled for something else to keep his attention. "What if I do a commercial for Ivanka's shoes live on air? It's just a little ethics violation."
Tapper finally found his spine, telling her, "It's over, Kellyanne. You're toxic. You're sick. You're done."
"We'll see about that. If I can't be on TV, I"ll go somewhere else. I'll call HuffPo Live," she threatened.
"No, you won't!" he countered. "No one watches that!"
She turned on the waterworks, which worked like a charm.
"I'll text Fareed Zakaria," he promised. "You can go on his show."
"FAREED ZAKARIA?!? I have an office in the (expletive) White House!"
"How about Carol Costello?" Tapper offered. "Do I look like Kayleigh McEnany to you?" Ouch.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2l2lvmyMILWAUKEE -- Baseball will be making major changes in the next two years -- adding two teams to the playoffs, moving the Houston Astros to the American League and extending interleague play to September.
The expanded playoffs could come as early as next year. That will put 10 teams in the postseason, requiring a new wild-card playoff round that probably will be one game, winner take all.
The altered playoff structure is subject to an agreement on a new labor contract with the players' association, which is expected before the current deal expires Dec. 11.
"We believe after a lot of study and a lot of thought that the addition of two wild cards will really help us in the long run," said Commissioner Bud Selig, who called it a "historical" morning.
Baseball began its playoff system in 1969 and doubled the playoff teams to eight in 1994, a change delayed one year by a strike. This change will put one-third of the baseball's 30 teams in the postseason. In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams make the playoffs. In the NBA and NHL, 16 of 30 teams advance.
Selig acknowledged that additional wild-card teams would have eliminated the drama on the final night of this season, when Tampa Bay overtook Boston and St. Louis moved past Atlanta.
"You don't do things for one year. You do things for a long period of time," Selig said.
As a condition for approving the sale of the Astros from Drayton McLane to Jim Crane, the Astros agreed to shift from the NL Central to the AL West as soon as 2013, giving each league 15 teams. It's baseball's first realignment since the Milwaukee Brewers went to the NL after the 1997 season.
"It won't be perfect. Nothing in any schedule is ever perfect," Selig said, "but this will be very good."
With an odd number of teams in each league, there will be interleague play from April through September. Since interleague games began in 1997, they had been concentrated around May and late-June.
The Astros, part of the NL since joining the majors in 1962, will be getting plenty of frequent flier miles. Instead of going to cities in the Midwest several times a year, they'll be headed out to Anaheim, Oakland and Seattle.
"I was in the air freight business and we were always flying a lot. So, we'll be flying a lot," Crane said.
But they'll have a built-in rivalry with the two-time AL champion Texas Rangers.
"I'm proud of the changes, but you want to be sure you're always doing the right thing. This is the thing we've studied for a long time, but they'll be working on schedules in the future," Selig said.
The shift, approved unanimously, does not appear to be popular with fans.
"I don't like how they did it, sort of strong-arming it," 47-year-old Eddie Fuller of Houston said at a sports bar near Minute Maid Park.
"I prefer the National League myself. I'm not a big DH fan. I just like National League baseball better," said Fuller, who estimated he goes to 30-40 Astros games each year.
An expanded playoffs has been debated for a year, since union head Michael Weiner said players were open to it. Players also pushed for 15-team leagues because they felt it was harder to make the postseason from the six-team NL Central and easier from the four-team AL West.
"We haven't come to a final decision but if I had to take a guess today it would be one game," Selig said. "Baseball people, my 14-man committee, all wanted one game. The only guy who had concerns about it was me. They like the one game. It'll be dramatic. One game will be good."
As part of the Astros' agreement to switch leagues, the sale price was cut from $680 million to $615 million, a person at Thursday's meeting told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details weren't announced.
Major League Baseball will make up part of the $65 million difference, paying McLane $35 million over three years, the person said.
Owners also approved longtime San Francisco Giants executive Larry Baer to replace Bill Neukom as the team's controlling owner.
In addition, MLB executive vice president Rob Manfred said progress was made on a new labor contract. The deal could fall into place before Thanksgiving.
"I'm really confident. I think we will finish an agreement," Manfred said. "As for the process, it's hard to predict exactly when anything is going to happen. I think we've made good progress and I'm hopeful that we'll push it across the finish line."
Selig saluted McLane, who bought the Astros in 1992 for about $117 million. The Astros were a major league-worst 56-106 this year, setting a team record for losses.
"Drayton should have a wonderful legacy of what he did for the Astros, got them a new ballpark and did all these things," Selig said. "He sure left a much better franchise than we he came in."
Crane founded a Houston-based logistics company in 2008. He is chairman and chief executive officer of Crane Capital, a private equity fund company. Two years ago, he was attempting to buy the Chicago Cubs and last summer he tried to purchase the Texas Rangers.
In September, Crane expressed frustration at how long it was taking MLB to approve the sale, which was announced on May 16, and noted there is a Nov. 30 deadline. The sale had been placed on the agenda for a vote in August, then was removed.
In 1997, employees of Crane's former company, Eagle USA Airfreight, filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying there was discrimination. Eagle settled the case in 2005 for about $900,000.
Selig acknowledged the long vetting process.
"We did spend an enormous amount of time and I'm very comfortable today that he has put together a really blue-ribbon group in Houston," Selig said. "I'm relieved today. It's over, and I'm happy. The group represents the entire Houston community and I think they'll do very, very well."
Owners were given a report on the bankrupt Los Angeles Dodgers. While owner Frank McCourt reached a still-secret agreement with baseball to sell the franchise following months of litigation, the team and the Fox division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. are fighting over McCourt's desire to market media rights from 2014 on as part of the process.
A sale would give McCourt the money to pay his divorce settlement by the April 30 deadline he agreed to.
Asked whether it was awkward having McCourt in the meeting. Selig said no.
"All of that went as well as it could today," he said.UC Researchers Unravel Important Role of Rb Tumor Suppressor in Aggressive Form of Breast Cancer
CINCINNATIThe retinoblastoma (Rb) protein plays a critical role in suppressing the multi-step process of cell migration through the bloodstream, lymphovascular invasion and the metastasis of an aggressive type of breast cancer to the lung, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) Cancer Institute, the Cincinnati Cancer Center (CCC) and the UC Brain Tumor Center have found.
The findings of Rbs role at multiple points in the disease process point to a potential new therapeutic target in patients with the most aggressive subset of breast cancer, known as basal-like breast carcinomas. This type of cancer has no estrogen receptor expression, and to date there is no efficient therapy for patients who suffer from it, leaving them with a generally poor prognosis. Basal-like breast carcinomas spread to the lungs in about 25 percent of cases and to the brain in about 30 percent of cases.
The findings http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080590 are published online in the journal PLOS ONE. The investigator-initiated research was funded by the UC Department of Cancer Biologys Startup Fund, the UC Deans Fund and the Mayfield Education and Research Foundation.
"Our research suggests that Rb inhibits collective cell migration, which in turn inhibits the lymphovascular invasion, the release of cancer cells into the blood circulation and the growth of metastasis, says Samuel Godar, PhD, who led the study while an assistant professor in the Department of Cancer Biology. Godar is now visiting assistant professor of cancer biology at UC and president of BioTest4U, a biotech startup based in Loveland, Ohio, and Covington, Ky.
The deadly progression begins when decreased levels of Rb are coupled with an increase in the expression of an oncoprotein (a gene that has the potential to cause cancer) called CD44. Basal-like breast carcinomas are known to have an elevated expression of CD44 and relatively low levels of Rb. Expression of the oncoprotein CD44 is required for the breast cancer cells to move actively through the bloodstream.
The researchers studied Rb in two different ways. They studied its ability to suppress collective cell migration in cultures at the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies. They also studied Rb in an animal model, examining its ability to suppress the release of single cancer cells and cancer cell clusters into the bloodstream.
"Our results suggest that Rb suppression stimulates an array of pathological consequences, says co-investigator James Driscoll, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the UC Department of Internal Medicines Division of Hematology Oncology and member of the CCC. "It stimulates collective rather than single cell-based invasion and migration; it leads to lymphovascular invasion; and it orchestrates metastasis to remote organs through the bloodstream.
The research illuminates the crucial role of the Rb/CD44 pathway in the metastatic progression of basal-like breast carcinomas, Godar says.
"It points to the Rb/CD44 pathway as a promising target for therapy to combat the propensity for these aggressive breast cancers to metastasize to the lung and brain. About 90 percent of cancer patients die primarily because of metastatic disease. We believe that the complex analysis of metastatic progression in a preclinical model, such as the analysis we used, will become essential for predicting the true powers of novel anti-cancer drugs.
Additional co-investigators of the study were Kui-Jin Kim, Alzbeta Godarova and Kari Seedle of UCs Department of Cancer Biology; Min-Ho Kim of Ulsan University Hospital in Ulsan, Republic of Korea; Tan Ince of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; and Susanne Wells of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Cincinnati Childrens, the University of Cincinnati and UC Health have created the Cincinnati Cancer Centera joint effort designed to leverage the strengths of all three organizations in order to provide the best possible cancer diagnostics, research, treatment, and care for individuals in the Tristate region and the nation.Story highlights Veteran steed decked in tweed
Dubbed the world's first equine suit of its kind
Unveiled by Tony McCoy ahead of Cheltenham Festival
(CNN) It's a clothes horse -- a horse in a three-piece Harris Tweed suit and flat cap.
Unveiled by 20-time champion jockey Tony McCoy, the equine outfit -- labeled a "world first" -- was worn by veteran racehorse Morestead ahead of this week's Cheltenham Festival, one of Britain's most prestigious jump meetings.
"Some models can be real divas, but Morestead was calm and a pleasure to work with," said the suit's creator Emma Sandham-King, who is an apprentice of the late Alexander McQueen.
"Creating the world's first tweed suit for a horse has been one of the biggest challenges that I have faced in my career as a designer," added Sandham-King, who together with her team spent four weeks working on the outfit.
A favored fashion choice for many horse racing spectators, tweed fans at the festival will wear enough of the material to stretch 200 miles from Cheltenham all the way to Ireland, according to statistician Dr. Geoff Ellis.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
The corporate media allowed two Christian leaders to take over the Easter Sunday morning airwaves in order to launch a partisan attack on President Obama.
Here is the video from Face The Nation:
Transcript:
BOB SCHIEFFER: So I guess that question I’d ask you, Your Eminence, are you good with that? CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN: No, although I appreciate very much the Vice President. He has been helpful and I– I– I have benefitted from his counsel and I look forward to talking to him again. So I am glad he weighed in on it but I would disagree with him. It hasn’t helped us much, Bob, because– because we still have to pay for it, because most of us are self-insured and we are still worried not just about our institutions but also the individuals. So we still find ourselves in a very tough spot, and we’re still going to continue to express what we believe is just not a religious point of view but a constitutional point of view that America’s at her best when the government doesn’t force a citizen or a group of citizens in a religious creed to violate their deepest held moral convictions. BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you agree with what the vice president seemed to be saying that this– that the President really didn’t change his position? CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN: Yes, I– I think so. Although I am a little confused, because the President told me his convict— his position, his conviction is that the government would do nothing to impede religion. And he– he was very gracious, and especially complimenting the Catholic family in the United States in their work for health care charity and education. And he’d say I don’t want this administration to do anything to– to impede that. It’s tough for me to see how the strangling HHS Regulations do anything but that. BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this: Do you ever worry that sometimes– do you like to be careful about getting too involved in politics? I know since the– CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN: You do. BOB SCHIEFFER: –new Pew poll out that says sixty percent of Catholics say that churches and other houses of worship should just totally steer clear of politics. CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN: Yeah. I do worry about that, Bob. And this– this is a good place for me to– to remind everybody, we didn’t ask for this fight, I don’t enjoy it at all, I wish I was on here FACE THE NATION answering other questions and you probably do, too. We didn’t ask for the fight but we’re not going to back away from it. What I’d say is this: Yeah, I don’t think religion should be too involved in politics but I also don’t think the government and politics should be overly involved in the church, and that’s our problem here. You’ve got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church that bothers me. So hear me say, hey, I’d like to back away from this, I got other things to worry about and bigger fish to fry than this. Our problem is the government is intruding into the– into the life of faith and in– in the church that they shouldn’t be doing. That’s– that’s our– our read on this.
On ABC’s This Week, Rick Warren continued the Obama attacks:
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
Transcript:
R. WARREN: Well |
No No Flag[4] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No Flag[4] Yes
§ object spread properties No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No[24] No[24] No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No Flag[4] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No Flag[4] Yes
§ basic support No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] No No No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No[25] No[25] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes
§ don't change resolution value No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] No No No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No[25] No[25] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes
§ change rejection value No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] No No No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No[25] No[25] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes
§s (dotAll) flag for regular expressions? Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No???????? No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No??????? Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes?? No No Yes?? No No No Yes Yes?? Yes
§RegExp named capture groups No Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No Flag[23]
§RegExp Lookbehind Assertions No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes
§RegExp Unicode Property Escapes No Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No Flag[23] Flag[23]
§ async generators No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No Yes
§ for-await-of loops No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No Yes
2018 misc
§template literal revision No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes No Flag[23] Yes
2019 features
§Object.fromEntries No No No Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Yes No No No No No Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
§ String.prototype.trimLeft No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
§ String.prototype.trimRight No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
§ String.prototype.trimStart No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No[27] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ String.prototype.trimEnd No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No[27] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ Array.prototype.flat No No No Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No[29] No[29] No[29] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ Array.prototype.flatMap No Yes[5] Yes[5] Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No[27] No[27] No[27] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ flat and flatMap in Array.prototype[@@unscopables] No No No Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
2019 misc
§ basic No No Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No No
§ await No No Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No No
§ yield No No Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No Yes Yes No No No
§ basic No No No Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ empty description No No No Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ undefined description No No No Yes[5] No No No No No No No No No No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] No[26] Yes[6] No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No
§ functions created with the Function constructor No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23]
§ arrows No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
§ [native code] No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
§ class expression with implicit constructor No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
§ class expression with explicit constructor No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
§ unicode escape sequences in identifiers No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23]
§ methods and computed property names No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23] Flag[23] Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No Flag[23] Flag[23]
§ LINE SEPARATOR can appear in string literals No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No
§ PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR can appear in string literals No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No No NoBranded running techniques such as Chi Running and the Pose method have become quite popular. But are they effective? Many runners who have read the books, watched the DVDs and/or attended the clinics say they are, and no doubt they do yield results for some runners. But do they represent the best way to increase stride power and efficiency and to reduce the stride anomalies that cause injuries in most runners?
There is no scientific proof that this is the case. In fact, quite the opposite. For example, a 2005 study published in the Journal of Sports Sciences reported that the running economy of 16 high-level triathletes was actually reduced (meaning the athletes became less efficient) after 12 weeks of practicing the Pose running method.
Another study of the Pose method was performed at the University of Cape Town, South Africa a few years ago. Ross Tucker, PhD, who led the second phase of that study, has told me that it had to be halted because the Pose method was causing calf strains in many of the subjects (a common complaint among Pose customers).
More: Can Running Technique Be Taught?
There is a newer theory of running biomechanics which holds that the stride is best improved unconsciously instead of consciously. It is well-known that stride efficiency and power increase automatically through subconscious processes in response to different types of training. It is not known whether consciously manipulations of stride form can be beneficial, and if so, which specific changes are beneficial for which runners. Therefore your efforts to improve your stride should consist primarily if not entirely in training methods that stimulate "automatic" gains in power and efficiency.
Here are three such training methods:
Hip Flexor Stretch
Kneel on your right knee and place your left foot on the floor well in front of your body. Draw your navel towards your spine and roll your pelvis backward. Now put your weight forward into the lunge until you feel a good stretch in your right hip flexors (located where your thigh joins your pelvis). You can enhance the stretch by raising your right arm over your head and actively reaching towards the ceiling. Hold the stretch for 20 seconds and then repeat on the left side.
More: 5 Common Hip Injuries You Can Fix
Giant Walking Lunge
Fast running requires good hip mobility. You need to dynamically achieve a high degree of hip flexion and extension to take the large strides that speed requires. The giant walking lunge is an effective exercise to develop hip mobility. To do it, simply walk forward slowly by taking the largest strides you can and lowering the knee of the trailing leg to within an inch of the floor on each stride. Focus on reaching out ahead of your body as far as you can with the striding leg. Complete 10 lunges with each leg, alternating the striding leg as you would with normal walking.
More: Why Runners Should Lunge
Single-Leg Running
Studies have shown that plyometrics training (or jumping drills) improves running economy by reducing ground contact time and increasing the capacity of the legs to capture and reuse energy absorbed through impact. Few runners care to make time to add plyometrics workouts to their training regimen.
More: 10-Minute Plyometric Workout for RunnersJ.P. Wiser’s will launch its own brand centre at the Hiram Walker and Sons distillery next month and start offering public tours that will include whisky tastings.
Although the distillery makes about 150 different products, it is the home of J.P. Wiser’s Canadian whiskies. Its brand experience centre with a bar and a view of the Detroit River is in building 20 on Riverside Drive east of Walker Road. It won’t be located in the historic building that holds the Canadian Club Brand Centre which may have held its last public tours in the spring.
For J.P. Wiser’s, it will be the first time it will offer the general public a peek inside its grain to glass whisky process and an opportunity at the distillery to taste and learn more about the J.P. Wiser’s brand which dates back to 1857.
“We’re just so thrilled actually to open our doors to the public and again tell our story, especially to the people of Windsor,” Keeshan Selvakumar, J.P Wiser’s senior brand manager, said Monday.
“That’s our home. That’s where we make our product. You made a comment earlier about people not knowing that so we’re so excited to finally tell that story.”
Because of the heat and the size of the distillery and bottling plant, the public won’t be able to tour the whole distillery. The brand centre will re-create the grain to glass process and talk about the craftsmanship that goes into whisky as well as offer whisky tastings and the ability to purchase J.P. Wiser’s whiskies.
“We want to celebrate how we make whisky. I fundamentally believe that Canadian whisky is some of the best whisky in the world but a lot of Canadians don’t really know that yet,” Selvakumar said.
More details will be available after the launch with the media Oct. 4 which is the birthday of J.P. Wiser, one of the original Canadian whisky barons who was distilling whisky in Prescott, Ont., in 1857.
Part of the brand’s re-launch included a new television commercial which premiered during the NFL kickoff game last week and was filmed in Windsor at the distillery. It begins over the Detroit River with a view of the distillery’s grain elevators and only includes employees at the distillery including master blender Don Livermore. The new branding called Hold it High celebrates the time, care and pride that about 160 Windsor workers put into each J.P. Wiser’s bottle at the riverfront distillery, he said.
The distillery which produces whisky, gin, rum and liqueurs and is the largest in North America is owned by the French company Pernod Ricard and managed by Corby Spirit and Wine Limited.
The Canadian Club brand is owned by Beam Suntory which leases the Heritage Centre building for its brand centre and announced earlier this year its plans to stop offering public tours in the spring and to close the centre Dec. 31.
Mayor Drew Dilkens could not be reached to ask what had become of talks with the company to try to keep the Canadian Club Brand Centre open. Dilkens went to Chicago in February to try to convince the company to keep the centre in Windsor.
A Beam Suntory spokesperson did not have any additional information Monday on the fate of the centre.
shill@postmedia.com
twitter.com/winstarhillMash-Up marriage is an incredible opportunity to deeply explore and share in a culture outside of your own. But such exploration doesn’t come without a price. Tough conversations, awkward questions, and occasional faux pas included.
On their first wedding anniversary, our Indian-American Mash-Up, the journalist Hitha Herzog, reflects on her incredible journey to Hind-Jewism, and how she and her husband, Jewish-American comedian Seth Herzog, have found ways to balance and honor both of their cultures. It has a little something to do with brisket and sambar.
I dated my husband for almost seven years before our wedding. We’ve now been married for one. He’s Jewish; I’m Hindu. But it wasn’t until five months into our marriage that the divide between our cultural backgrounds and religions become blaringly apparent.
It began with brisket.
The evening started benignly enough — we were trying to decide if we were going to host his family for Passover that year, our first as a married couple. But in the midst of planning, our conversation escalated when I pointed out I knew more about his culture and religion than he did. It ended in a huff when I was able to explain how to make a perfect brisket, but he couldn’t tell me what sambar, a lentil-based South Indian vegetable dish, was.
The real issue wasn’t about food, obviously.
When I first met Seth, I knew how important Jewish culture was to him, even though he wasn’t religious. I made it a point to learn about Judaism. I studied the diasporic journey of his relatives from Hungary and Russia to Princeton, N.J., via the Lower East Side and the Bronx. I researched Jewish history and visited museums. I learned how to make a perfect potato pancake and read up on what each of the eight Hanukkah blessings meant. I happily called myself a Hind-Jew. Because in my mind, that’s what I was becoming — a balanced, super in-tune Mash-Up of my culture and his.
Despite having had a four-day wedding which included separate Hindu and Jewish ceremonies, though, my husband had no idea who he was (culturally) marrying. Sure, he was schooled on the several ritualistic steps of our Hindu wedding ceremony. He was present for the house blessing puja we hosted when we bought our first apartment on the Upper West Side.
My husband had no idea who he was (culturally) marrying.
But he still didn’t understand why I kept vegetarian on Saturdays (a day devoted to Lord Venkateswara, an incarnation of Vishnu, something I have done since birth) or why it was imperative that we always take our shoes off in the house. His understanding of what it meant to be a Hindu Indian was straight from a Mindy Kaling script, peppered with “tiger mom” quips.
Food was a whole other issue. Seth wasn’t used to eating spicy food, so instead of having my weekly thali complete with idli, potato masala and a dosa, a South Indian breakfast array that I had turned into a dinner tradition, I swapped it out for a weekly trip to our favorite Chinese joint. Secretly, I was afraid I was becoming more “Jew” in the delicate Hind-Jew equation I created for myself, and it scared me.
We were a few weeks out from our wedding when Seth and I started talking about our future kids.
“We are going to raise them Jewish,” he said with finality.
“OK…” I said, giving him the side eye, slightly bewildered.
Turns out discussing brisket is great for surfacing a hidden identity crisis.
I was right to be nervous. Turns out, though he’d always said he didn’t want me to convert to Judaism, once we were engaged and talking about our future kids, he’d had a change of heart. He wanted our kids to be raised Jewish, and in order for our kids to be Jewish, I had to be as well. And just like that, another weight had been added to the “Jew” side of the Hind-Jew scale. But I loved this guy. We were getting married! I tucked away my anxiety.
And suddenly, five months later, we were married and facing our first Passover. Turns out discussing brisket is great for surfacing a hidden identity crisis.
“How would you like it if I made an executive decision to raise our kids Hindu?” I shouted. “I thought our kids were going to be raised knowing both religions. And now you are saying they can only be one?”
Seth took a step back, and sat down at our enormous kitchen table, a place I had envisioned our kids studying for Hebrew school and reciting lines from the Mahabharata.
“Where is this coming from? We were just talking about brisket!” He genuinely looked perplexed.
“You said you wanted me to convert so our kids could grow up Jewish!” I shrieked. I was getting upset but for reasons only I could understand. It wasn’t even the conversion part that upset me. I had spent so much time learning about his culture and religion in our relationship that I was 75 percent there. I was upset because I felt like I was losing myself. I had already changed my name to Herzog when we got married. Now I had to give up a large part of my identity? No way.
Seth paused for a moment before he spoke. “It’s important to me for the kids to be raised in the Jewish faith.”
Our conversation wasn’t going anywhere, so I dropped it for the moment. We did host Passover. It was a week before a trip to India to visit my extended family. During the dinner, Seth talked about his excitement and fear swirling around the trip, since it was his first time there.
“I’m sure I’m going to get diarrhea,” he said with a smirk. “But at least I will lose some weight!”
The Hind-Jew scale had practically fallen over. I cried myself to sleep that night.
Our guests doubled over in laughter. My heart sank as I passed around the matzoh ball soup, which I had made from scratch. I didn’t want to ruin the fun everyone was having by dismissing such a backwards notion of India, but I was heartbroken. The Hind-Jew scale had practically fallen over. I cried myself to sleep that night.
But something happened during our week abroad.
The minute we touched down in Hyderabad, all the preconceived ideas Seth had about India vanished. He was enthralled and eager to learn. I took him to all the ancient sites in town and he stood and said nothing; instead he let the sensory overload of noisy auto rickshaws, street anarchy and the smell of petrol and street food take over. He met my extended family. They embraced him like a son. They over fed him South Indian delicacies of biriyani, a savory chicken and rice dish native to Hyderabad; tamarind and yellow rice; pesarattu, a mung bean pancake; and upma, a savory porridge made from rice flour.
My heart burst when he asked for seconds.
It shattered in a billion pieces when he went in for thirds.
One night, my family pulled together a “small” Hindu reception of 100 people in the courtyard of our family’s apartment building. They wanted to welcome Seth and celebrate our wedding and give blessings. Seth was so touched by the gesture, he cried.
Later in the week, we ventured to Cochin, in Kerala, where we hung out on a houseboat for three days as the second part of our honeymoon. Seth got to see how diverse the religious landscape of India really was when we visited a Syrian Christian church that had been in town since the 1300s.
“This place is awesome,” he said. Day #5 into the trip and he still wasn’t sick, and continued to take second helpings of the food.
Our last day in Cochin was a significant turning point in our Hind-Jew negotiations. Seth and I visited a section of the city called “Jew Town.” Historically, this was where most of the spice trade happened in the city. It was an ancient section, beautifully preserved with a 500-year-old synagogue at the end of the street. While walking back to our car, we stumbled upon a shop which sold hand-made bread coverings for Shabbat. The coverings were made by a 92-year-old Jewish woman named Sarah Cohen, whose family had settled in Cochin nearly 400 years ago. She was one of seven Jews left in Cochin.
Seth and I spoke with her about her family, her faith and what it meant to be an Indian Jewish woman. She showed us pictures of her family from the 1800s and of herself from 1940. When Seth and I left, she started to cry and said “please come visit me again soon, my days are numbered!” Something changed in both of us that day.
On our way back to the states, we talked about Cochin and my family. Seth, unprompted, said: “I want our kids to be raised Jewish, but it’s important to me for them to know their Hindu roots. And they can ultimately decide what they want to do.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Could our travels have changed his perspective on our future family? He didn’t elaborate, but when we stepped off the flight I knew he was a changed person. And I was, too. I no longer felt the pressure to convert, or the weight of my hidden anxiety over the Hind-Jew scale. Even if I do convert, I know that I won’t be losing myself; converting will be a chance to access another faith, while still holding on to my traditions.
At least I know that Seth was changed in one dramatic way. Instead of an “Indian” diet, he had to go on a diet when we got back to the U.S. after gaining 10 pounds from eating so much incredible South Indian food — the same food that he now asks me to make alongside the brisket.
Think Mash-Up marriage is awesome and tricky? You are not alone.
Mazel Tov! You’re Engaged! But Your Fiance Isn’t [Insert Race/Religion/Ethnicity Here]
A Marriage in Black and White
Top 12 Tips for Being an Indian Daughter-in-LawCracks are emerging in Israel's democracy. A comprehensive survey compiled by the Israel Democracy Institute and reported in yesterday's Haaretz paints a gloomy, worrisome picture whose gist is a lack of understanding of the basic principles of Israel's political system.
Almost all the survey's findings point to this trend. A majority of the public supports predicating voting rights on a declaration of loyalty to the state; only 17% of the public believes the state's self-definition as a democracy should take precedence over its self-definition as Jewish; an absolute majority believes that only Jews should be involved in decisions crucial to the state; a majority supports allocating more resources to Jews than Arabs; a third of Jewish citizens support putting Arab citizens in detention camps in wartime; and about two-thirds think Arabs should not become ministers.
These findings follow campaigns of hatred and incitement by rabbis and politicians against Israel's Arab citizens. They also follow anti-democratic bills that have been discussed, and in some cases even passed, by the Knesset. And all this happened without the voices of the prime minister, education minister and leader of the opposition being heard.
The survey results are therefore not surprising, but they are extremely disturbing. At their root lies the twisted belief that democracy means the tyranny of the majority, and that equal rights for all the state's citizens is not an integral part of the democratic system.
The survey must spark resolute action. The leadership of the state and all its organs, but especially the education system and the Knesset, must now mobilize to inculcate true democratic values among the public that holds such beliefs and opinions. All the relevant bodies have an obligation to take action against the ignorance and nationalism reflected in the survey.
It must be reiterated at every opportunity that about a fifth of Israel's citizens, the Arabs, are citizens with equal rights, and a democracy's mission is, first and foremost, to defend its minorities. It must also be reiterated that a democracy cannot have two classes of citizens, first-class and second-class. And, most importantly, the next generation of Israelis must be taught these lessons.
The importance of this effort cannot be overstated: What is at stake is the very nature of Israel's society and political system. Cracks in either will endanger Israel's future no less than any external threat. The kind of society reflected by this survey will not be able to preserve democracy - or even a veneer thereof.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. CloseSanta Survival :: The Third Wreath
c a
n
y
a
e
i
m
g
u
m
d
r
o
p
*MUST READ - IMPORTANT MAP NOTES*
Minimum Render Distance must be 8
UPDATE #4 - WHERE ARE THE TWO KEYS LOCATED IN DAY 11?? Watch this video and eventually it will show you where the two keys are located.
UPDATE #3 - NEW MAP DOWNLOAD! The download button now carries these following updates!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-Snow can be turned on and off-Paul tells you how to craft-There are more Dark Oak trees near the house-Day 2's chest system had an overhaul-You can no longer skip to Day 5-More info is given about the Advent Calendar~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The download button now carries these following updates!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-Snow can be turned on and off-Paul tells you how to craft-There are more Dark Oak trees near the house-Day 2's chest system had an overhaul-You can no longer skip to Day 5-More info is given about the Advent Calendar~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE #2 - HOW DO |
realism. It lives in those places. But Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks are all about societies that seem normal on the outside, but once you peel away the top layer it’s very scary and messy and magical—very primeval forces. I think the difference is that Night Vale wears that on its sleeve, and then it’s kind of reversed: It wears its weirdness on the outside.
This is a larger question, but obviously we live in a culture that’s highly visual and cinema and television are celebrated as visual media, even though television was always more verbal. You were supposed to be able to do the ironing, or go get a snack, and still follow along. But the shows that are considered the best are often praised for being more visual, not relaying on dialogue—like Mad Men, or even Twin Peaks. Is there a kind of a flip side? Can podcasts do something unique by not being visual media?
Oh sure. Again, when you’re talking about disenfranchised voices, it’s really amazing. When Night Vale was first blowing up, the internet was all over it. Fan art was one of the first things that contributed to Night Vale becoming so popular. With only a voice to go on, people would start drawing a character who is completely not described, and it would become a kind of groupthink experiment. Someone draws a character one way—let’s say like Tim Gunn, blonde, square-jawed—because that’s what this voice conjured in their head; that’s what the level of vocabulary or—*
Articulateness.
Articulateness! Because there are references to Pulitzer Prize–winning authors, this is what they imagine: blonde, dapper, bow tie, that sort of thing. But then there was an interesting point of view where people were drawing Cecil as a person of color, as Native American, black, Asian, everything. And so we began to lament the fact that so many others defaulted to white. Why do we hear “respectable, intelligent, articulate” and think “white blond man,” you know? And so there was an interesting conversation about that—a tempest in a Tumblr teapot. But “POC Cecil” became like a hashtag. And still the No. 1 question that people ask me on Twitter or in person at conventions is “What does Cecil look like?” And I’m like, “Why do you need my opinion on this? What do you think he looks like? Well that’s what he looks like.” Here’s the thing, we’re talking about ambiguity in your art, and people don’t like ambiguity in art because it means that they have to do work, you know?
Did you always want to be a voice actor?
You know, I feel like in a lot of ways I didn’t necessarily want to be a voice actor, but it was thrust upon me—like when I was ten years old I had the deepest voice in class. I also share a name with my father, so people would call our house asking to speak to Cecil, and I would be like “Hello?” and they would just assume I was an adult. But it got to the point, especially when I was in college, that everyone said “oh you must be a voice actor, right? Listen to that voice, it’s so great!” But the practicality of that is a very different thing. When I got to New York, I found a commercial agent, got head shots, and did all the things that good little actors do when they get to New York City, and one of the commercial agents was like “Oh you should definitely do voice acting, oh my god, just go get the demo made!” So I found this professional who had been working in New York for decades and who had a house in New Jersey that his voice over career built. I thought, “Oh my God, it can be done!” This guy just had pages and pages of copy and this was what he did all day. But I’ve also found that it’s really hard because everyone has the capacity to speak, and therefore anybody could potentially do voice-over work …
Well, maybe not. When I was a teen, people called me “ma’am” when I answered the phone.
Sure, well you know what—what’s ironic about this, I was born like, 30 years too late. What people respond to about my voice is this sort of witty newscaster gravitas, which is so not the trend in advertising now. Like I would have been the brand for Lucky Cigarettes in the ’60s, but now we’ve learned to mistrust that sound. I read this interesting article about the sort of the things that “the greatest generation” held in high esteem: hard handshake, look a man in the eye, tell him the truth, don’t let emotions cloud your judgment—
Be the most patriarchal …
—Be the most patriarchal. Be reserved. Be the distant father. That’s the opposite of what people are looking for now, so I found when I got to New York. They were like “For this pizza commercial we’re looking for a Seth Rogen voice, we’re looking for a Paul Rudd voice, we’re looking for a Jesse Eisenberg voice.” They don’t want the patriarchal radio announcer’s “I’m going to tell you why you should buy this product” dulcet tone. They want “Hey I’m your best friend, you should get this pizza!”
Do you think that this idea that you have this somehow stereotypically patriarchal, old-fashioned masculine voice is at all in tension with your willingness to be an out gay actor?
Yes, I think so. You know I went to school in East Tennessee, a middle-classy kind of environment. As far as I knew I was the only out gay kid at my high school. I came out when I was 16. And honestly, the people that were meanest to me about it—I mean, sure, I got called faggot a couple times by the jocks, but it was always kind of half-hearted—but the people that were meanest to me were the guys that were obviously gay but had a more femme voice and mannerisms. They were the meanest to me because I could pass if I wanted. I feel like there’s a lot of stratification in the gay world. Some of my best friends are faggots [laughs]—all of my best friends are faggots, and I love them. But it was difficult in high school because I was like “No, I’m gay,” but I wasn’t getting the negative attention from the straight world that they were. So I’m sure that my decision to come out seemed much easier in their eyes.
I think voices are an underdiscussed aspect of queer detection. Sure all kinds of gestures and mannerisms matter, but it’s the voice that cements it for people, in my own experience. I wonder if that’s related to why everyone would rather text than call these days. The voice gives so much away right?
You remember when Instagram started their whole pseudo-Snapchat thing? There are all these beautiful models that you follow on Instagram, and you’re like “oh my god, what man candy.” And then all of a sudden you hear them speak and you’re like “No, no, shhh, you were much better when I didn’t have to hear you.” And that has nothing to do with being masc or femme, it has more to do with the image in my head of you as an image. Now that I hear you, the image has completely changed.
Tell me about your decision to come out as HIV-positive.
I found I was HIV-positive when I moved to NYC and was led to the Neofuturists, and I felt like I owed it to this theater company to be honest about my status. There, I wrote several little pieces about being positive talking about the day-to-day life of what it’s like to have this virus. With a couple of guys I called my “gay uncles,” we used to end shows by asking if anyone knows someone who is HIV-positive. Only one or two people would raise their hands usually, so we would then walk out into the audience and start shaking hands saying “now you do.”
As for announcing my status in a bigger way, well, look I’m not much of a social media guy. But social media is a tool, and I realized I could use it. Actually, when I got Twitter, they shut me down on the first day. They thought I was a bot for getting so many followers. Once I started to understand my own limits for social media, the HIV question was always the biggest one. My friends would advise me to come out as HIV-positive as long as I knew my reasons for doing so.
What were those reasons?
For me, it was about the fact that the majority of Night Vale’s fan base are younger and female-identified. I find that this generation is struggling with LGBTQ history, and it’s become so normal to have the cycle of outrage where everyone is crazy angry about something and then forgets it two days later. The HIV/AIDS story was falling behind. Millenials and post-millenials don’t have a lot of reference for what living with HIV was, and is. I wanted to be a more-or-less benign figure that proves that the days of the AIDS crisis have passed. Science has caught up, and it’s no longer about comforting the dying. It’s about treating those people who are living with HIV humanely.
*Correction, Aug. 30, 2017: This post originally misspelled Tim Gunn’s last name.These and other findings are from the McKinsey Global Institute Study, and discussion paper, Artificial Intelligence, The Next Digital Frontier (80 pp., PDF, free, no opt-in) published last month. McKinsey Global Institute published an article summarizing the findings titled How Artificial Intelligence Can Deliver Real Value To Companies. McKinsey interviewed more than 3,000 senior executives on the use of AI technologies, their companies’ prospects for further deployment, and AI’s impact on markets, governments, and individuals. McKinsey Analytics was also utilized in the development of this study and discussion paper.
Key takeaways from the study include the following:
Tech giants including Baidu and Google spent between $20B to $30B on AI in 2016, with 90% of this spent on R&D and deployment, and 10% on AI acquisitions. The current rate of AI investment is 3X the external investment growth since 2013. McKinsey found that 20% of AI-aware firms are early adopters, concentrated in the high-tech/telecom, automotive/assembly and financial services industries. The graphic below illustrates the trends the study team found during their analysis.
AI is turning into a race for patents and intellectual property (IP) among the world’s leading tech companies. McKinsey found that only a small percentage (up to 9%) of Venture Capital (VC), Private Equity (PE), and other external funding. Of all categories that have publically available data, M&A grew the fastest between 2013 And 2016 (85%).The report cites many examples of internal development including Amazon’s investments in robotics and speech recognition, and Salesforce on virtual agents and machine learning. BMW, Tesla, and Toyota lead auto manufacturers in their investments in robotics and machine learning for use in driverless cars. Toyota is planning to invest $1B in establishing a new research institute devoted to AI for robotics and driverless vehicles.
McKinsey estimates that total annual external investment in AI was between $8B to $12B in 2016, with machine learning attracting nearly 60% of that investment. Robotics and speech recognition are two of the most popular investment areas. Investors are most favoring machine learning startups due to quickness code-based start-ups have at scaling up to include new features fast. Software-based machine learning startups are preferred over their more cost-intensive machine-based robotics counterparts that often don’t have their software counterparts do. As a result of these factors and more, Corporate M&A is soaring in this area with the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) reaching approximately 80% from 20-13 to 2016. The following graphic illustrates the distribution of external investments by category from the study.
High tech, telecom, and financial services are the leading early adopters of machine learning and AI. These industries are known for their willingness to invest in new technologies to gain competitive and internal process efficiencies. Many startups have also had their start by concentrating on the digital challenges of this industries as well. The MGI Digitization Index is a GDP-weighted average of Europe and the United States. See Appendix B of the study for a full list of metrics and explanation of methodology. McKinsey also created an overall AI index shown in the first column below that compares key performance indicators (KPIs) across assets, usage, and labor where AI could make a contribution. The following is a heat map showing the relative level of AI adoption by industry and key area of asset, usage, and labor category.
McKinsey predicts High Tech, Communications, and Financial Services will be the leading industries to adopt AI in the next three years. The competition for patents and intellectual property (IP) in these three industries is accelerating. Devices, products and services available now and on the roadmaps of leading tech companies will over time reveal the level of innovative activity going on in their R&D labs today. In financial services, for example, there are clear benefits from improved accuracy and speed in AI-optimized fraud-detection systems, forecast to be a $3B market in 2020. The following graphic provides an overview of sectors or industries leading in AI addition today and who intend to grow their investments the most in the next three years.
Healthcare, financial services, and professional services are seeing the greatest increase in their profit margins as a result of AI adoption. McKinsey found that companies who benefit from senior management support for AI initiatives have invested in infrastructure to support its scale and have clear business goals achieve 3 to 15% percentage point higher profit margin. Of the over 3,000 business leaders who were interviewed as part of the survey, the majority expect margins to increase by up to 5% points in the next year.
Amazon has achieved impressive results from its $775 million acquisition of Kiva, a robotics company that automates picking and packing according to the McKinsey study. “Click to ship” cycle time, which ranged from 60 to 75 minutes with humans, fell to 15 minutes with Kiva, while inventory capacity increased by 50%. Operating costs fell an estimated 20%, giving a return of close to 40% on the original investmentNEW YORK (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump’s early list of potential appointments to top positions appears to reward people who were loyal to him after a campaign in which many Republican Party leaders kept their distance.
U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions speaks next to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally at Madison City Schools Stadium in Madison, Alabama February 28, 2016. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry
Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator who was one of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the U.S. Congress, is said to be under consideration for a prominent role, perhaps defense secretary, sources familiar with transition planning said on Wednesday.
Retired General Michael Flynn emerged as a possible pick for Trump’s national security adviser, the sources said.
Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, played a prominent role during the campaign, often serving as an introductory speaker at campaign rallies and has provided private counsel on foreign affairs.
“He has a calming influence on Trump,” said a source familiar with transition planning.
In addition, former House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and U.S. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee were also considered potential selections for secretary of state, the sources said. Corker chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Both Corker and Gingrich had been under discussion as potential vice presidential picks for Trump, a position that eventually went to Indiana Governor Mike Pence.
These same sources said Republican National Committee Reince Priebus, who has emerged as a trusted adviser to the New York businessman, was being talked about as a potential White House chief of staff.
A Priebus deputy, RNC senior strategist Sean Spicer, was a possibility for White House press secretary.
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, who helped bring about a more disciplined approach to the candidate, was seen as potential White House senior adviser.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who endorsed Trump after dropping out of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination fight, was a possible education secretary.
Richard Grenell, a former spokesman for the United States at the United Nations, was a potential U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as was New York Republican Representative Peter King.
Mike Rogers, a former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was in the mix for CIA director, the sources said.
Trump's transition team set up a website (www.greatagain.gov/) and Twitter account (@transition2017), promising to keep the country posted on plans, Politico reported. Trump was a prolific user of Twitter during the campaign, sometimes using it to deliver pithy put-downs of his critics and rivals.Missed seeing comedians Redd Foxx and Andy Kaufman while they were living? Soon, you could see them again—as holograms.
Hologram USA, the company headed by billionaire entrepreneur Alki David, is responsible for this revival. It recently announced a partnership with the comedians’ estates, which would put them both back in venues in 2016.
David Nussbaum, Hologram USA’s senior vice president of sales, has been leading this project. He says the company is hard at work creating some “clever illusions,” and that while, yes, this is a business, it’s also just full of fans. Contacting the families or estates of potential hologram candidates usually involves a cold call, and then a partnership is created with “as much authenticity that can possibly be done without them actually being there,” as well as the continual approval of the performer’s estate through each step in the process.
“We don’t want an Andy Kaufman superfan sitting front row center saying, ‘Eh, that’s not Andy. He would never do it that way.’”
Foxx, who died in 1991, is perhaps best known for Sanford and Son, but he was a groundbreaking and prolific standup before that show, releasing a string of “party records” from the ’50s to the ’70s. Kaufman, who died in 1984, was less of a traditional standup comedian. His bits on Saturday Night Live and Late Night With David Letterman have circulated widely online, and he was fond of characters and stunts, which makes this hologram performance even more of a mind-bending proposal.
Michael Kaufman, Andy’s brother and his estate’s representative, told the New York Times that this is “the right platform for the new generation of audiences to experience Andy.” Kaufman’s name has been invoked many times in the Internet era, with “Kaufmanesque” becoming a descriptor for obtuse, challenging comedy. If he were still alive, Michael thinks he would have “busted the Internet. This keeps him alive.”
This new Kaufman will likely only stoke the fires of “Andy Kaufman is still alive” conspiracy theorists, who have used the Internet to exchange blurry bits of proof.
“We nearly didn’t press release [the partnership] at all,” Nussbaum said. “We were just going to have Andy Kaufman show up somewhere and do standup. That would have blown people’s minds on its own. I think that Andy and Redd and all of our artists deserve to be publicized and deserve their own show and press release. But I think with Andy, we could have gotten away with having him just show up on a talk show or an open mic or even hosting Saturday Night Live.”
Nussbaum says the material for Kaufman and Foxx’s shows will include some of “best of” but hints that there “may or may not be additional material.”
So Andy Kaufman and Redd Foxx could somehow be doing new material?
“All material will be approved by the estate,” Nussbaum explained. “We’re not just going to put anything we want onto a stage or into a club without the estate saying ‘that’s the right material, that’s the way I want it said, that’s the way I want it delivered.’ …If Andy Kaufman is playing a venue he performed in quite often, say in the 1970s, he might say, ‘It’s so great to be back.’”
Great or not, more and more dead performers are coming back. Bruce Lee was revived for a whiskey commercial. Paul Walker was reanimated for Furious 7. Eazy-E performed at Rock the Bells in 2013. Tupac appeared at Coachella with Snoop Dogg in 2012. Next year, Hologram USA will be digitally resurrecting Whitney Houston for a world tour. Legendary singer Billie Holiday is performing later this year at the Apollo as a hologram, which is a sentence none of us could have predicted.
When a celebrity passes, social media becomes a medium for coping, even if it’s by proxy and retweet. But now celebs have to consider another layer to their eventual afterlife: Will they be made into holograms?
Before his death in August 2014, Robin Williams filed a deed to restrict use of his image 25 years after his death. Rachel Alexander, a privacy lawyer, told the Guardian that this will likely become more popular for celebs as digital effects and the looming specter of holograms do as well:
The motive behind this seems to be firstly that Robin Williams wanted to make sure his image isn’t tarnished, with unauthorised images used in adverts for example or films, which technology has now made possible. I think it is very likely we will see more people doing it.
In this brave new world, it gets even more complicated. Last year, Michael Jackson performed at the Billboard Music Awards; Alki David attempted to prevent the performance, citing an infringement on patented hologram technology by Pulse Evolution, a rival company. That company sued David, claiming his complaint was a means to “divert public and industry attention away from Pulse Entertainment just as the company was being launched.” David also sued after a Homer Simpson hologram was used at Comic-Con in 2014, claiming patent infringement.
The hologram performance isn’t new, but shows featuring living performers point to a rapidly changing landscape that’s increasingly embracing virtual reality as entertainment. M.I.A. and Janelle Monae did a bi-coastal hologram performance in 2013; Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am famously appeared on CNN as a hologram in 2008; Hologram USA beamed Julian Assange to an event from the Ecuadorian embassy in London last year. Chief Keef’s July hologram concert at Craze Fest in Hammond, Indiana, which was to be a benefit for two victims of shootings, was quickly shut down, raising questions about free speech.
(Sorry, this embed was not found.)
“The thing about that [Craze Fest] is, they were playing Chief Keef’s music all day at that festival,” a spokesperson for Hologram USA said. “It was the appearance of him as a hologram that was deemed to be too far.”
Hologram technology does have interesting implications for political dissidents or controversial figures, like Assange, in terms of getting them access. “But on the negative side, if people can squash [the Chief Keef hologram], which is really just a very high-tech and high-quality digital transmission,” the spokesperson said, “then what’s to stop them from squashing any digital transmission?”
Earlier this year, Hologram USA announced a hologram comedy club for comedians in Jamestown, N.Y.; Nussbaum calls it the “Cooperstown of comedy.” The Hologram USA comedy club will be located there, and it will be the world’s very first all-hologram comedy club. But it’s not just for dead comedians: The team could also “beam in” live ones. They tried it out with Jimmy Kimmel in Nashville in 2014.
(Sorry, this embed was not found.)
There will be limitations, at least until hologram projection spaces are installed in venues. If people can’t get to the shows, there might be a livestream, according to Nussbaum; David does own streaming site FilmOn, which has seen its own legal issues.
And yet, so much of live comedy is the connection between the audience and the performer; the comedian feeds off the audience’s energy and response, which often informs where he or she goes next with their material. Won’t that get lost with the digital performance?
Nussbaum doesn’t think so: “People who are going to a hologram show are going for the experience.” He views it more as a movie, with the digital performer already anticipating when the audience might laugh. Kaufman, he says, was a natural fit for a hologram, then.
“He thrives on awkward silences.”
Would he be able to respond to a heckler? Yes, but Nussbaum doesn’t want to reveal too much. He paints a vision of the not-so-distant future: If you’re a performer, at a certain point, you have to hang it up. It’d be perfectly reasonable to film a comedian as a hologram, and then send it out on the road to keep revenue coming in. Soon, comedy clubs and venues might look like a scene from Disney World’s Haunted Mansion ride.
Kaufman and Foxx are returning to a comedy landscape that’s much different from the one they existed in. This digital revival is going to change what it means to be a touring comedian, and a fan of live comedy. But can we truly laugh along?
Illustration by Max FleishmanJoy in Juba and the Birth of a New Nation
Editor's note: On April 13, 2010 Awolich published "In Anticipation of More," his optimistic essay on the impending Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Read that essay here.
On January 30, 2011 hundreds of Southern Sudanese, diplomats, and government officials started gathering at 7:00 in the morning at the John Garang Mausoleum. They convened to hear the announcement of the preliminary results of the Southern Sudanese independence referendum, which took place January 9 through January 15. Although the outcome was already known to be an overwhelming vote for separation from the rest of Sudan, the formal acknowledgement of the result was an important milestone—the citizens in Juba flocked to the mausoleum in large numbers to hear the confirmation of what they had long expected.
The announcement was made in two parts: the first was the results from the 10 states that make up Southern Sudan (also known as South Sudan), called out state-by-state by Justice Chan Reech Madut, the Deputy Chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission. As he read aloud the states in alphabetical order, he was met with applause whenever he declared the percentage of people who voted for secession. The total number of people who voted for unity stood at 16,000 while those who voted for independence were over three million. The crowd jumped to give themselves a standing ovation, with many in the crowd breaking into celebrations and shouting “South Sudan Oyee!”1 Justice Chan appealed to the crowd to calm down, since the announcement process was not complete. The interruption went on for about seven minutes, however, before the crowd finally queited down enough for the proceedings to continue.
After many people returned to their seats, they were reminded that Professor Khalil, the Chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, still needed to announce the results of votes cast from Northern Sudan and from outside the country. Only Southerners who lived in the north and outside Sudan were allowed to vote on the referendum. Dr. Khalil announced the results of these votes too—an overwhelming majority of which were for independence.2 In the end, he concluded by saying that the results of the referendum are decisively for separation; he was given another huge round of applause.
Southern Sudan Vice President Dr. Riek Machar then spoke briefly before introducing the President of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit. The president was very emotional when he spoke about the sacrifices and the struggles our people had to endure to arrive to this day. He reminded the citizens that Southern Sudan will not be independent until the C.P.A. (Comprehensive Peace Agreement with Khartoum) expires on July 9, 2011. As such, the flag of the Republic of Sudan and those things that represent the government in Khartoum should be respected. He finished by urging the citizens to be ready to continue the struggle not with guns, but with development.
As soon as the president was finished (and I believe not many people were listening because everyone was anxious to celebrate) the crowd ran into the middle of the square and began singing. I was caught in the middle of the frenzy as I was recording the events with other journalists. My colleague, Peter Clavelle, and I joined the crowd in celebration.
A New Dawn for Sudan … and for Me
To be honest, that day was different from any other day in my life. It was the day that I became a proud citizen of Sudan for the first time. My heart has already started to forgive those who denied me the chance to grow up with my family. Many people were shedding tears of joy and excitement as they celebrated in the square. The children’s choir sang that all they want is liberty and peace and development for Southern Sudan. The children challenged the leaders to give them the chance to go to school, that’s all they could ask.
That day was similar to January 9, 2011, the day I voted for independence. On the nearly eleven-hour drive from Burlington, Vermont to Alexandria, Virginia and Washington D.C., I prayed to God and said: “God, do not let me die before I vote, for this vote is bigger than life itself.” Of course I did not want to die after I voted, but at the time I could care less about anything else. When I was given the ballot, I looked at it carefully for about a minute before I put my thumbprint in the secession square box. After I voted my heart was pumping really fast and I thought to myself, I must have voted incorrectly. So I checked my ballot once more before I put it in the ballot box—I confirmed the vote for my brother who was killed during the war, and for my friends who perished for the just cause of independence. After I placed my ballot in the box, I felt like I had grown an inch taller and I was walking majestically—proudly. I prayed to God once again and said: “God let me live to see the Independence Day and to live in a new, free country and to have children that would enjoy this freedom.”
On the day the vote tally was announced, it hit me again. First of all, I was not supposed to be here in Sudan to celebrate with my people, but I prayed to be here when the results were announced. Somehow one of the consulting firms I work with decided to give me a short-term contract to do work for them in Juba (what will be the capital of Southern Sudan) for one month. The timing could not be any better, and I am eternally grateful to Tetra Tech ARD for this once in a lifetime opportunity.
After dancing with the crowd for a good thirty minutes (the sun was beating down hard) Peter and I decided to go around the square where different ethnic groups where dancing. I went to an Acholi dance and took some pictures and video, then I went to an Anyuak dance and did the same thing. I went to a Dinka Atuot dance, then finally to a Nuer dance. While I was going around to these different dances, I could not help but notice that these beautiful, diverse cultures of Southern Sudan represent our opportunity to build a pluralistic, diverse society that cherishes the values of each culture. But this diversity is also the weak link in building a new nation; if not managed properly, it might lead to ethnic rivalry for power, leading to chaos and to the failure of the new state.
I have deep faith in our people that these challenges will be overcome, and that we are ready to set a new precedent in Africa that has never before been witnessed. Democratic values are inherent in our society, and our experience with the north should be our guiding bible to building a society that tolerates no marginalization or oppression, and that gives equal value to all its citizens regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and other social affiliations.
After the celebrations, I returned to my room and reflected on what had just happened; I realized that a new dawn has come upon us. In this picture I see my responsibility becoming increasingly heavy. For the last fifty years, we have been blaming all our evils on bad policies on Khartoum. Now, Khartoum will be out of this picture. I see myself standing alone where any failure will not be displaced, but will be owned by me. The sunrise will lead me to freedom, but its light may also expose my failures that have thus far been concealed by the shadow of evils originating from Khartoum.
Afraid of such exposure, I have no choice but to man-up and proudly own my failures while I cry for help to correct my deficiencies. Programs like Sudan Development Foundation (SUDEF)3 with support from our American friends will be central to the rebuilding and reconstruction efforts in Southern Sudan. Our message to our friends and allies is that a new dawn has come and your involvement will be more important now than never before. A new baby will be born in Africa with birth defects from many years of abuse, and so an intervention will be needed to nourish and keep the baby healthy. We can only fail if our friends become ambivalent and indifferent to our cause.
February 8, 2011
frontispiece: Southern Sudanese in line to vote. Photo by Angela Stephens/USAID
1. The proposed national anthem for Southern Sudan. Read the lyrics here.
2. In the North, 57.65% of voters chose secession while 42.35% chose unity. Outside the country, the votes for secession were staggering: Australia: 98.81%; Canada: 98.96; Egypt: 97.68; Ethiopia: 99.64; Kenya: 99.72; Uganda: 96.1; UK: 97.97; USA: 99.12.
3. Learn more about SUDEF here: http://www.sudef.org/.A few years ago I had the opportunity to teach Comparative Civilizations 12. At one point we talked about folklore and legend and the fact that every culture in human history has had, for lack of a better term, a tradition of “scary stories”, an ancient and universal genre that modern literary and film critics usually refer to as horror. All of these stories, regardless of the source, seem to have as their primary method the creation of a sense of vicarious terror or, to use a word which I think perfectly encapsulates the genre, dread. Yet horror stories use this sense of dread as a means, not an end. The end of horror stories is usually to confront a taboo, a forbidden subject, a topic so unsettling that at every point in history every culture has felt the need to craft frightening stories to confront it.
There is more than one taboo, yet I think Sigmund Freud was right when he described the two great taboos as sexuality and mortality or, to put it in a more pithy manner, sex and death. I would add as a third the existence of arbitrary evil and suffering or, as C.S. Lewis once described it, the problem of pain.
You will sometimes hear people say that the reason horror novels and films are popular is because people “like to be scared.” But that’s not true. Genuine fear is a horribly unpleasant emotion which no one in their right mind would willingly choose to experience. If you’ve ever felt genuine terror, such as in the moments before a car accident or turning around in a crowded shopping mall to find that your child is missing, you know what I’m talking about. No one wants to feel that way. But horror stories attempt to allow their audience a sense of “play terror”, or a vicarious fear which can lead to a catharsis, a sense of relief that they have survived and endured the experience of confronting the three topics that civilized society is so reluctant to speak about openly.
Of the three taboos I mentioned above, I have always suspected that in the contemporary world, horror stories are most interested in exploring the finality of death and the banality of evil. Sexuality as a topic is not the taboo it once was, for better or worse. This was not always the case, of course; perhaps the most famous horror character in history, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was a character who symbolized Victorian sexual attitudes, closely linked with syphilis outbreaks in London. Such topics could not be freely spoken of, and were instead addressed through allegory.
But unlike sexual attitudes, which have become more liberal or more conservative at different eras in history, I suspect that human beings have never quite come to terms with evil and death. We can’t quite understand why some people do such horrific things as child abuse or mass murder, and we aren’t sure how to deal with the fact that one day we will die.
This, of course, is one of the reasons that human beings have always had religion in one form or another, because unlike horror stories, which only attempt to address these taboos, religions all claim to have the answer for them (at least to different extents). This is probably why so many horror stories contain religious imagery (such as the cross being used to fight the vampire); they are on each other’s turf, so to speak.
AdvertisementsThe subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after F.B.I. agents discovered what a law enforcement official said on Wednesday were sexually explicit e-mail exchanges between him and Ms. Kelley.
A spokesman for Ms. Kelley provided her version of events in two conference calls with reporters on Wednesday. Ms. Kelley’s concern when she took the e-mails to Mr. Humphries was that she feared the sender was “stalking” Mr. Petraeus and General Allen, said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.
“She asks the agent, ‘What do you make of this?’ ” the spokesman said. “The agent said: ‘This is serious. They seem to know the comings and goings of a couple of generals.’ ”
General Allen himself had received a similar anonymous e-mail message, sent by someone identified as “kelleypatrol,” advising him to stay away from Ms. Kelley. The general forwarded it to Ms. Kelley, and they discussed a concern that someone was cyberstalking them.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he had asked the Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing for General Allen’s next assignment while the department’s inspector general reviewed his e-mail correspondence with Ms. Kelley, which was discovered by F.B |
implementation of what today is known as granular synthesis, a technique in which tiny segments of sound are digitally spliced together and layered on top of one another, enabling musicians to slow down music without changing the pitch, to stretch the sustain of a piano note to infinity, and to create entirely new sounds.
From roughly the mid-1910s until the end of the 1930s, a handful of Russian engineers and artists took it upon themselves to remake the practice of music in the image of a revolutionary utopia. In contrast to the better-remembered Prokofiev and Shostakovich, these inventors were mostly outsiders to formal musical traditions, and they believed that the future of music lay not in new compositional styles, but in new technologies for the production of sound.
What they created was astonishing, not only in its novelty but in its quantity and scale. Many of their more outlandish ideas never saw fruition: an organ powered by an entire factory, an electro-acoustic orchestra mounted on a fleet of airplanes. But they successfully fashioned a great number of unprecedented devices, from synthesizers to proto-samplers, with technology that predated magnetic tape let alone the integrated circuit. Many of their conceptual developments—methods for synthesizing speech, models of the physics of musical instruments, theoretical descriptions of the idiosyncrasies of live performers—would have been at home in the technological landscape of the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s.
But under Stalin their projects were shut down and denounced as “undemocratic” and “formalist.” Many of them were persecuted, imprisoned, or executed. Most died with disappointed ambitions, their papers and prototypes buried in the “Miscellaneous” files of inaccessible Moscow archives or discarded as trash. Andrey Smirnov has spent much of his life reassembling the history of these inventors and their work, sifting through correspondence and patent certificates, interviewing descendants and pulling strings to access sealed archives. Sound in Z is the first book to come out of that project, and the fact that at 281 pages it still feels like a cursory overview is a testament to the scope of his research. The book was delayed by two and a half years and nearly tripled in size because he kept uncovering more new material than he knew what to do with.
Because of the way so many of the inventions it describes anticipate later developments, Sound in Z, with its biographical sketches, technical diagrams and photographs, reads like a scrapbook inherited from a long-lost branch of the electronic music family. At the same time, Sound in Z’s protagonists seem to refuse assimilation into any musical tradition that exists today. They and their work were products of a particular political climate, which was wildly alien to the conditions of any musician now. Nothing illustrates this fact as dramatically as Arseny Avraamov’s Symphony of Sirens, perhaps the largest musical performance ever.
Symphony of Sirens was performed twice, once in Baku in November 1922 as a celebration of the fifth anniversary of the revolution, and again one year later in Moscow with the support of the State Institute for Musical Science. The instrumentation for the Baku production included “a cast of choirs,... two batteries of artillery guns, a number of infantry regiments including a machine-gun division, hydroplanes, and all the town’s factory sirens”—plus the foghorns of the Soviet navy’s entire Caspian Flotilla, moored in the town’s port. It also involved a special sound machine called the “Magistral,” containing fifty steam whistles played by twenty-five musicians. Avraamov conducted the performance with colored flags from the top of a purpose-built tower.
The Moscow production was even larger, with performers spread over such huge distances that coordination became extremely difficult. Avraamov wrote, “Because of the big area of distribution of the factory sirens it is necessary to have at least one heavy gun for signaling purposes with the capacity to shoot with live cartridges (shrapnel is not suitable for this, bursting off in the air is most dangerous and gives a second explosion sound, which can confuse the performers).”
That Avraamov pulled these performances off is a reflection of his prodigious ambition and ingenuity. But more than that, it speaks to the capabilities of an authoritarian state eager to uproot and re-make its own culture. Imagine what it would take to perform Symphony of Sirens today: to divert an entire city’s industrial works and a whole naval flotilla just to put on a concert, not to mention the perceived menace of bringing a huge military presence to an urban area. A concise expression of both the strengths and weaknesses of liberal society: we cannot make this kind of art.
While Soviet musical inventors did anticipate many later technologies, the diversity, conceptual extremity, and technical sophistication of their creations owed much to the fact that they were working in a very different mode from most music technologists. Though their work now appears to presage technologies that came later, it would be a mistake to see their advances as evidence of some kind of historical necessity.
As an illustrative metaphor for technological change in music, we could say that there are at least two ways to break a piano. Liszt regularly demonstrated one method: he played pianos until they fell apart. His style of playing involved an unprecedented level of violent banging, more than the wooden-framed pianos of that era could take. He would sometimes smash a piano mid-performance, and a new one would have to be brought out from the wings. Because Liszt’s endorsement was a big deal for any piano company, manufacturers competed to win his favor, trying to make a piano that he couldn’t break. They began to produce sturdier pianos, incorporating metal frames, which in turn prompted composers to come up with even more ambitious piano pieces for the new instruments. As a result, the young instrument developed rapidly, through a mutual reinforcement of aesthetic trends and economic pressures.
The Liszt case reveals one way that stylistic change can drive and be driven by technological change. Developments in music technology often fit this pattern, in which stylistic innovations push the capabilities of existing tools, prompting the development of new tools whose boundaries can be pushed even further.
Arseny Avraamov, however, planned to destroy pianos on a much more dramatic scale than Liszt. Avraamov reviled the piano because he thought that the traditional Western musical scale was irrational and even harmful. By restricting themselves to only twelve pitches out of a whole continuum of possible frequencies, Avraamov believed that musicians had dulled the perceptual capabilities of entire populations, preventing them from fulfilling their human potential. After the October Revolution, he made a proposal to Anatoly Lunarcharsky, the Commissar of Public Enlightenment, that all pianos in the country should be gathered up and burned. The proposal was fortunately unsuccessful, but Avraamov did go on to conduct extensive research on novel possibilities for microtonal music, devising his own “Ultrachromatic” tone system and inventing instruments to perform it.
In a similar spirit Leon Theremin, famous as the inventor and namesake of one of the first electronic instruments, undertook pioneering work on live concert visuals as part of a series of experiments aimed at improving viewers’ sensory perception thresholds. In 1923 he created a gesture-controlled multicolored light called the Illumovox, later teaming up with Albert Einstein in what we can only hope was the first ever VJ duo, showing test subjects geometrical figures accompanied by music.
The Projectionists and many contemporaries also shared Avraamov’s view that art had both a power and an obligation to transform society, specifically by using technology to break through old stylistic boundaries. They believed that a freer, more “rational,” more spectacular art could alter perception itself, opening whole new possibilities of experience and demonstrating better ways of life that had been closed off by the old oppressive culture—but that new tools were needed to make this possible.
The most striking elements of Sound in Z can appear paradoxical, as the reader is torn between marveling at the uniqueness of Soviet musical technology and at its resemblance to what came afterward. While reading Sound in Z I had the experience of learning that some of my own ideas were much older than I’d thought. In November 2011, some musician friends and I got together to work on a project. Each of us had recently moved to a different city, and we were all working through the early-stage disorientation of learning to get around a foreign place. We wondered what it would be like to listen to the experience of navigating our new streets if it were possible to hear such a thing: the tight regularity of New York versus Honolulu’s slow curves and wide spaces, London’s crooked alleyways or Maastricht’s nested crescents. And so we came up with a method for translating maps into musical scores. We wrote some software that would take a map, rendered as a network of white streets against a black background, and use it to generate a piece of music, the North-South axis corresponding to pitch and the East-West axis to time.
We prepared ourselves for the results to be completely unlistenable, but they turned out rather interesting. New York becomes a series of densely layered downward and upward glissandos; Honolulu alternates reedy trills and silence; London is mostly noise. The project, by our measure, was reasonably successful. Luckily the novelty of our technique wasn’t really the point, for as it turned out, we were building on a concept that had originated in Petrograd nearly a century before. Our particular image sonification method was already old in 1958 when it became the basis for the graphical score of the ANS synthesizer, named for the composer and occultist Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. The ANS is best known for its use in Eduard Artemyev’s 1972 soundtrack for Solaris, but it was actually conceived in 1938 by the engineer Evgeny Murzin and the painter-acoustician Boris Yankovsky. Shortly afterwards Murzin was sent to design artillery controls at a secret military research institute and only built the instrument twenty years later.
Murzin’s synthesizer had a unique interface: a sheet of glass covered in black tarry goop, which the composer could scrape off to etch a diagram of polyphonic music – the vertical axis corresponding to pitch and the horizontal axis to time. Propelled by either a hand crank or a motor, the glass sheet passed through a beam of light over a row of photosensors, exposing only the sensors under parts of the sheet where the goop had been scraped off. Each sensor drove one of 720 sine wave oscillators, enough to cover the entire range of human hearing with a resolution of 1/6 of a semitone, the smallest perceptible change in pitch.
This was the first interface to give composers immediate, tangible control over the realization of their music: if they didn’t like what they heard, they could scrape some more goop off, or smear it back on. It opened up a mode of working with music in which composers interact directly with their product as it takes shape. This tight connection between composer and composition is now practically universal in electronic production. In our age of digital audio workstations, it’s difficult to imagine how much of a paradigm shift this must have represented to a generation of composers accustomed to meticulous tape splicing, longhand calculations, and getting their bearings by plunking out approximate renditions on piano.
Soviet inventors’ anticipation of later musical tools holds some lessons about the way that new music technologies emerge. Advances tend to spread in fits and starts, beginning with semi-isolated pockets of practitioners often working outside the mainstream. Without central institutions to disseminate them, ideas follow indirect and obscure paths through the social graphs of musicians and listeners, and the same techniques and tools are often appropriated or reinvented for disparate purposes in different times and places. Thus Karlheinz Stockhausen and Daphne Oram, both of whom had visited Pierre Schaeffer’s studio in Paris, developed similar techniques for generating and manipulating sound in the 50s even though Stockhausen was composing high-brow art music while Oram produced television soundtracks.
But ultimately the sense of deja vu that pervades Sound in Z is misleading. If Schaeffer or Stockhausen had political goals, these were incidental, or ex post facto; even the anarchist piano-rigger John Cage developed his political thoughts well after his most important musical advances. Soviet musicians by contrast intended to have their music united with social change, heightening both their technical and stylistic radicalism. Their ideas have survived, but they are hard to recognize.
The Russian avant-garde ideal of performer-less music, embodied in the fine-grained control of modern production methods, has become something of a problem for today’s music technologists. Now a main goal is to reinsert a performer who has been all too effectively cut out. As usual, economic forces are at play: these days records don’t make much money; live shows do. But live performance options for electronic musicians have historically been restrictive. Painstakingly assembled studio productions are difficult to reproduce on stage, and while performers from Kraftwerk onwards have used synths, samplers and homebrew electronics in successful live acts, many more have stuck to DJ sets.
From the early 2000’s, a small tech industry has sprung up to help electronic musicians up their spectacle game. Companies like Ableton, Novation and Akai sell hardware and software that enables live de- and reconstruction of “studio” (laptop) produced tracks, while a handful of designers have made names for themselves building custom instruments and stage effects for a range of budgets. Daedalus plays in front of a wall of motorized concave mirrors, while Amon Tobin DJs inside a three-story pile of projection-animated cubes.
This technology is impressive to look at and adds a crucial element of dynamism and spontaneity, often making the difference between a concert and an iTunes playlist. New forms of audio hardware and software are also more accessible than earlier studio equipment in terms of both cost and usability, enabling many more people to create their own music. These are welcome developments, but Nikritin would have demanded more. “Prosumer” culture or no, electronic music performance is increasingly dominated by commercial raves and concerts that are rarely ever more than passive entertainment: fans show up, have fun for a few hours, and resume life the next day unchanged, bar an ecstasy comedown.
What’s been lost is the notion of the spectacle as a tool for radical transformation. Left-wing thinkers from Guy Debord onward have condemned spectacular performance as a device for pacification. Earlier avant gardes viewed it as one of their primary means of activation and engagement. Avraamov’s concept for the Symphony of Sirens was to create a performance so large that an entire city would need to participate rather than just look on, fostering a sense of civic involvement and inspiring hope for a bright common future. Whether the Symphony was successful or not, it reflected an awareness of its status as a political act, and it aimed at real goals that had nothing to do with turning a profit.
In any case, the Soviets came to think that their musicians were indeed too dangerous, outpacing their own revolutionary will, and support for the avant garde came to an end. After 1934 the Stalinist doctrine of Socialist Realism demanded popular propaganda music: accessible, folkloric compositions espousing Communism. Electronic music was branded undemocratic, unappealing, and unsuitable for the masses. Pravda’s notorious article demonizing the composer Dmitri Shostakovich after the premiere of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District set off a wave of persecution, ending the careers of many avant-garde musicians and technologists. Some, like the visionary polymath Alexei Gastev, were shot; others were marginalized and died in poverty. Smirnov enumerates the catalogue of jailings and deaths in a singularly deflating postscript to his book.
Leon Theremin got off relatively lightly. His international stardom ended in 1938 when, after living for many years in New York, he was secretly taken back to the Soviet Union on board the Starry Bolshevik. The circumstances of his return to the USSR are unclear. Many believe that he was kidnapped by the NKVD (precursor to the KGB), though that seems unlikely considering that he was allowed to bring along over a metric ton of electronic equipment, most of which ended up confiscated by Soviet customs. Regardless, in 1939 he was condemned to a labor camp “for participating in the counterrevolutionary organization,” whatever that may have meant. He was later released and went on to produce more musical inventions, but he spent much of the rest of his life working for the NKVD designing surveillance equipment.
Arseny Avraamov fared worse. By the end of his life in 1944, he was living in destitution in a tiny flat in Moscow with his wife and ten children. He had spent the years from 1934-38 trying to revive the folk music culture of the Caucasus Mountains, and returned to Moscow to find himself in the middle of the Great Terror with no stable employment. When the NKVD purged a number of his associates in the Caucasus, his documents, which he had left behind, were confiscated and never resurfaced.
If you like this article, please subscribe to n+1.HALIFAX — A Dalhousie University medical student who was facing expulsion told a psychiatrist he would obtain a gun and kill up to 20 people and himself, court documents allege.
The search warrant documents filed with Halifax provincial court allege that 30-year-old Stephen Gregory Tynes met with psychiatrist Dr. Terry Chisholm on Aug. 20 and told her he would stab Evelyn Sutton, the associate dean of undergraduate medical education, and her daughter Ellen MacDonald, who was also his classmate.
In the document, police say they later went to an apartment in Halifax and seized 1,834 rounds of ammunition for rifles, a Russian SKS rifle, a Henry Golden Boy.22-calibre rifle, a banana clip for a rifle, a baggie with three spring clips and bore cleaner, two ammunition boxes, a firearms acquisition card and a gun club card.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Chris Hansen, a spokeswoman for Nova Scotia’s public prosecution service, said Tynes was arrested on the same day as his meeting with Chisholm and was later charged with two counts of uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm and one count of engaging in threatening conduct directed at a person or any member of their family.
Tynes indicated that he would stab her (Sutton) and he has thoughts of shooting 10-20 people and then himself
The warrant gives a detailed account of the meeting with the psychiatrist that led to the student’s arrest.
It says that the psychiatrist warned Tynes she would contact police after he made the alleged threats during their afternoon appointment, “at which point he left her office in an agitated state.”
The document says Chisholm had treated Tynes for more than 16 months and believed he was angry because he couldn’t return to the medical school and felt he had no other options.
“Tynes indicated that he would stab her (Sutton) and he has thoughts of shooting 10-20 people and then himself,” the document alleges that Chisholm told police.
We are in close contact with Halifax Regional Police and our security staff is working closely and collaboratively with them to ensure the ongoing safety of our community
Police say in the document that they interviewed relatives who told them Tynes owned rifles. They also heard he was a member of a gun club, the documents say.
A judge granted the warrant. The weapons and ammunition were seized on Aug. 21 at an apartment in the south end of the city.
Tynes appeared in court on Aug. 25 for a bail hearing and was released on conditions that he live at his father’s home and have no contact with Sutton or MacDonald, said Hansen. The court also required that he not possess any firearms, alcohol or drugs, and that he stay away from the university’s campus except when he is with his parents or his lawyer.
A spokesman for Dalhousie University said in an email that Tynes has been suspended.
“Safety and security is a prime consideration for our faculty, staff and students,” wrote Brian Leadbetter.
“We are in close contact with Halifax Regional Police and our security staff is working closely and collaboratively with them to ensure the ongoing safety of our community.”Spaniard takes stunning win from Rossi and Pedrosa.
Jorge Lorenzo emerged victorious from a thrilling Polini Grand Prix of Japan at Twin Ring Motegi, the second win of his MotoGP career and a result that retained his 100% podium record in the 2009 season.
The Fiat Yamaha rider took little time in taking the reigns of the race, having started from the front row and showed no fear when faced with the likes of Dani Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi in front of him. However, despite a relatively comfortable advantage, Lorenzo was never quite able to say a definitive ‘sayonara’ to his rivals as the action heated up. He held on to cross the line with a gap of less than two seconds between him and second placed teammate Rossi.
Lorenzo moves up into first place in the overall classification, for the second time in his MotoGP career. The battle for second place in the race was MotoGP at its finest, as Repsol Honda man Pedrosa exchanged overtaking moves in the middle third of the 24 laps. Pedrosa took third from out of nowhere, having had a storming start from the fourth row of the grid.
Ducati Marlboro rider Casey Stoner was unable to break away as he had done in Qatar, finishing fourth and keeping up the pressure in the general standings. Andrea Dovizioso completed a fine day for Repsol Honda in fifth, ahead of Marco Melandri, Loris Capirossi, Mika Kallio, James Toseland and Chris Vermeulen.
Home rider Yuki Takahashi crashed out of the race in a collision with Nicky Hayden on the second lap.On the 10th, the Finals of the 2017 All-Star tournament took place. For League fans that enjoy and follow the international events, Sjokz is a familiar name. She is the host of the EU LCS and is well-known for maintaining a "natural" atmosphere when interviewing players. For 5 years, Sjokz attended all international events that were hosted by Riot, and our team had the opportunity to speak with her for an interview.
Q. It has been a while since Worlds. How have you been?
I went to Mexico during my vacation. I don't know if it was because of relaxing after working so hard, but my body was aching throughout my entire visit... so I pretty much slept through it all.
Q. This year's All-Stars feels much more competitive compared to its predecessors.
It's hard to find a "serious" tournament after Worlds, especially since everyone is waiting for the next season - also, most players practice for Worlds and puts a lot of their stress into it. It's true that the atmosphere for this year's All-Star is more strict, but a lot of players have moved around from team to team, and there were other issues as well. So no matter how "serious" the players were, I'm pretty sure that they were all having a good time, enjoying their games. Meeting other players and getting to know them; I think that's what the players were prioritizing.
Q. The 2017 World Championship took place in China. You've been to multiple esports arenas scattered around the world throughout your career. How different are the arenas for each region?
First of all, it was my very first time visiting Brazil. They were very passionate about LoL. Also, they were all very kind. I've been to China on multiple occasions, but when I was there for Worlds, the fans' passion towards the game far exceeded everything else that I've seen. They were screaming very loudly... it was overwhelming.
Also, another reason why China was so intense was that the fans were very critical towards their teams when they lost a game. I think Korean fans are similar in that regard.
Q. It looked like you were having a great time while interviewing players during Worlds. Which player interview was the most memorable?
The tournament was long, so I had many opportunities to speak with various players. The player that I most clearly remember is Ruler. He is always smiling! Although I couldn't fully understand, I often saw Ruler sharing jokes with his translator, Homin. Also, I think the players talk carefully when doing interviews during an international event. On the contrary, when I watched Korean broadcasts such as OGN, I saw the players trash-talking and sharing jokes with the interviewer! I hope that sometimes they would do that when I interview them.
Q. Which team or player are you anticipating the most for next year?
I want to say Longzhu again. In 2017, I had high hopes for Longzhu Gaming - just like everyone else. In 2018, Peanut joined the team - and that looks like such a strong team! - and by using their experience from 2017, I think they'll do much better.
The player that I'm looking at right now is IgNar. I was very surprised by how good IgNar played during Worlds. He came to EU from KR, but now, he's gone back to Korea to play for bbq Olivers. He's learned a lot and he made a name for himself, so I'm waiting with anticipation to see him perform. As for the EU LCS, sure, many players left for NA, but we still have great players such as Rekkles and sOAZ, so I'm still very excited for it.
Q. What kind of effect do you think the NA LCS franchising will have on the esports industry?
I think next year will be a year we will learn a lot from. Not only League, but PUBG and Overwatch will also take the next step come 2018. I think next year will be a very interesting year for esports as a whole. Currently, there are players that earn so much money, and I wonder what kind of influence this will have on the players. Will they continue practicing as much as possible? What kind of effect will this have on the team? Although I have minor concerns regarding the scene, overall, this is a great development for the NA LCS, because you want to see the players getting treated better and have the big sports teams to join the scene and increase the visibility of esports around the world.
Q. Lastly, I'm curious if you still play League. And if you do, what kind of champions do you play?
During last year, I watched a lot of League, but I didn't get to play too much of it myself, mostly because I was traveling a lot. As for this year, I played a number of different games.
After the rune rework, I started playing League again, but I wasn't doing too well for myself. My preferred roles are mid, support, and ADC. For the midlane, my most played champions are Ahri and Orianna. But when I die, the enemy team always seems to snowball really heavily from it...Hegel wrote in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right that the owl of Minerva flies only at night. It hoots at insomniacs. I know. I'm one.
Bruises, red eyes, and research remind me that insomnia breaks down body and soul. Noisy neighbors, crying kids, overwork, bad food, sickness, pain, allergies, and rude visitors drive sleep away. So do naked thoughts and the words they wear: insomnias of insult, dread, worry, remorse, faux pas, frustration, revenge, and raw anxiety. Philosophy, in its immense universals, omits nothing (not even nothing). Thus there have always been tired philosophers of insomnia.
Insomnia has intrigued thinkers since the ancients, an interest that continues today, especially in Europe. What light does philosophy's exploration of the dark of night shine on insomnia, particularly for that quintessential insomniac, the scholar?
Philosophy is no friend of sleep. In his Laws (circa 350 BC), Plato platonized, "When a man is asleep, he is no better than if he were dead; and he who loves life and wisdom will take no more sleep than is necessary for health." Clement of Alexandria echoed, "There is no use of a sleeping man, as there is not of a dead man.... But whoever of us is most solicitous for living the true life, and for entertaining noble sentiments, will keep awake for as long time as possible."
"The need of sleep is not in the soul," he wrote, "for it is ceaselessly active." In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzsche preached that the high goal of good Europeans "is wakefulness itself."
Aristotle said all animals sleep. In the 20th century, the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran added in On the Heights of Despair (first published in 1934): "Only humanity has insomnia." Emmanuel Levinas, author of the erotic and metaphysical Totality and Infinity (1961), imagined philosophy, all of it, to be a call to "infinite responsibility, to an untiring wakefulness, to a total insomnia." What scholar has not heard that call, sacrificing sleep, straining eyes, and risking health in pursuit of some bit of truth or transcendence?
The first thing you learn about insomnia is that it sees in the dark. The second is that it sees nothing. Nada, nichts, néant. The French philosopher Maurice Blanchot said in The Writing of the Disaster (1980), "In the night, insomnia is discussion, not the work of arguments bumping against other arguments, but the extreme shuddering of no thoughts, percussive stillness."
Ever since Sartre's 1949 novel, Troubled Sleep, assorted philosophies of insomnia have mostly spoken French. Paris became a refuge for philosophers like Levinas, fleeing Nazis or Soviets, or like Cioran, seeking fame. World War II and its aftermath gave French philosophy plenty to think about, and plenty to lose sleep over.
Philosophers of insomnia come in three alluring types: the dutiful, the austere, and the cynical, which, faithful to its traditions, often poses as an antiphilosophy. Plato was the paragon of the dutiful, who deprive and discipline the body to the brink of death, or to it, for the sake of truth. Anne Dufourmantelle assumes the burden in Blind Date: Sexe et philosophie (2003), saying that "philosophy was born with anxiety, with questioning, with insomnia. It takes upon itself the ills of the world, and thus it cannot sleep." This is executive philosophy, whose duty it is to convert worry into analysis.
Writing for the austere was Levinas, the philosopher-king of insomnia. Take a running start and try this passage from "God and Philosophy" (1975): "Insomnia, wakefulness or vigilance, far from being definable as the simple negation of the natural phenomenon of sleep, belongs to the categorial, antecedent to all anthropological attention and stupor." Or more plainly: "Insomnia is wakefulness, but a wakefulness without intentionality." Levinas saw insomnia as the site of insight. In "In Praise of Insomnia" (1976), he explained, "The entire opening of consciousness would already be a turning toward the something over which wakefulness watches. It is necessary, however, to think an opening that is prior to intentionality, a primordial opening that is an impossibility of hiding: one that is an assignation, and impossibility of hiding in oneself; this opening is an insomnia." A conscientious philosopher could toss and turn over that for weeks.
Advertisement
Cioran, snickering like Diogenes, found Levinas's jargon unappealing but understood the notion. "Every problem, if we get to the bottom of it," he believed, "leads to bankruptcy and leaves the intellect exposed: no more questions and no more answers in a space without horizon."
Cioran was the outspoken cynic of the philosophy of insomnia, chiefly I suppose because he was an insomniac, morose, disillusioned, and weary. When he was about 20, Cioran had a life-changing experience: "I stopped sleeping and I consider that the grandest tragedy that could occur. At all hours I walked the streets like some kind of phantom. All that I have written much later has been worked out during those nights."
Levinas's insomnia was a chaste metaphor for disembodied, disinterested thought. Cioran's insomnia dragged along the body, that suffering beast hard driven by the mind. Levinas exalted insomnia as a clear scene, bare consciousness aware of bare being, a state of mind ideal for selfless philosophic reflection. Cioran put insomnia's selfishness front and center. "You will suffer from everything, and to excess: the winds will seem gales; every touch a dagger; smiles, slaps; trifles, cataclysms. Waking may come to an end, but its light survives within you; one does not see in the dark with impunity, one does not gather its lessons without danger; there are eyes which can no longer learn anything from the sun, and souls afflicted by nights from which they will never recover," he wrote. The insomniac is bound to think about insomnia, and about what it does to thinking. In the wink of an eye, insomnia slips from thought to obsession, from earnest doubt to pitiless masochism and misanthropy. Insomnia has moments of extraordinary lucidity, but it also has traps and delusions of grandeur. "The tyrant lies awake—that is what defines him," Cioran told us.
Insomnia incubates megalomania. The mighty caliph Harun al-Rashid walked through One Thousand and One Nights as an insomniac. Nero was insomniac. Hitler was insomniac. Cioran understood the connection: "You enter into a conflict with the whole world, with sleeping humanity. You no longer feel like one person among others, because others live unconsciously. One develops a demented pride. One tells oneself, 'My destiny is different, I know the experience of the uninterrupted vigil.' Only pride, the pride of a catastrophe, gives you courage then. One cultivates the extraordinarily flattering feeling of no longer being part of ordinary humanity."
No philosophy would last a night without its contradictions. Insomnia has these: It tears your body down and inflates your ego. It magnifies and belittles. Insomnia flatters, and so does philosophy.
That sense of superiority is not Cioran's alone, but a symptom of all insomnias. Insomnia's intellectual pride has been supported by medical experts (the drug industry thrives on insomnia), who flatter the sleepless. At the turn of the last century, Sir James Sawyer supposed that insomnia mainly afflicted "high mental endowments" (also "neurotic temperaments," but never mind). Dr. Foster Watson, a neurologist and early British educational psychologist, believed insomnia was confined to "brain workers," rarely in his experience troubling the "labouring classes." Recent research on sleep disorders among working people has blown the supposition of superiority to smithereens, but insomniacs cling to it. Insomniacs' Web sites cover themselves in the glory of insomniacs like Churchill, Edison, Kafka, and Newton.
Nowadays insomnia is everybody's business, a common denominator. It is a symptom of depression, melancholy if you like, as common as colds. It leads to irritability, irrationality, and irascibility.
Sleepless duty, pure thought, or bitter truth? Several decades ago, the philosopher Clément Rosset wrote, "Of all the questions known to philosophy, that posed by Cioran is without doubt the most grave and most serious: Is an alliance between lucidity and joy possible?" A philosophy in love with truth confronts cruel facts: Lies abound, innocents suffer, everyone dies, and the universe doesn't care. There are thoughts that won't be denied, thoughts that won't let you sleep. Cioran wrote, "To keep the mind vigilant, there is only coffee, disease, insomnia, or the obsession of death!"
Chased by regrets, Cioran strove to put philosophy behind him, like a growing shadow. In his Short History of Decay (1949), he inserted an "Invocation to Insomnia," which personifies and praises it. "Insomnia, you... in a single night grant more knowledge than days spent in repose, and, to reddened eyelids, reveal yourself a more important event than the nameless diseases or the disasters of time!... I appealed to philosophy, but there is no idea which comforts in the dark, no system which resists those vigils. The analyses of insomnia undo all certainties."
Cioran concluded, "We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help." Helplessly he vanished into Alzheimer's and died in 1995.The Seahawks know that Bruce Irvin is fast. Now, they want him to be great. [Brian Bahr/Getty Images] The Seahawks know that Bruce Irvin is fast. Now, they want him to be great. [Brian Bahr/Getty Images]
But when Irvin was set up outside the tackle and had to face blocks, his lack of an inside counter often stymied his efforts. The Seahawks were not put off.
"We didn't want to get too cute with this,” general manager John Schneider said after he and head coach Pete Carroll made the pick. “We obviously viewed him as the best pass rusher in the draft. Trying to add that to our team, add to the team speed. There was a certain area we thought we could get to and then we talked about going back again and then we decided to go ahead and lock it down. We had this guy rated as one of the top players in the draft."
Irvin led all rookie pass rushers with 8.0 sacks, adding 12 quarterback hits and 18 hurries for good measure. But he was often bottled up as a defensive end for the same reasons he faced in college – he could not sustain straight-on power against tackles, and his inside counter was a work in progress. Because of this, his speed was negated unless he was able to beat his man off the edge, or he stunted inside through a gap. This was especially apparent through Seattle’s two-game playoff run, and against the Atlanta Falcons in the divisional round, Irvin may as well have been invisible.
Carroll and his coaches then looked to switch things up. Going back to his time as San Francisco’s defensive coordinator in 1995 and 1996, Carroll developed the idea of the LEO end, a variable pass rusher who performed as a hybrid of |
beginning of the tutorial. Click on “Launch Power Map” and here we go.
4. Create a map.
The Power Map window will pop-up on your screen. Below you can see that plugin automatically detected two parameters from our table “City” and “Country”. Based on these two columns Power Map will join the name to a centroid of a Country or a City on our list. In that case we are interested in visualizing the data for cities, so we should select only this option.
After choosing “the geography” click on the NEXT button in the bottom-right side of the page. You will be moved to the settings menu. Now you need to select which data you want to visualize. In our case we’ve got only the Population column, so we should select it. Below that there is a menu to select how you want to visualize the data. There are 5 options:
Stacked Columns
Clustered Columns
Bubble
Heat Map
Region
As you can see on the example below I’ve selected the Bubbles.
Now it’s time to play with the visualization and Power Map gives plenty of cool features to do that. You can Flat the map, you can select one of the predefined map themes, add text description (via Text Box) and so one. You can also play with the data visualization. Under settings menu on the right side you can change the opacity, size and thickness of your data points. You can also select a color. The size of the bubbles will change with the map scale so you can select “Lock current scale” if you want to keep make them look the same when you zoom in or zoom out.
5. Save the map
Our map is ready! We can present it directly in Power Map to maintain the interactive features or we can save it as a picture. To do that we just need to press the button “Capture Screen” in the main menu and paste (Ctrl + V) the picture to any graphical editor like Paint or a Photoshop.
Here we are. Awesome looking map of the population of 75 largest cities in the world in under 5 minutes! Have fun!I don’t know who these two guys were, if they pictured themselves as historical reenactors or professional ironists, but they felt to me like fitting ambassadors for a college football program still trafficking on a 50-man melee with Princeton that took place in 1869. They were sitting along the rail in a corner of the end zone that could generously be described as “semi-vacant,” and one of them appeared to be wearing a leather helmet, and together they were holding up a handwritten sign that read, “BEAT VISITOR.”
So let’s just go ahead and admit that there were a number of “semi-vacant” sections at Rutgers’s recently expanded football stadium on Saturday afternoon. They did not exactly jam the rafters at the self-proclaimed “Birthplace of College Football” — it is inscribed right there, on one of the walls in the end zone, in case your memories of the early years of the Grant administration are no longer what they used to be — but what did you expect? There was a Yankees game starting in five hours! Anyway, this is New Jersey, where the gas pumps are manned by professionals and the State U. football team has long been a secondary concern, even when State U. is undefeated. For years, they’ve been trying to drum up interest in the idea of big-time college football right here in the maw of New York City; for years, the conventional wisdom has been that Rutgers is one or two stellar seasons away from elbowing its way into the regular WFAN rotation, but with the exception of a brief flirtation under Greg Schiano in the mid-aughts, it hasn’t really happened.
I mean, did you even know Rutgers was 6-0? Because they are. Really. Seriously. Truly. I live in New York City, and I write about college football, and this story crept under my radar until the past couple of weeks. On Saturday, the Scarlet Knights BEAT the VISITOR, which happened to be Syracuse, one of those few conference foes with a semblance of football tradition that will abandon the sinking Big East after this season for the superior Atlantic Coast Conference. When it was over, a few fans in the home section started chanting “A-C-C,” which may have been an attempt at derision but sounded more like wishful thinking, and then the students started to chant “Six-and-oh!,” as if they could hardly believe it themselves. And I give them credit: They were a spirited student section, even if it felt like they were learning how to do this on the fly.
“I can’t say enough good things about our student section,” said Rutgers’ first-year coach, Kyle Flood. “It’s what hopefully your home-field advantage should yield for you as you go forward during the season.”
There is little doubt that Flood has done a remarkable job in picking up the pieces following the abrupt departure of Schiano for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; there is little doubt that Rutgers has an excellent defense, including one of the great linebackers in America in Khaseem Greene; there is little doubt that this Rutgers squad has an opportunity to be as good as any Rutgers team ever, for which Schiano deserves at least some of the credit. As a college football fan marooned in New York City, I wish them the best — there is nothing I would enjoy more than hearing Mike Francesa argue for an hour about high school recruiting with Vince from Edison. But there is a big-picture question looming over everything here, and it has to do with history, both distant and recent; it has to do with the very viability of a major college football team in a region that doesn’t seem to need one in the first place.
The basic theory behind the continued existence of a big-time Rutgers football program is that it will eventually “build the Rutgers brand” in ways that only football can. This is the rationale college administrators use to convince themselves that an oft-corrupt and debilitating sport is worth the investment, and in certain parts of the country, particularly the South and the Midwest, it is a damned sound strategy. Michigan could subsist as a university without a football team, but the football team creates a cycle that spikes interest from prospective students and breeds an inherent loyalty that prevents alumni from shredding those financial solicitations before they bother to read them. Without football, Michigan would feel like something less tenable, less formidable, less elite.
I bring up Michigan because I spoke to a man named Mark Killingsworth this weekend. He is a Michigan graduate, and last Saturday he went back to Ann Arbor to attend the homecoming game; he sat five rows behind the Michigan bench, and he found it quite enjoyable. This is interesting for several reasons, but mostly it’s interesting because Killingsworth is an economics professor at Rutgers, where he has become one of the most vocal critics of the school’s athletic program.
Killingsworth is not reflexively anti-football, but like most economists, he speaks the language of money, and there is little doubt that Rutgers is losing a tremendous amount of money in this ongoing attempt at branding — according to the most recent studies, the school is shedding $28 million per year on athletics altogether, which is 40 percent of the cost of the program, which means the deficit has to be made up through subsidies and student fees. According to Killingsworth, every student at the New Brunswick campus pays $900 to help support athletics. Killingsworth’s own School of Arts and Sciences, which had a budget deficit of $25 million over three years, is now facing budget cuts and hiring freezes, and it is easy to draw a direct line to athletics — to the $100 million football-stadium expansion completed in 2009 — and ask how exactly this sort of incongruity benefits the college experience.
“I don’t think athletics has the potential to build the Rutgers brand in any significant way,” said Killingsworth, who says that average SAT scores and the school’s yield — the percentage of accepted students who actually attend Rutgers — has not increased since the mid-2000s. (Rutgers’s standing on the U.S. News & World Report public school rankings has dropped from 16th in 1997 to 25th in 2012.) “Maybe it gets us attention, but it’s not clear the attention it gets translates into anything further. I honestly don’t think we have a lot to show for it.”
What Killingsworth and a large number of his faculty colleagues are asking for is more accountability; if they have to make sacrifices, why shouldn’t athletics have to make the same sacrifices? And it is true that Rutgers’s new president has promised to cut the athletic budget, and it is true that Rutgers’s new athletic director has promised the same, but at some point, you have to ask yourself if there is only so far this university can go before it hits the financial wall. Nearly all of the hard-core college football fans I know in New York City are hard-core college football fans because they graduated from a university where the sport was built into the culture; their allegiances are already set. This is a professional sports town, with the occasional diversion into college basketball, and I’m not sure how you capture the attention of people who feel like they already have enough to pay attention to; this, I’m assuming, is the same reason why Atlanta no longer has a professional hockey team.
But they keep hoping that this year will be different in New Brunswick, and who am I to burst their bubble, to inform them that even if they do go 12-0 this season, the relative weakness of the conference they play in will almost certainly keep them far afield from the national championship game? Who am I to say that the Rutgers football team, which arrived on the scene three decades before the Yankees came to exist, might not someday experience a true and complete renaissance that alters the very perception of the university they purport to represent?
“It was much easier for us to recruit a New Jersey kid this year than last,” a Rutgers football coach once said, “and it was easier last year than the year before. The whole state is more receptive to us now. We are building state pride.”
That was in 1976, and the coach was Frank R. Burns. He was speaking to a Sports Illustrated reporter after an 11-0 season that ended when the team, feeling shunned, rejected a bid to play McNeese State in the Independence Bowl. Following that season, Rutgers stepped up the quality of its opponents, joined college football’s arms race, and the Scarlet Knights’ records slowly dwindled from 9-3 to 7-4 to 5-6. Burns was fired upon finishing 3-8 in 1983, and the cycle began again — three straight coaches with losing records until Schiano’s blip of success — and after 14 decades of trying to build state pride at State U., I’m not sure if anyone knows where it’s supposed to stop.Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 2:10pm
Gun Rights Advocates Test Limits In Georgia
Gun rights activists want to push the limit on where they can carry concealed weapons in Georgia. House Bill 615 would allow them to carry guns anywhere except in a courtroom or prison.
Republican Representative Tim Bearden is championing the bill. He told a house committee that people with carry permits must be able to take their guns into churches, bars, schools, colleges, and to the Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International airport, which is currently a gun-free zone.
“When you say it’s a gun free zone at the airport and you can’t bring one on, you didn’t just make the airport a gun free zone, you made that person defenseless," he says.
The controversial bill drew quick criticism from Democratic Representative Roberta Abdul Salaam, who said the airport needs special consideration.
"We have a high level of threats right now in this entire country, and for whatever reason our airports seem to be targeted," she said. "Wouldn’t we want to be more cautious at least around an airport?”
The bill would affect about 400,000 Georgians who currently hold gun carry permits. It was assigned to a house subcommittee.
The legislation is backed by the gun rights group Georgia Carry. The group is angry that Transit Police in Atlanta arrested and searched one of its members who carried a gun on MARTA property. A federal judge recently agreed with MARTA.
The proposal is backed by the National Rifle Association and should get strong consideration during the upcoming legislative session. This is an election year for all house members and state senators.Author's Note:
No girls read, apparently.
So as always, my overlords demand reviews. Also, you should favorite or follow. Or both.
Tell me what you thought!
As Naze looked at the artifact, he came to the hurried conclusion that whatever was happening would be far easier to deal with if the White Fang were not continuing to charge him and his people down. They started to pick themselves back up off of the ground, and he could tell that there was a fire in their eyes that hadn't been there before. The air was now thick with demonic energy and, while it wouldn't affect Naze or his people, Ironwood and his men would be just as susceptible as the White Fang if exposed for too long. He didn't need Ironwood becoming hostile. It would be best to simply wrap this conflict up, and take the artifact for himself. If that was still possible.
He turned to face the numbers of White Fang that were picking themselves up, raising his staff, ready to do the grim work that would be required of him if the White Fang were to be dispersed in a timely manner. Necromantic energies pooled in the spike near the top, and he to build greater and greater reserves, drawing from his inexhaustible supply. Ironwood and his men were starting to rise from the ground now, all shaking off the surge of demonic power. Naze knew that his control over the situation was no longer secure, so the sooner he and his men got out of the way, the better. His own solders were climbing to their feet now, and resuming the slaughter that had been interrupted.
Several of the sprinting attackers had gotten past them, though, and were quickly closing the distance between them, spitting gunfire and shouting as loud as their lungs would let them. The dark green and purple swirling light of the blast ripped the air apart, momentarily pushing the demonic taint away as everything in its path died. The grass on which the White Fang ran shriveled and withered, and all biological functions in their bodies ceased. Naze was not wasteful with his investments, though, and the corpses were reanimated before they hit the ground, the only instruction in their heads being "kill".
The zombies stumbled and fell at first as they tried to change directions from the way they had been sprinting before their demises, but their fists remained clenched around their weapons tighter than any rigor mortis could manage. Zombies as fresh as them were fast and, while uncoordinated, more deadly than their stiff-jointed relatives. The sudden excess of death energies also started to eat at their flesh, causing rapid decomposition. They wouldn't last long, but they would make quite a show while they did. Naze could only imagine the terror one might feel when battling the corpse of a friend, not only dead, but rotting before their eyes. There were only around fifteen of these zombies now, but Naze planned on making many more.
Ironwood looked to the lich now, an implacable look on his face. It was part worry, part fear, part anger, a wide variety of things. What he expressed however, was a question. "What's going on? What was that explosion?" Naze spoke back as his hollow sockets scanned the battlefield for the most horrifically mangled corpses he could find. "I couldn't say. Something demonic, no doubt. I might recommend you evacuate your men, and leave the White Fang for me to deal with. I can assure you they will find no mercy from me."
Ironwood glanced from Naze to the artifact. "Is this thing safe?" He had to shout to make sure that he was heard over the screaming, shouting, and pounding of weapons. Naze shook his head as his gaze alighted on a particularly shredded pile of bodies, all having been tossed aside by his knight using the wrist claws. "Not at all. It us unpredictable, and requires further study. I shall keep you appraised of our progress, if you wish, but it would be far more convenient for you to leave." Another blast of necromantic energy, and another few zombies joined the fray. This time the number added was around twenty, and all bore significant disfigurements. Several were torn wholly in half, intestines trailing behind them through the muck, and many more were missing significant portions of their bodies. As these monstrosities started to run, shuffle, or claw their way towards their former brethren, he could see the fiery resolve start to dissipate. A battle with necromancy was not only a war of attrition, but one of mental fortitude as well. One had to be prepared to see horrific things if one was to battle them.
Those who came into direct combat were horrified, and became even more so when they realized that their weapons were next to useless. Dust rounds didn't cause enough structural damage to impede their abilities, and the knives and cleavers required them to get far too close for comfort.
The mages in the center of the defensive circle set about the task of studying the artifact, even in the middle of the battle. It would be very important to know if it could be safely contained, and if it could be deactivated from whatever state Ironwood's touch had put it into. Ironwood was shouting into a communicator about "immediate evacuation", and his men were continuing to fire. A few had stopped, simply putting their weapons down and sitting, their backs to the defensive cover that had been set up earlier. They couldn't be blamed, really. Not everyone was strong enough to bear the sight of a rotting human rising up from a mortal wound and resuming fighting. If Ironwood hoped to avoid traumatizing all of his troops, his evacuation had to be quick, as Naze had no plans of holding back. He continued to conjure the magic of death, hurling it at his foes and creating allies from the aftermath, the numbers of his forces only increasing with every casualty. It wasn't long before he became aware of something else, though. Something far more worrying than what he was doing.
The barriers between normal space and hell were weakening, and he could feel the demons clawing at them from the other side. If they didn't hurry up, a rift between the two would open.
Cinder started to realize that her plan to take the artifact was going to fail about as soon as she saw the knights start to rip into the White Fang as if they were lambs to the slaughter. This was why she had hung back instead of charging with the men. It was obvious that Neo did not like this, but she didn't care very much about what Neo wanted. Roman had been deployed with one of the units, tasked with driving them forward and keeping them focused. Neo wanted to go to him, but she didn't let her. Her abilities would be better used guarding Cinder rather than that fool. He had been useful, but lately he was becoming more trouble than Cinder thought he was worth. Still, this battle would be a good place to prove himself.
Then the artifact had let off some kind of pulse, and Cinder had been taken completely off guard. The wave that came out of it gave Cinder a certain strength, one that she couldn't quite place. Although she didn't know why, she felt stronger, and her thoughts were faster than ever before. She was still cautious, though. Momentary confidence was no reason to throw herself into battle. She was certain that if she were to try and charge one of the knights, she would meet the same fate as those others who tried it, and be several pieces on the ground.
That was when the lich had started to reanimate those who had already fallen. It was at this point that Cinder knew the battle was hopeless. No matter how many men she threw at the artifact, the undead would be able to endure it. In fact, the more people she threw at it, the more undead there would be. She had been about to order a full retreat when that power and strength that the artifact had given her started to shift. "No."
The voice was deep and booming, but no one else seemed to hear it. She tried not to react to it, and instead puzzled over what it was, or what it meant. She didn't have to puzzle long, as the voice spoke again soon. "No retreat. You desire power, I can give you power."
She saw the artifact pulsing, and noticed that the voice boomed in rhythm with it. She wasn't sure if she was somehow hallucinating, but the voice seemed to be that of what she had assumed to be an inanimate object. "Blood. Need blood. When we have enough, we will burst forth. You will be spared. All others will die." A smile wove its way across her face. She had come here to take the power of the artifact, so maybe it wasn't too late. If this thing was being truthful, then she would be happy to keep the blood flowing.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw Ironwood starting to shout into a communication device. Was he really calling for evacuation? That wasn't very like him. She shrugged. He wasn't the one spilling blood, so he could leave if he wished. It would actually make things easier, anyways. Dust rounds didn't cause nearly as much damage as the weapons that the undead used. If she could sate the artifact's request, she would gain power. That was worth the risk of the thing lying. Even if it was, there were many more White Fang that she could use to her own ends. She had the inclination that it wasn't, though. She felt more powerful now, and the feeling seemed to be slowly growing. It couldn't be lying. She could already feel that it was telling the truth. Down in the charging masses, she spied Roman being swept up in the crowd.
As much as she felt that his blood on the field would be a beautiful sight, she could think of several things that she could still use him for. Avenues of action that would close if the man were to die. With a sigh, she looked around herself. She was quite a distance away from the battle itself, and anything that came after her would give her plenty of time to react before it reached her. After she had come to this conclusion, she gestured to the distant Roman and said "Very well, if you really must, than go to him."
Neo broke into a run faster than Cinder had even seen her move before. Her short legs carried her small body faster than Cinder had thought they could. As she went, Cinder let her eyes drift back to the fighting. There was a certain beauty about it, the people willing to throw their lives away so readily for something they believed in. She almost felt guilty about lying about it.
Yang pulled her fists up, and Solace shouted "Get your weapons!" The robed Paladins all rushed towards a weapon rack, and team RWBY, Pyrrha, and Jaune readied themselves. They didn't want to fight their friend, but there was little choice left. Nora gave a ferocious scowl, then called out "I just want to help Ren! Why do you want to stop us?"
Jaune was the first to answer, saying "You aren't good for him! You've been hurting him the whole time!" Pyrrha spoke after him, saying "And you've been hurting yourself as well! You've obsessed over him constantly! It's not healthy!" Pyrrha lowed her shield and took a step towards the girl. "Please, just let us help you."
Nora's face softened for a brief moment, then hardened back into an aggressive frown. "No! You just want to take Tiny away from me!" With that, she started sprinting again. It wasn't in the direction of Ren's room this time, but directly at Pyrrha. The girl barely had time to raise her shield before Nora's fist impacted the disk of metal dead center. The vibrations that rang through the shield almost made her cry out, but she managed to stay resolute.
Yang stepped in now from the side, again delivering the force of a train into Nora by means of a fist to her gut. She hadn't meant to, but she had used her metal one instead of her flesh. The force of the blow lifted Nora off of her feet, and her eyes widened in shock as a small amount of bile was forced from her innards. The fluid fell onto Yang's arm before sliding off and hissing on the ground, steam wafting slowly away.
Yang had thought that his blow would be enough to stop her friend, or disable her enough to restrain. However, before her feet had even touched the ground again, Nora had wrapped a hand around Yang's wrist and pulled herself closer. Immediately she started to assail the blond with everything she could, kicking, clawing, and even leaning her face in to bite her. Yang held her at bay, just able to keep the girl's razor sharp teeth a few inches away from her flesh. Nora's nails were almost as sharp as her teeth and, though Yang couldn't feel pain, she was well aware of the damage that they were doing to her face and chest. It was superficial so far, but blades that sharp could easily slice tendons.
"Get her off of me!" Yang shouted to her teammates. None of them were quite sure what to do, but Ruby was the first to react, using her semblance to rocket herself towards her sister, wrapping her arms around Nora as she went, and continuing on past through the air now dragging her violent cargo. Nora didn't weigh much, but Ruby's capacity to transport anything but herself with her semblance was bad, and it was only a few feet before the two dropped out of the air, thudding against the floor and rolling. Before anyone could do anything, Nora was on top of Ruby, screaming viciously and making wild swipes. Ruby held her arms up to protect her face and neck, and felt her skin start to split under the assault.
Yang shouted angrily and made to lung at Nora, ready to punch her in the head again, but before she could, one of the robes Paladins leapt at the two, a moderately sized war hammer arcing up from below. The hammer impacted Nora in the center of the chest, and a bright flash of golden light was cast outwards by the head of the hammer, seeming to blow Nora away from it. She was knocked into the air again, did a small spin then reoriented herself before hitting the ground again. She stood, giving the Paladin a death glare. The woman swallowed the lump in her throat before hefting the weapon back up, ready to swing again.
Nora looked like she was about to go for the woman, but Jaune called out again "Nora, please, we only want to help you!" Nora's head flicked to face Jaune, and in the pause everyone got a good look at her face. There were bruises left from Yang's knuckles, but even as the group watched, the bruises started to fade. If there was any damage from the punch to the gut or the hammer blow, they couldn't tell.
The brief break allowed both sides of the conflict to recuperate, team RWBY, Jaune, and Pyrrha making their way over to Ruby, who was still on the ground, while the Paladins made to encircle Nora. The one who had saved Ruby from Nora stayed behind, even lowering their guard a little.
Yang went to Ruby, holding her by the shoulders and saying "Are you alright? How bad did she get you?" in a very concerned voice. Without speaking, Ruby held her arms out for her sister to see. The black fabric of her sleeves was sliced nearly to ribbons, but luckily Ruby's aura had saved her from the brunt of the damage. The cuts that she did have were just from what Nora had been able to force through. Still, the bleeding was heavy, and if it continued Ruby wouldn't be able to fight anymore.
Yang was about to start looking for something she could use as a bandage before the Paladin put her hammer down, balancing it on its head, and pulling a thick book out from her robes. "If you'll let me, I think I can help with this." Yang felt a natural distrust, but her desire to have her sister save overpowered that by many times. "Yes! Yes, just do it!" The woman's auburn hair cast a few silvery reflections of light off of it as she nodded, then cracked the book open. "Let's see…" she seemed to be talking to herself "prayers, prayers, where is it…" One of the other Paladins shouted out, and all eyes went to him just in time to see Nora sink her teeth into his arm. No aura would protect from that, at least not enough to matter.
The woman's eyes lingered on this, as if she was transfixed by the scene, before Solace stepped forwards and with a deft motion, pulled the man's arm down, forcing it off of Nora's top row of teeth, then pulled it away, smoothly off of the bottom row. After that he cautiously yet quickly shunted the man behind him and delivered a kick to Nora that knocked her back.
Yang snapped her fingers in front of the woman's face. "Hey, come on! Fix her!" The woman's brown eyes fixed with Yang's for a second before she blinked, swallowed hard, and looked back down at the pages. "R-right, sorry." She flipped through a few more pages, then stopped, placed her finger on a line, and started to trace it across the page, speaking a strange, ancient-sounding language. Yang's friends around her looked at the woman with slight surprise, as if the things that were coming out of her mouth were beautiful. Yang only thought it sounded strange, but supposed that she didn't find it so pretty because she was undead. She tried to look at the book itself, but it gave off a bright glow that burned her eyes when she saw it. She held up a hand, blocking the light, then looked down at Ruby's arms.
The woman's hands were resting softly on top of the cuts, and as she read, her hands started to glow as well. Yang could hardly see past it, but what she could see was Ruby's flesh starting to knit back together, and Yang smiled. If it took a Paladin to make sure her sister was alright, then that was what she would get. The woman let out a breath and gave Ruby a happy look, leaning close and saying "Are you feeling-" before her voice was cut off by another shout, and her eyes raced back to the group. She moved quickly, standing back up and stowing the book away again before going for her hammer. She retook it and rushed at Nora, leaving team RWBY, Pyrrha, and Jaune on their own again.
Ruby sprang to her feet and immediately started to spur her team into action. "Come on guys! We have to get her under control! And, as much as I hate to say it, it looks like we won't be able to do that gently." She removed Crescent Rose from her back, and gave a backwards look at the raging girl who had been a close friend a few weeks ago. "Don't worry, I'm sure she can take it."
All six of them moved at once, as a group, to join the Paladins. They had already encircled Nora, and it seemed like they were poised to regain control of the situation, but all of them could feel something in the air that made them feel as if something was just begging to go wrong. None of the Paladins were attacking Nora yet, and Nora seemed temporarily content to remain in the center of the circle and seethe at the others. The Beacon students joined into the circle of Paladins, making it thicker, and Ruby spoke to Solace, saying "How do we calm her down?"
Solace shook his head and said "I'm afraid that we may have to knock her out." He gave the girl a doubtful look, then shrugged his shoulders. "If we can manage it." Ruby closed her fingers tight around the handle of Crescent Rose, and said "We can do it, don't worry. She's strong, but she's wild too. We can use that to our advantage; she leaves herself wide open after every attack. We just need someone to take a hit so that we can get to her. Yang could probably take the hit, but there's no way to guarantee that she wouldn't get hurt so much that she couldn't fight, and if she does that then there's no way to fix her during the fight." Nora made a few eccentric gestures, and Ruby took an involuntary step back. "If we're going to decide, we should probably do it now!"
Solace stepped forward, hefting his hammer up as he did so. "I will be the one to bear the blow." Nora's gaze immediately shot to him, and he spoke quieter over his shoulder "Be ready to strike hard. I will give as many opportunities as I can." The rest of the group agreed, and he stepped forward more, the gap behind him in the circle closing. "Demon" he spoke heavily "leave this girl, or face our holy wrath."
Nora's mouth curled into an unnaturally large smile, and she said "I don't want Tiny to leave me. All I want is Ren. You're the ones who are making me fight." Solace lifted his hammer and shook his head. "Then you make your choice. It is sad indeed."
Suddenly, as if the hammer was weightless, he struck out at her, bringing the head crashing down into the ground in front of her. She leapt back, then charged forwards when Solace left himself open as he pulled his hammer back up. Her hands were outstretched, and her claws extended, ready to turn him to mincemeat. Of all the people to put the plan into action, Jaune had not expected to be the first to hit his friend. He saw the opportunity though, as Nora brought her hands up, and he lunged out, bringing his shield crashing into Nora's ribcage. As he did this, he wasn't thinking about protecting Ren, or getting Nora to be still so she could be healed. He was thinking of Pyrrha, and of the look of bloodlust that had been on Nora's face when she had attacked Pyrrha. He allowed his shield to carry through, pushing her further off course.
Her path disrupted, Nora stumbled to the side, unable to stop. She was just about to topple over when Yang stepped off of the line, bringing her metal left fist up, catching Nora just under the chin. The girl was tossed up in the air, but tucked her knees to her chest in midair, sending herself into a controlled spin. Blake was the next to see on opportunity, and activated her semblance, a brief clone of herself occupying her place as she launched herself into the air. Her bladed sheath sang through the air before connecting with Nora, batting her out of the air and sending her back to the ground.
She hit face-down, and laid still for a moment as she recovered from the series of blows she had suffered. She remained on the ground for just an instant too long, and Solace's hammer, Judgment, came down on the center of her back, making her yelp as another bright flash of light was given off by the strike. Solace stepped back, putting the hammer back over his shoulder and waiting to see if Nora was finished. A tense second of silence followed, then two, then three.
The whole of team RWBY as well as Pyrrha and Jaune were all fairly sure that Nora was not a contortionist. She had demonstrated an impressive level of flexibility before, but they had never seen her do something like what she did now. Instead of pushing herself up to her feet in the somewhat slow, battered manner that they all expected, her back arched in an unnatural way, placing her feet flat on the floor next to her head. There was a series of sickening pops as her muscles pulled her back upright.
Without pause, she picked another target to try and break out of the circle. This target was Jaune. His reflexes were slower than Pyrrha's, and she had barely gotten her shield up in time to protect her from Nora. As such, he wasn't able to save himself.
Nora's long strides carried her shoulder into Jaune's gut, and the two of them traveled several yards before Nora pushed off the ground with her feet and tucked her shoulder towards the ground. Jaune realized what was about to happen just as Nora's weight started to push more into his belly. He cried out, but it was too late for him to be helped. With Nora holding him tightly, there was nothing he could do. He tried to pry her off of him, but it was the same situation as it had been before, she was simply too strong.
As the pair rammed into the ground, Jaune felt his organs pushed out of the way and his ribs crack under the pressure. It was a terrible pain, and his aura did little to dull the feeling. Even worse, the air was forced out of his lungs, and as Nora climbed off of him, he was forced to breathe in the hypnotizing odor that she gave off. He felt his body relax, and he was unable to do anything to stop her as she broke into an all-out sprint towards the room Ren was stored in. All he could do was watch.
The group moved to pursue Nora as best they could, but she moved too quickly. Her pace didn't slow, either, as she neared the wall to Ren's room, and everyone felt a small amount of disbelief about what she was about to do. Nora impacted the wall, body thudding against it hard, before it crumpled under her, and she flew through it. Yang was hot on her heels, though, and she leapt through the hole, shouldering Nora as hard as she could manage.
Nora only caught a brief glimpse of Ren before Yang ran her through the next wall like a bulldozer, bringing them back out into the light of the sun. He had been sitting cross legged, and had a shocked expression on his face. Nora could tell that he was scared. She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn't do that will all of these people attacking her.
Yang's momentum slowed, and she threw Nora off of her before she could grab ahold of anything. The rest of the fighters streamed through the new holes in the walls, again making to surround their target. Nora knew that this would only keep happening and happening if she didn't do something about it, so she had to break the cycle. She had taken Jaune out of the fight, but that wasn't enough.
She thought of what was going on, what was really going on, and felt rage start to boil up inside of her. They were trying to keep her from |
police departments, potentially leaving victims of rape and sexual assault vulnerable to police departments with a pattern of mishandling cases and intimidating victims
Advertisement
LGBTQ RIGHTS
What Ivanka Trump said she wants:
Support LGBTQ community, generally
What the Trump administration has done:
Advertisement
CLIMATE CHANGE
What Ivanka Trump said she wants:
Advertisement
What the Trump administration has done:
Advertisement
SUPPORTING WORKING FAMILIES
What Ivanka Trump said she wants:
Support women in the workplace, generally
What the Trump administration has done:
Advertisement
That’s Ivanka Trump’s scorecard, six months into her father’s presidency. We will periodically update this list as she achieves yet more in the months to come.Already, as we feared, the process, the legal issues, and the lawyers - so important to achieve the sweeping law reform Australia so desperately needs - are sucking up all the funding, and all the focus. This process must be survivor-centred, not lawyer-centred. The commission exists because of the horrendous crimes committed against Australia's children, and because these crimes are allowed to go unpunished, and so flourish. And because our so-called justice system imposes life, or even death, sentences on little children, but allows the real criminals to keep their precious reputations, to keep the respect of their communities, and to keep offending unhindered for decades, even lifetimes. Statistics from Victoria, analysed by Judy Courtin, a lawyer and researcher, show only 0.06 per cent of child sexual abuse results in a conviction - even less once appeals are taken into account. This means that more than 90 per cent of these crimes leave a child rapist free to reoffend, and a survivor denied justice. Closer to 100 per cent leave the survivor feeling betrayed, neglected or re-abused by the system supposed to protect us. The only reason most survivors even engage with our predator-friendly and horribly abusive criminal justice system is to ensure that at least this rapist can be kept from targeting more children. The strength and courage this demands from fragile survivors is enormous, superhuman even - and is one reason why so few are able to do it. Now, we are being asked to draw on all our strength and all our courage, and then some, to confront the terrifying experiences forced on us as children; to relate facts that many adults find too hard to face.
And we are expected to do it without proper support, while tens of millions are being spent on premises, on staff and on computer systems. And, of course, on lawyers. Don't get me wrong, we asked for this commission. Or rather, where so many turn their backs on the suffering of abused children, this is the best way available for us to tell the truth, find some justice and finally be able to heal. But we do not want the price to be more suffering by the most innocent, most neglected, and most deserving. Nor do we want any more tragic, unnecessary deaths. The government needs to immediately announce a comprehensive system of counselling and other support services to help us through this challenging time. We should never have been abandoned to suffer alone and unassisted all these years. We should not be asked to tell our hard, sad truth alone and unassisted. We should not have conditions and limits to our access to life-saving services. We should not be exposed to untrained suppliers, who don't know about dealing with complex trauma, or to those with a connection to the institutions that abused us. By all means charge the cost of our support back to the wealthy institutions that cunningly evade their responsibilities. We should not be expected to suffer for years more, waiting while lawyers and others get rich off our suffering.
Our suffering is silent, but not because we don't want to speak. We desperately tried to be heard but nobody listened, and nobody cared. And those most silenced are the ones most in need of help; those in remote communities, in jail, battling addictions, or on the streets. We all deserve the feeling of weight being lifted as we are listened to, heard and believed for the first time in our lives. We all deserve to hope, to no longer be one of the walking dead, and to learn how to live. We all deserve a chance to become the economically contributing, functional members of society we were never allowed to be. And we all deserve the support to make all this possible. Starting now. Anything less is another betrayal, another win for the privileged criminals. Nicky Davis is a victim, and a leader of SNAP Australia (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests).It is a measure of how entitled many college professors think themselves that a group of professors at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) felt so annoyed that the state legislature ignored their protests and feelings that they filed a lawsuit against a law. The law in question allows people who have permits to carry concealed handguns on campus and inside most buildings on state university buildings.
That law (“Campus Carry Law”) was signed by Governor Abbott in June, 2015 and took effect August 16, 2016. Before the law had taken effect, three UT professors (Jennifer Glass, Lisa Moore, and Mia Carter) filed suit to block it. Their key argument against the law was that it infringes upon their First Amendment rights.
How could a law that allows people with concealed carry permits to keep their firearms when they’re on public campuses infringe upon anyone’s right of free speech?
The professors argued that the law could “chill” discussion of controversial topics in class because faculty members and students might fear that someone with a weapon would shoot a student or professor who disagreed with him. Such fear would cause faculty members to avoid discussing potentially dangerous topics. This argument plays upon the stereotype of gun owners as volatile people who can’t control their emotions. Bring up a touchy subject and you might cause a shooting spree, so don’t discuss any topics that might send a gun-toting student into a rage.
Would a court overturn a lawfully enacted statute merely because a group of professors claim that it makes them so worried that they fear to speak freely?
So far, the answer is a firm “no.” The First and Second Amendments do not conflict.
In a decision filed on July 7 (available here), federal judge Lee Yeakel dismissed the case. The basis for his ruling was that the three plaintiffs lack what lawyers call “standing to sue,” which means that they are appropriate parties to bring the case. The rules on “standing” are meant to prevent courts from being inundated with suits from people who want to complain, but have not truly suffered any legal injury.
Judge Yeakel ruled against the three professors, writing “Plaintiffs cannot establish standing by simply claiming that they experienced a ‘chilling effect’ that resulted from governmental policy that does not regulate, constrain, or compel any action on their part.”
In response to their statements about “chilling,” Judge Yeakel replied, “Plaintiffs do not specify a subject matter or point of view they feel they must eschew as a result of the Campus Carry Law…or point to a specific harm they have suffered or will suffer as a result of the law and policy.”
The defendant in the case, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is quoted in this Texas Tribune article saying, “The court’s ruling today is the correct outcome. The fact that a small group of professors dislike a law and speculate about a ‘chilling effect’ is hardly a valid basis to set the law aside.”
Judge Yeakel’s dismissal does not end the case, of course. The plaintiffs can appeal to the Fifth Circuit. Their attorney, Renea Hicks, says that they may do that because Judge Yeakel’s decision did not address every aspect of their complaint, including an argument that the Texas Campus Carry Law violates their right to equal protection under the law. That seems as far-fetched as their First Amendment claim.
If the plaintiffs do appeal, Attorney General Paxton might include in his argument the fact that quite a few states allow concealed carry on their state university campuses and have never had any incident like the shooting spree that the professors here claim to be so worried about. He could also note that there have been murderous shooting incidents on campuses where guns are not allowed.
Arkansas State University history professor Erik Gilbert made both of those points in this Martin Center article, where he concluded, “It’s very hard to see any intersection between premeditated murderers and law-abiding people who obtain carry permits. The rules regarding guns on campus mean little to people who come to campus bent on committing crimes.”
Texas’ Campus Carry Law will almost certainly survive if the plaintiffs press ahead with their case. Then they will have to decide if the threat they perceive is so bad that they feel compelled to resign their faculty positions. I’d bet that not one does so.Now yes, obviously, not everyone is going to like you for who you are. Get over it. Everyone agrees that it's tough, but why try to win over the approval of someone who doesn’t appreciate the unique aspects of you? They don’t deserve to be deeply involved in your life if they aren’t totally infatuated with how you operate. Here’s some further inspiration. Take some time to analyze influential people. Think of your favorite artist or musician or writer. Their unique qualities are what made them so highly revered in your eyes. It is because of their unique qualities that they are able to create the art that they do. Notice my use of the word “qualities”? Let’s take a look at what that word really means. According to Dictionary.com, the word means the following: “an essential or distinctive characteristic, property, or attribute.” Your qualities are what shape you. They are essential.
If we didn’t all possess different qualities and characteristics, there would be no art or music or anything even along those lines. Everything would be mundane and lifeless. Can you imagine how boring that would be? You are a part of this world, and you contribute to the creativity and direction in which it operates. Never change because someone who isn’t relevant in your life looks down on you for how you think, how you dress, or anything even remotely along those lines. In the song of the week (featured below), the following words are used: “Nobody thinks what you think, no one. Empathy might be on the brink of extinction. They will play a game and say they know what you're going through and I tried to come up with an artistic way to say they don't know you, and neither do I.” No one else will ever be able to truly comprehend how your mind works, so never let them judge you for how you operate. Take some time to appreciate the exclusive traits of those around you, because it will help you to understand them better and treat them with a more intimate form of respect. Everyone can bring positivity to this world in their own distinct way, including you. I think that’s a beautiful thought.
Don’t put others down.
Don’t let others put you down.
Be you.
Be unique.
Be happy.
- Jonah
jonahjahns.com
Also a big thanks to my brother, Micah, for helping edit!I was waiting for the Taz 7 to be released since it has been a year and a half since the Taz 6. I decided to get a "cheap" printer instead but I am glad I chose this one.
I had the machine together in about 20 minutes including unboxing. Put the machine on a flat surface and the tower will sort of self align (use a right angle to make sure it is 90 degrees), put the four screws in, connect the motor cables (which are labeled!) and DO NOT forget to connect the black ribbon cable from the extruder to the base! (The manual does not mention this). I leveled the Z axis by spinning the motor shafts until I could loosely wiggle a circuit board under each side. The initial height does not matter, only that the rods are level.
Tighten EVERYTHING including the set screws on the X axis rods. Mine came loose and my Z axis would not home. If you are having Z axis issues unscrew the belt, loosen the X axis rods then wiggle them to realign them then put everything back together.
To level the bed, home the Z axis with the four screws on the bed at the lowest position (so it does not strike the bed). Use the Tools -> Move command to place the nozzle at the four corners of the black print surface. Use a business card inbetween the nozzle and the bed then turn the screw until you just feel friction on the business card. The built in home function misses the back left corner for some reason.
Loading filament is easy, just cut a small piece off at 45 degrees to prevent clogs, place the filament into the extruder by pressing the black lever until it stops. Use the load filament command until a little filament oozes out. Unloading is pretty similar, heat it up and use the unload command to remove it.
The included sd card includes a few models and I was able to just barely print 3 of them with the included sample filament. I think they are set to be high precision to impress the user - they take about 2-3 hours to print but do come out very well.
I am using Solidworks to generate my STL files but you may want to head over to Thingiverse to grab some premade stuff. This is where the fun begins - slicing. There are several slicers in free, freemium, online, and paid. I prefer Cura since it is simple and works. Slic3r is a good alternative. If you have a Raspberry Pi then you can try Octoprint (Incredibly easy to get running by the way). There is also Simplify3D but I do not recommend it since it cost $150 for two installations and requires you to log in to use the desktop program (good luck when their servers go down). Slicers are a whole different topic but if you chose Cura, you can use the Prusa i3 (which this unit is based off of) or you can add your own printer and specify a 200x200 and 180 height bed with a 0.4mm nozzle and 1.75mm filament with a rectangle bed that is heated. The included Cura version on the SD card is outdated and I believe you can import the included gcode to generate a modern cura profile.
Once you are confident in the machine then find a better Spool holder, filament cooling fan shroud, Z axis brace then your prints will turn out much better. The stock spool holder can jerk when feeding and cause Z axis artifacts while the stock filament fan shroud isn't directed enough. After those mods then you can start looking into adding a better Y axis plate, different print surfaces, and so on. The Select Plus is a 24v model, so if you upgrade the fan then be sure to use a 24v fan. You might also have to perform searches for the Wanhao duplicator i3 to find upgrade parts.
This machine is for tinkerer's so I did not mind having to play around with the X axis rods and can't count that against the machine. I did contact Monoprice support via their website chat and they told me they would send a replacement but I needed to do it though Amazon. I sent them an email but have not heard a response (it has been almost a week). The print quality out of the box is great, it has a large build surface, and was very easy to get running (including with octopi). Overall I think this is a great printer for the price range. It does not have the fancy features like auto leveling or dual extruders but this will satisfy the average hobbyist needs.Only two of the nine men convicted following the Rochdale child grooming scandal remain in prison, and four are using taxpayers’ money to fight deportation to Pakistan.
The Manchester Evening News reports that only Shabir Ahmed, 64, and Mohammed Sajid, 40, are still in custody.
Mohammed Amin, 50; Abdul Qayyum, 49; Hamid Safi, 27; Adil Khan, 47; Abdul Rauf, 48; Abdul Aziz, 46; and Kabeer Hassan, 30, have all completed short sentences of five years or less, or been released on license halfway through longer sentences – as is standard since Labour passed the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Four of the men, including ringleader Shabir ‘Daddy’ Ahmed, were stripped of their British citizenship so they could be be deported to Pakistan, but are now mounting a taxpayer-funded legal challenge in the Court of Appeal, aided by lawyers accused of “gaming the system”.
The paedophile targeted “dozens” of vulnerable white teenagers, usually underage, for years, in an episode which has been partly serialised by the BBC in the drama Three Girls.
An official report found that the grooming gangs, composed overwhelmingly of Muslim men, were able to operate with impunity because police, prosecutors and social services feared being accused of racism if they intervened.
“They knew all along what was going on. They knew crimes were being committed, but they just told my mum and dad I was making lifestyle choices,” said one of the victims.
“How is being raped by dozens of men a lifestyle choice? Why would any girl of 15 want to do that?”
Police told the 13 year old Rotherham grooming gang victim not to mention the ethnicity of her rapists. https://t.co/oWc8uMUAjw — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 14, 2017
Similar problems have afflicted British cities and towns across the country, although the issue is most acute in the north of England.
One victim from Rotheram, who went to the authorities after being raped by multiple men when she was just 13, said she was “specifically told not to comment on the ethnicity of the perpetrators” by police and social workers.
The enormous scale of the problem is still being uncovered, with twenty-nine men of similar background to the Rochdale gang being brought to court last month on over 170 charges of rape, child abduction, trafficking, drug dealing, and other crimes following a child sex abuse inquiry in Huddersfield.Shinhwa has officially announced that the full version of their 13th album will be released on January 1, 2017.
The group held their “2016 Shinhwa Live – Unchanging” concert on December 18. During the event, the group made the official announcement that their album will be released at midnight going from January 1 to January 2. This is actually earlier than the previously announced date of January 3.
The members also added, “We hope to be closer to you all at the start of the new year. We’re even thinking about attending some awards shows next year.”
To celebrate their 18th anniversary, Shinhwa has already released the first part of their new album “SHINHWA 13 UNCHANGING PART1 – ORANGE,” which includes tracks such as “Orange,” “She Said,” “Us,” and “Star.”
Are you excited to be ringing in the new year with Shinhwa’s new album?
Source (1)Whooping cough: 'Anti-vaxxers' target Brisbane woman following viral Facebook plea for parents to vaccinate
Updated
A Brisbane woman has hit back at so-called anti-vaxxers who targeted her with private messages after a Facebook post she made sharing her son's battle with whooping cough went viral.
Rebecca Harreman's Facebook status included a short video of her comforting her four-month-old son, who rubbed his red eyes before bursting into a small coughing fit.
It has been viewed more than 475,000 times and shared more than 13,500 since it was uploaded on Friday.
The 400-word status documented her son's 20-plus day battle with whooping cough, also known as pertussis.
Since then, she has received messages of love and support from friends, family and strangers alike - however it has also attracted the attention of those against vaccination.
"I really didn't think that people would personally message me to tell me I am wrong," she wrote in a follow-up post.
"I didn't intend to offend anyone in particular with my views. Because they are just that - MY views.
"But since some anti-vaxxers seem to feel they can share and say anything they want, even if it is unreliable, and I'm not allowed to have my say or share my own personal experience... well then I say bring it!
"No more turning a blind eye and not sharing opinions for fear it will upset someone else.
"It's called freedom of speech. If they can say what they want, then so can I."
In her original post, Ms Harreman said the video of her son featured a "good coughing fit" - because it was "nothing compared to watching him turn blue from coughing for so long and so much he can't take a single breath".
"I've been on duty for over three weeks having to wake every single time my baby boy coughs for fear he will stop breathing," she wrote.
"So for those of you sitting on the fence on whether to vaccinate yourself and your kids or not... maybe this video will convince you."
'It's time for me to go private'
Ms Harreman has since written another Facebook post since her original message.
She has thanked the many people who supported her stance, but she had been "completely overwhelmed" with questions.
"Okay this is getting out of hand," she wrote early on Tuesday morning.
"I truly appreciate all the messages of love and support and well wishes from strangers all over the world. It's incredible and truly meant a lot.
"I also appreciate all the questions coming in for those people fence sitting on whether or not to vaccinate - there are literally hundreds of them coming in.
"But I unfortunately don't have time to respond to everyone's messages, even though I'd really love to.
"Because as of this moment Austin is back in hospital and my inbox is packed to the brim, people are reporting my family portrait for nudity on FB and let's not even start on what the anti-vaxxers are sending me.
"So I'm making this post another public one just to say thank you and it's time for me to go private so I can just concentrate on my family, my son and his health."
'Doing nothing is just wrong'
Whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory infection.
The infection causes severe coughing fits followed by a whooping sound on inhaling and, often, vomiting.
It is particularly serious for children aged up to two years of age, but especially infants less than six months where it can be fatal.
In this age range, between 0.5 and 1 per cent of children who catch whooping cough die from the disease, but the outlook improves in older children.
"I don't care whether you want to try and prove to me that vaccinations and herd immunities don't work," Ms Harreman said.
"I don't care that vaccinations have side effects, because every person in this world reacts differently to all types of food, products and medicines.
"I could not care less, even if it is ever proven one day that they don't work.
"Because at least at the end of the day I tried to do something to prevent this and not sit there and say 'oh well, vaccinations don't work so I'll just sit here and do nothing'... because doing nothing goes against every cell in my body as a mother.
"Doing nothing is just wrong."
Topics: infant-health, vaccines-and-immunity, social-media, brisbane-4000
First postedI remember a few weeks ago, there was a challenge in the R-help list to make the prime symbol in R graphics. In LaTeX, we simply write $X'$ or $X^\prime$. R has a rough support for math expressions (see demo(plotmath) ) and they are certainly unsatisfactory for LaTeX users. In fact we can write native LaTeX code in R plots via the tikzDevice package! Why bother to use all kinds of tricks to cheat R?
Here is an example per request of a reader of my blog:
library(tikzDevice) options(tikzMetricPackages = c("\\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}", "\\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}", "\\usetikzlibrary{calc}", "\\usepackage{amssymb}")) ## I need the amssymb package because I use \mathcal and \mathbb tikz("formula.tex", width = 4, height = 4, standAlone = TRUE, packages = c("\\usepackage{tikz}", "\\usepackage[active,tightpage,psfixbb]{preview}", "\\PreviewEnvironment{pgfpicture}", "\\setlength\\PreviewBorder{0pt}", "\\usepackage{amssymb}")) par(mar = c(4, 4, 0.1, 0.1), mgp = c(2, 0.9, 0)) plot(1, type = "n", xlab = "$x_1$", ylab = "$x_2$") text(1, c(0.8, 1, 1.2), c("$\\underbrace{1,2,\\cdots,10}_{10}$", "$\\mathbb{ABCDEFG}$", "$\\mathcal{HIJKLMN}$"), cex = 2.5) dev.off() tools::texi2dvi("formula.tex", pdf = TRUE) system(paste(getOption("pdfviewer"), "formula.pdf"))
Related Posts
RelatedPlease enable Javascript to watch this video
MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- A group of servers at La Fuente restaurant have filed a class action lawsuit against the restaurant -- saying they are sick of footing the bill for food sent back to the kitchen. The claim says servers were expected to work and not get paid -- and that they were stuck with the bill when customers would skip out.
Larry Johnson is a labor attorney representing servers at two La Fuente locations. Johnson says it was written policy to have the servers start shifts early and prepare the restaurant, but they weren't allowed to clock in until customers arrived, and so now, a server has served the owners with a class action lawsuit.
"Setting up tables, putting rolling silverware, filling salt shakers, working, making coffee, all that kind of stuff to get the restaurant ready," Johnson said.
Johnson says those kinds of violations aren't all that uncommon, but what is rather uncommon is what the complaint says servers were forced to pay for their uniforms, aprons, hot pads to serve fajitas, order pads and name tags -- and that's not all.
"Anytime a customer walked out without paying the bill, the servers had to pay. Anytime a customer said, this is not what I ordered, food or alcohol drink, the server had to pay for that," Johnson said.
Johnson says the owners were essentially transferring the cost of doing business on to the servers, who were only being paid $2.33 an hour.
The suit now requests those unpaid wages and if they win the case, the court could double it, along with attorneys fees.
Johnson says it is too early to know how much money that could be, but he says it's the price companies pay when they don't follow the law.
"The employees have gone to management and complained about this. Management has not taken those complaints into consideration, or their practices have not changed since those complaints," Johnson said.A moose attack in an Eagle River neighborhood, which sent a woman to the hospital with serious injuries, was just one of eight run-ins with Anchorage's most visible urban animal resulting in injuries in May, officials said.
The woman was either jogging with or walking her dogs in the Eaglewood subdivision on May 22 when she got too close to a cow moose and its two calves, said Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Dave Battle.
"She didn't have time. … The moose attacked her, and came back twice, which is why she was injured so badly," said Eaglewood operations manager Mark McAllister.
Anecdotally, eight moose encounters resulting in injuries is a lot, said Fish and Game public information officer Ken Marsh. There may have been more encounters, but many go unreported, as is often the case with wildlife incidents, Marsh said.
"I suppose it's because it's that time of year," he said. "People want to get out and about, hiking and biking, playing in the woods and greenbelts. It also is the time when the moose give birth to calves."
A majority of the injuries consisted of bumps and bruises, but some were more severe. The most serious injuries involved the woman at Eaglewood, Battle said.
The first two incidents of the month occurred May 15 on the north end of Kincaid Park soccer field 4. A witness told park officials there was a mother moose with two calves, said Kincaid recreation supervisor Brad Cooke.
Cooke categorized the encounters as "negative incidents," meaning the moose acted aggressively. The moose did so toward two groups of people, he said. The groups were walking, not riding bicycles, he said.
Signs were erected around the park at the beginning of the season warning of moose calving season, and secondary signs have been placed near the sites of several wildlife encounters since, he said.
A third incident, an attack involving a cow and calf, took place May 20 at the Davenport Fields, in the area of Airport Heights and Chester Creek. A man was walking on a path near Chester Creek in an area with thick vegetation around 8 p.m. when he came face-to-face with the moose, according to Fish and Game. The department's report did not include further details.
The fourth encounter of the month listed by Fish and Game notes the Eaglewood subdivision incident May 22 and then a fifth and sixth encounter, each happening either in the days before or after the woman was sent to a hospital.
The Chugiak-Eagle River Star, which first reported the moose attack, spoke to the woman's brother, who told the paper her injuries were severe enough to put her in an intensive care unit. He said his sister was "hanging in there."
McAllister, Eaglewood's operations manager, said the two other encounters in the neighborhood involved residents getting charged and "clipped" by what was likely the same cow moose involved in the more serious attack. The moose ended its aggression after charging, though, he said.
McAllister described the subdivision's paths as "hallways" — walkways with thin greenbelts up against the fenced yards of homes. There is no room to get around moose if people run into one on the paths, he said.
He posted on the Eaglewood Facebook page, telling people to be cautious, but said homeowners will likely still use the paths as that's one of the reasons people choose to live there.
A seventh encounter happened back in Anchorage behind South Anchorage High School on May 28, according to Fish and Game. A father and son were in the woods, off the walkway looking for a potential new path, when they came across a cow with twin calves, Battle said.
"He reported that he butted heads with the moose when it ran past or into him," Battle said. "He had a bruise on his head."
The eighth and final encounter happened two days later, off of Mainsail Drive, a residential street in South Anchorage. A cow and two calves were trapped in a woman's yard, and she tried to open the gate to free them but was charged, Battle said.
Calving season has not ended, Battle said. Moose will also remain protective of their calves throughout the summer as the young animals cannot yet protect themselves against predators, he said.FINE wine prices have plummeted by up to 40% as the economic downturn and the fall in the value of the pound has spooked investors into offloading their stock.
The boom in wine prices that has seen the value of Bordeaux's prestigious 2005 vintage more than double in two years has come to an end. The value of the Liv-ex 100 Fine Wine Index, the equivalent of the FTSE, is now 20% below its all-time peak reached last summer, with analysts speculating that it could fall further.
Jack Hibberd, market research director at Liv-ex, said the market was now "steady" but had come down 20% since August.
He said: "There are still wines that are holding up in value but prices of the 2005 vintage have fallen, in some cases by 40%. There are some good bargains to be had, but at this stage it is impossible to forecast anything for the first quarter of the year."
Some of the worst hit include Lafite Rothschild 2004, which has dropped by 28% from 2,775 per case to 2,000, and Chateau Montrose 2003, which has seen a 23% fall from 1,625 to 1,250. A case of 2000 Chateau Ausone premier grand cru classe has dropped from 15,575 to 12,200. The October fall in prices was the steepest since the Liv-ex began in 2000.
As the euro continues to strengthen against the pound wine merchants are now calling for a minimum 20% price reduction of Bordeaux to offset currency fluctuations.
Meanwhile, wine sales continue to fall as the global downturn sparks the first drop in sales for decades. The British spend around 4.8bn annually on wine, compared with 3.3bn on beer and 3bn on spirits, and wine sales now account for more than a third of all alcohol purchases, compared with just 24% in 1992. But as household income drops, so do wine sales.
According to research group AC Nielsen, sales of still wine in supermarkets and other off-trade outlets such as off- licences, have fallen 0.2% by volume in the year to October.
Fine wine merchant Justerini & Brooks has also admitted interest in the Bordeaux 2005 has fallen. According to Bernstein Research, total sales volumes of all kinds of alcohol dropped 6.8% in the third quarter from a year earlier, with spirits down 8.2%, wine down 10% and beer and cider each down 4.2%.How To Sell Your Business And Make And Lose Millions
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and several-times entrepreneur. His latest book, is “Choose Yourself!” (foreword by Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter) about how to make, lose, and make back millions. Follow him on Twitter @jaltucher.]
First I totally gave up. I thought there was no way to sell my web services business.
It started when I was in the offices of Loud Records, run by Steve Rifkind. My company, Reset, was doing websites for the Wu-Tang Clan and other Loud artists. It was 1997.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard would call me on the phone sometimes. Mobb Deep would stop by. Trent Reznor would hang out (we did Interscope’s artists as well).
Steve Rifkind’s dad, Jules Rifkind, was a music mogul from the 50s, signing acts like James Brown. He was infamously (supposedly) portrayed in The Sopranos as the character Hesh Rabkin.
And the rumor was that Jules Rifkind’s father used to handle all the details whenever Meyer Lansky threw a party.
When you walked into Loud Records these huge beefy older Jewish guys would pat you down to make sure you weren’t carrying a gun. They looked like they were about 70 years old but you had to have a suicide impulse to disagree with them.
Someone said to me, “Steve needs you in his office. He’s got some guy in there pitching BS.”
So I went in there.
This guy, Justin W., was saying, “Steve, let’s do a rollup of all urban businesses. We take Loud Records, combine with SRC, combine it with five-star basketball camps, maybe get The Source magazine in there. We take it public. You could have a billion-dollar company! This would be hot on Wall Street. Rollups like this are fucking sexy.”
Steve was sitting in the center of the room and everyone was sitting around with him. “A billion dollars. This is too much for me. I gotta go to the bathroom and jack off.” And he got up and left the room.
Justin introduced himself to me. He was a banker at [big investment bank].
A few weeks later Justin called me even though we hadn’t exchanged cards or anything.
True to my style, I didn’t pick up. I don’t like talking on the phone very much.
The next day he called. The next day he called. The next day he called. The next day he called.
Finally I picked up.
“Why do you never pick up?” he said.
“Sorry about that,” I said, and that was that.
“Listen,” he said, “you’ve got a hot company. I know people who want to buy it. Go to this address.”
So I went to the address he gave me. It was a huge empty room about 10,000 square feet with one desk in it. It was the soon-to-be offices of a company called Rare Medium. The CEO, Glenn Meyers, was there. “I like your company,” he said. “I want to buy it.”
But I didn’t understand anything then and his company wasn’t public yet. It would later merge with an air-conditioning company that was trading for one dollar, and then it went up to $300 at the height of the boom and then it went bankrupt. Someone recently told me that Glenn pulled $200 million off the table and relaxes now.
So I didn’t return Justin’s calls for a while more. Finally he got me on the phone. “Listen,” he said, “you have to pick up when I call. I’ve got other guys who want to buy your company.”
He sent me to two or three other places. Everyone made offers. They were all complicated, though. Like, $X up front and then $Y over five years.
I had to practice going to places and saying, “I want to be a part of a larger team” and other BS. But all I really wanted was money.
Independently, for the prior year I had been sending updates to the person who bought companies for Omnicom, the big ad agency, Felice Kincannon.
After a year of meeting her and sending her emails of our updates, we were finally big enough. She started introducing me to other agencies within the Omnicom family to see who would want to buy us. Everyone did. And I started sending ad business to Omnicom agencies.
But again, the deals were all too complicated for me. Deals should be simple. Because they always get complicated later. They should start simple.
Honeymoons are meant for love-making.
Finally, I got tired of it. We wouldn’t get acquired. I called Justin, “Just forget it. I appreciate your help and we’ll figure it out some other time.”
“No wait,” he said. “One more try. These guys |
they can offer up capabilities that might free SOF forces to do other things," Beydler said. "We're not trying to encroach on what they do, but we think that we can be better utilized at times and free them up to do even more than SOF does right now."
Beydler said the Marine Corps was already stepping into some of these roles, though he demurred from specifics.
In one instance that may illustrate this utilization of conventional troops, Reuters reported in May that "a very small number" of U.S. forces were deployed into Yemen to provide intelligence support in response to a United Arab Emirates request for aid in the country's fight against Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
While the Defense Department did not identify the service to which these troops belonged, officials told Reuters that the amphibious assault ship Boxer -- part of the deployed 13th MEU -- had been positioned off the coast of Yemen to provide medical facilities as needed.
In a January fragmentary order, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller emphasized his desire to see Marines operate more closely with SOF troops and develop a deeply collaborative working relationship.
To this end, six-man special operations forces liaison elements, or SOFLEs, began to deploy with MEUs in 2015 to improve communication between Marines and SOF forces downrange and coordinate efforts. Beydler said professional rapport had increased as a result of these small liaison teams.
"A part of this is again developing professional relationships, developing professional respect and having SOF appreciate that which Marines can do," he said.
Currently, he said, the Marine Corps is considering creating SOFLEs for the Marines' land-based Middle East task force. While there is no timeline to test out the creation of new liaison elements, Beydler said the unit informally looks for opportunities to coordinate with special ops in this fashion.
"I think that we've valued the SOFLEs at the MEU level," he said. "We'll continue to work with SOF to see if we can't have more of these liaisons, more of those touch points."
-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.Markieff Morris did not back off his criticism of Suns home crowds despite a backlash for his comments. (Photo: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports)
MIAMI – Markieff Morris did not back off his criticism of Suns home crowds despite a backlash for his comments.
"You could say it was bad timing because we lost but these are my feelings toward the fans," Morris said after his Suns team's Monday shootaround in Miami. "I'm passionate about winning. You could say it was bad timing because we got beat bad (101-74 to San Antonio) but we still felt like that.
"As a team, like I told you, I'm not just speaking for myself. I'm speaking for me and my teammates that we all feel the same way. Like I said, you have your genuine fans. I'm not talking to those guys. They know who they are."
Boivin: Markieff Morris should zip it, mull these numbers
After Saturday night's loss, his twin teammate, Marcus, also said the sell-out crowd was not energetic and it felt like there were more Spurs fans than Suns fans. In that game, the Suns set a franchise record for fewest points scored in a half, 24 in the first half, and matched their largest margin of defeat this season.
Markieff noted that it was not just about Saturday's crowd, expressing frustration that Suns crowds pale in comparison to crowds on the road and that Suns fans do not stand or react when players try to prompt them to make noise.
The twins' Saturday comments,which are sentiments shared by teammates, drew media and social media criticism with some fan backing.
Montini: Shut up and play, Morris brothers
"I don't think we have a home-court advantage," Markieff said Saturday night. "It does not feel like a home-court advantage at all. Some games are going to be bad. You can't win every game. That comes along with sports. Nobody wins games. We need the support. We need, as a team, to know that our fans are going to be behind us and I don't feel like this year they're behind us enough."
CLOSE Markieff and Marcus Morris say they expect better energy from the hometown fans.
Suns coach Jeff Hornacek had a translation for the Morrises' critique.
"It's tough," Hornacek said. "What these guys want, and it goes both ways, is they have to put in the effort. I think they're looking for the night that they don't have any gas, that they maybe they can get a lift from the crowd and that's what I think Markieff was looking at."
Suns draft history: First round picksLöfven caused fury in Israel last October after he announced the move as a centrepiece of his government’s programme.
"A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful co-existence. Sweden will therefore recognize the state of Palestine," he told Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag, in his first speech as prime minister. The same day, Swedish embassies were sent letters outlining Sweden’s position on the “state of Palestine.”
In a grilling on Friday by the powerful parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs, the main opposition Moderate Party said Löfven’s move was unconstitutional. They claim he should first have consulted the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
Read More: Rocky six months for new Swedish PM Löfven
But Löfven defended his handling of the announcement, arguing that that his speech merely expressed an “ambition”, and did not claim that the government had made a formal decision at the time.
“The speech outlining the government’s programme would be seen as watered-down if it didn’t contain the government’s views on the foreign policy area,” he said. He added that the plan was discussed by the Foreign Policy Committee before the formal government decision was made.
Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström faced questions from the same committee on the same issue. She also argued that the decision was arrived at in a “correct and proper” way.
Sweden’s recognition of Palestine was followed by non-binding parliamentary votes in France, Britain and Ireland - although in December Denmark’s parliament voted against a similar move.
Read More: Denmark votes against recognizing Palestine (The Local Denmark)CLOSE We recently visited one of the world's most powerful weather supercomputers, used by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to predict weather forecasts. Video by Jasper Colt, USA TODAY
One of the world's most powerful supercomputers is now being used to forecast weather. Located in Reston, Va. The computer can process quadrillions of calculations per second that all feed into the nation's weather forecasts and predictions. (Photo11: Jasper Colt, USAT)
RESTON, Va. — In a nondescript office building here, one of the world’s most powerful weather supercomputers quietly hums on a 24/7 mission to analyze billions of pieces of data that ultimately will tell you whether you need a sweater or sunscreen when you leave the house.
Forecasts, critical not only for your wardrobe choices but for ship captains, airline pilots and shipping companies, depend on sophisticated data crunching and computer models, but three years ago European models delivered a blow to the U.S. weather apparatus. The European weather models accurately predicted the path and strength of the devastating Hurricane Sandy that hit the New Jersey coastline and caused $65 billion in damage.
Now, the U.S. is on the rebound with this monumental supercomputer that collects, processes and analyzes billions of observations from weather satellites, weather balloons, airplanes, buoys and surface stations from around the world to help meteorologists make better weather forecasts.
The brand-new Cray supercomputer — designed, owned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — processes 3 quadrillion calculations per second. If that sounds like a lot, it is — you'd need about 12,500 high-end laptops to get close to that kind of power. Still, the supercomputer is merely the 18th fastest in the U.S. and 42nd fastest in the world, Michaud said.
NOAA's purchase of the school-bus size device stemmed partly from competition from the top European weather model — better known in some circles by its acronym ECMWF (European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting). It predicted Sandy's now infamous and unusual left hook in 2012 days before the top American model — the GFS (Global Forecast System).
The room where the supercomputer sits must be kept at a temperature of between 69 and 72 degrees. (Photo11: Jasper Colt, USAT)
The one-two punch pushed the U.S. to invest $44.5 million to develop better forecasts. In a case of keeping up with the Joneses, the U.S. chose Seattle-based Cray to build its new supercomputer. The company is a leading maker of supercomputers worldwide and supplied the ones used by European weather agencies. NOAA installed the Reston computer and its backup twin in Orlando, a safe distance away in case of a natural disaster, late last year.
Together, they provide a 10-fold increase in computer power over previous systems and put American forecasting systems back on par or even above European ones, said University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass. "It's a huge improvement over what they had," he said.
Mass was highly critical of the federal government's lagging computing capacity in recent years and called it a "national embarrassment." One consideration he has is that the new computer resources should be used for critical tasks, such as high-resolution ensemble forecasts, and not wasted on legacy (older, underperforming) models, Mass said.
The tidal wave of data NOAA sifts through each day is equal to more than twice that contained in the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress, said David Michaud, director of the office of central processing at the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA.
In this Washington, D.C., suburb, the supercomputer takes in current weather data around the world then uses models and mathematical equations to predict the forecast in the hours, days and weeks ahead. It displays its mission proudly: large photos of lightning bolts, a hurricane, a tornado, a snowstorm and other weather phenomena cover the computer's surface.
It's not all about the machines: Meteorologists refine and interpret the computer's predictions to make timely, accurate and reliable forecasts for specific cities and regions, from day-to-day weather to ferocious hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and blizzards.
Opening up and peeking inside the supercomputer reveals a complex snarl of wires and equipment. (Photo11: Jasper Colt, USAT)
The supercomputer, hidden behind a maze of unmarked doors, would work up a damaging sweat if it weren't for an extensive cooling and ventilation system and ice-cold water flowing through its internal pipes.
A combination of cool and dry prevents condensation. Water chilled to 45 degrees circulates throughout the massive computer. NOAA keeps the room's temperature dialed to 69-72 degrees with a relative humidity of 30-50%, said IBM's Travis McPhail, project manager at IBM Global Services.
In the months ahead, the supercomputer will focus on severe weather, storm surge and river forecasting, just in time for spring's flood season and summer's hurricane season. Its speed helps it process the enormous amount of data streaming into its lines so it can provide "more timely, accurate, and reliable forecasts," NOAA head Kathryn Sullivan said.
The supercomputer showed its prowess last month, predicting an East Coast blizzard with great accuracy days before the storm, said Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service.
That's only a glimpse of what's to come.
"We expect to see better forecasts for hurricanes, severe weather, floods and other extreme events this year," Uccellini said.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1TA6Utg“Let’s gather this data, so we can have some kind of meaningful estimate of what the risk is.”
There is no doubt the Taser is less a mortal threat than a police service revolver, said James Brophy, a member of the Canadian expert panel, a cardiologist and McGill University Health Centre professor of epidemiology and biostatistics.
The question, he said, is by how much.
“Let’s gather this data, so we can have some kind of meaningful estimate of what the risk is,” Brophy said in an interview.
Behind the debate over the science is the tale of how the company got its transformative weapon to market and dominated the industry even as reports emerged of a risk of cardiac arrest from chest shocks.
Smith declined interview requests. His comments come from Taser records, published interviews, videotaped presentations, articles he wrote and 23 depositions he gave from 2005 through 2012. In April, Taser changed its name to Axon Enterprise Inc to reflect its new emphasis on police cameras and digital evidence management.
In a panel discussion at Stanford University in April, Smith summed up the goal that drives him. “By the end of my life I want to look back and see that bullets are obsolete,” he said. “I view the idea of killing as a technology limitation.”
GARAGE R&D
Taser’s march to market began in 1993 with, as Smith put it, “an entrepreneur with a garage and a good idea.”
The garage and the intellectual property belonged to Jack Cover, a retired NASA Apollo scientist who had invented an early stun gun.
Smith brought drive. A high school valedictorian and football captain, Smith earned a bachelor’s in biology at Harvard University, graduating with honors in three years. He got interested in electrical weapons after two high school football teammates were slain in a shooting blamed on road rage.
The tragedy, Smith said later, made him realize two things. One – gun violence was “a huge problem.” And “two – if somebody could help solve that problem, it could be an enormous business opportunity.”
Smith earned a master’s in business from the University of Chicago and returned home to Scottsdale, Arizona. At 23, the budding entrepreneur called Cover about the scientist’s patented electroshock dart gun, a device inspired by an electrified whale harpoon invented more than a century earlier.
Cover, who died in 2009, invited Smith to visit his museum-like trove of inventions in his Tucson home. Smith left with a deal to commercialize the Taser and his first hire – Cover, a director of science and technology 50 years his senior.
Jack was looking for someone “who would continue his life’s work,” Smith recalled in a deposition. “I was fresh out of school and looking for what to do with my life, and so there was quite a fit there. He became my mentor, at least technologically.”
Dr Robert Stratbucker, Taser’s first medical director, worked with both men.
“Jack had a lot of background in electrical,” Stratbucker said in an interview. “Rick was the one who was short on background. But he didn’t let that get in his way. He is a very smart guy. He picked up on that stuff very quickly.”
Cover told his protégé the commercialization of the Taser in the 1970s had been thwarted by “a very onerous section of the federal codes,” Smith recalled.
Because gunpowder propelled the original Taser’s electrified darts, the device fell under the oversight of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Cover wanted to escape the ATF by tweaking the propulsion.
Smith agreed, borrowed his parents’ motor home and moved to Tucson to get started.
Working out of Cover’s garage with parts from a local Ace Hardware store, the pair fashioned a prototype in weeks, swapping out gunpowder for compressed nitrogen.
They sent it to the ATF. Two weeks later, in November 1993, they got the answer they wanted. The Taser was no longer a firearm – and no longer subject to ATF rules.
“Things moved very fast,” Smith recalled. “In 45 days, we had gone from concept to prototype to approval.”
THE RODNEY KING PROBLEM
That was two years after a videotape of a brutal arrest had been beamed around the world. The grainy images showed a man named Rodney King rising from the side of a Los Angeles road even as electrified wires tethered him to a stun gun. The widespread takeaway: Some suspects could fight through painful shocks.
In early 1995, Smith took the Air Taser, his first, to market. Only after the Air Taser failed to knock down police volunteers in demonstrations did Smith conclude the conventional wisdom had been right: The device “was not particularly effective on motivated people,” he recalled in a deposition.
By then, Smith was busy promoting another invention, an electrified steering wheel lock. But the $199 Auto Taser was a "cataclysmic flop," he said, leaving him with millions of dollars of unsold devices, a miscalculation he later blamed on inadequate research.
Smith returned to the drawing board and his stun gun. With enough power, he figured the weapon would be able to jam the neural system, inducing debilitating muscle contractions.
He hired Stratbucker, an Omaha physician familiar with stun guns. A decade earlier, a sheriff who wore a pacemaker was considering buying a Nova brand first-generation stun device for his deputies. The sheriff asked Stratbucker to vet it.
At the time, Stratbucker tested the Nova 5000 on pigs and dogs, delivering some of the shocks through a catheter into the heart. He attributed the animals’ survival to the duration of the Nova 5000’s electrical pulses, too short to interfere with the heart, he later testified.
In 1996, Smith gave Stratbucker an experimental device and instructed him to find a wave of electricity strong enough to lock up muscles without affecting the heart.
Stratbucker shocked a single anesthetized pig dozens of times, gradually increasing the power until he got the result Smith was looking for. He sent a videotape to Smith.
“We began to see significant muscular activity, so the muscles were reacting, which is what we believed would make for a more effective device in humans,” Smith later said in a deposition.
In his introductory letter to police, Smith pointed to the pig’s survival as evidence of the Taser’s safety.
The pig test was “benign,” Stratbucker later said in a deposition. “We used the same animal over and over and over again. Put him back in the pen.” After a couple of days, he added, "we come back and do him again.”
Relying on a single animal in a safety demonstration is unusual, scientists say. The more subjects in safety studies, the more robust the results.
“It was in our darkest of days. I thought the company was going under.”
OVERCOMING ELECTRICAPHOBIA
The team concluded the electrical output was well below the cardiac safety threshold for electrified cattle fences – a proxy standard, since there are none for stun guns.
“We’ve got the answers we need at this point,” Smith recalled saying at the time. “Let’s develop it.”
By then, Smith had maxed out credit cards and tapped friends and family for loans. His father had “mortgaged just about everything,” Smith recalled in a videotaped interview.
“It was in our darkest of days,” he said. “I thought the company was going under.”
Smith hired a moonlighting laptop engineer to design an electronic circuit that would achieve the effect he wanted from eight AA batteries. That done, he retooled an assembly line, and in early 1999, the M26, the model he would bill as the “Advanced Taser,” was put to a human test.
Hans Marrero, a former hand-to-hand combat chief for the U.S. Marine Corps, stepped forward. He was an ideal test candidate, having gone to work for the company as its chief instructor after fighting through the Air Taser’s stun in a demonstration a couple of years earlier.
The M26 took Marrero down in 1.5 seconds. He described the shock in a promotional video as more incapacitating than grenade shrapnel.
Smith mounted a road show in 1999, the start of a winning strategy to overcome scientific naïvete and “electricaphobic” views.
“Our average person, our average street cop, even, for example, may not know the difference between electricity and radiation,” Smith said in a deposition.
“So, when they’d hear we are using electrical discharge to incapacity, they’d worry,” he said. “What we were conveying is that this electrical discharge that’s going through the body is at a level that’s not going to affect the heart.”
In demonstrations from Edmonton to Austin, Taser invited cops to take a hit, most of them for half a second, with darts taped to the skin away from the heart. The volunteers’ responses – falls, groans and exclamations – were recorded in logs. But their hearts were not monitored, and no blood tests or other measurements were taken.
“That bad boy smokes ya!” a Nashville officer exclaimed, a company log noted.
Another log extolled the prowess of Blaine, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer able to bench press 405 pounds. The bodybuilder was offered three days paid leave if he could pick up a knife three meters away while being shocked. When the shock hit, Blaine dropped but managed to crawl with one hand outstretched to the knife.
A few months later, in late 1999 in Edmonton, the prize was a case of beer for any officer who could advance five feet. Blaine’s feat stood unmatched.
In December 1999, Taser conducted what Smith called a final “experimental validation of safety.” Five lab dogs were shocked nearly 200 times altogether. According to Smith, none went into ventricular fibrillation, a chaotic heartbeat that can lead to death within minutes. He emphasized the point in bold in his introductory letter to police.
Even under “extreme circumstances,” with needles carrying the Taser’s pulses directly to the dogs’ hearts, researchers “were unable to cause a dangerous cardiac fibrillation,” Smith wrote. “I think it becomes apparent that the chances of a random situation occurring in the real world where the ADVANCED TASER would pose a risk to the heart is miniscule.”
Training materials repeated the account: The Taser “does not interrupt the heartbeat.”
After launching the M26, Taser began R&D on a successor – much of it conducted in a garage. It belonged to Magne Nerheim, the moonlighting laptop designer who, by that time, had been hired as a staff engineer.
A car collector, Nerheim’s six-car garage had air conditioning, 12-foot ceilings and elbow room. A veterinarian could drive in a car loaded with testing equipment and park by the table where test pigs were strapped.
“It was actually the nicest test facility we ever had,” Nerheim said later in a deposition. Still, he said, the garage tests were “not very super-controlled experiments.”
Taser introduced the model developed in Nerheim’s garage – the X26 – in 2003. About a year later, the company was embroiled in controversy. Several people died following police encounters involving Tasers. News articles in the company’s hometown Arizona Republic and The New York Times raised questions about Taser’s safety assertions and about the value of the early research.
Smith fought back, citing the original dog test. On an earnings call on July 20, 2004, he asserted Taser “never observed adverse arrhythmias that would be dangerous, much less cardiac fibrillation” in the dogs.
On the call, Smith also previewed the results of a soon-to-be published study. In it, he said, researchers were able to induce ventricular fibrillation in pigs with the X26, but only by turning up the charge to 20 times its standard output.
That Christmas Eve, 2004, Taser’s fax machine spat out more challenging news: a notice that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating whether “we had lied about the safety of our devices,” Smith recalled in a first-person account published online.
The “gut-wrenching” crisis was existential for Taser, Smith said. He feared a bad outcome could bring the corporate “death sentence” – a ban on government contracting, an important source of Taser’s revenue.
The SEC wouldn’t comment on the investigation. But the probe included a look at the 2003 death of a man shocked three times with a Taser in an Indiana jail, according to redacted records of the investigation released to Reuters under the Freedom of Information Act.
Smith said he disregarded his lawyers’ advice, walked into the SEC’s offices and gave them “everything they were asking for – a transparency judo kick,” he wrote, without recounting what he said. “The investigation ended, and our business got back on track.”
Taser’s challenges weren’t over.
NEW PIGS, NEW RESULTS
Between 2006 and 2008, a series of pig studies – including one sponsored by Taser – appeared in medical journals demonstrating that Tasers could disrupt the heart.
The company-sponsored study appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It showed that shocks to the chest triggered extra heartbeats, a phenomenon known as capture, as well as the more dangerous ventricular fibrillation, but only when more than a standard jolt was applied. Still, the authors advised avoiding the heart.
In a second study in the same journal, independent scientists, led by a doctor with the Canadian Institute of Health Research, subjected six pigs to 150 discharges. Their hearts appeared immune to shocks outside the chest. But when shot in the chest, the stun captured their hearts 79 percent of the time, suggesting the weapon “may have cardiac risks that require further investigation in humans.”
Cardiac capture is not necessarily dangerous. Pacemakers use the phenomenon to keep hearts beating properly. But a heart captured by a rapidly moving outside source of electricity can lead to potentially lethal fibrillation.
To mimic the stress of a police encounter, a response that makes the heart more vulnerable to capture, the Canadians gave the pigs synthetic adrenalin. Taser later said the technique skewed the results.
Then, doctors in Chicago tested Tasers in a series of studies that included assessments of the longer shocks sometimes used by police on combative suspects. They reported that two 40-second shocks resulted in cardiac capture in six out of six pigs. Two developed ventricular fibrillation and died.
Company officials had been briefed on the results of the Taser-sponsored study months before it was published in August 2006. It would be three years before the company warned police of the risk of capture and advised them to avoid chest shots.
In wrongful death suits, the company argued that it had no duty to warn police that Tasers could affect the heart – or advise them to avoid chest shocks – because animal experiments provide theoretical evidence, not proof, of human hazard. Despite its history of touting pig studies, Taser said the animals were poor proxies for people.
FROM PIGS TO PEOPLE
In 2007, the nature of the science changed.
The setting this time was a California prison, not a laboratory. A guard pulled a Taser on a 53-year-old inmate attempting to flee. The darts impaled the prisoner’s right chest, delivering two 5-second shocks.
A week later, the prisoner complained of chest pain. He had a pacemaker, and doctors remotely downloaded its electronic record of his cardiac activity, which indicated he had experienced capture.
“Stored event data revealed two high ventricular rate episodes corresponding to the exact time of the Taser application,” the doctors reported in the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology. They noted that the pacemaker may have helped conduct the electric jolt to the man’s heart.
The case showed the risk of capture, they said, was real – at least for the prisoner with the pacemaker. Taser says the risk is “theoretical.”
In May 2009, another group of heart specialists writing in a medical journal implicated a Taser in a death – the first such finding in the scientific literature. The case involved a 25-year-old man shocked by police three times for 5 seconds each. He collapsed immediately.
The investigators, including a cardiologist on Taser’s scientific advisory board, identified the signature peaks and valleys of ventricular fibrillation on a cardiac activity readout taken just before the young man died. They ruled out other possible causes, including cardiac disease and drugs.
A couple of months later, Taser's research yielded more signs that stun guns could affect the heart.
It came during pre-market field tests of a new model, the X3. The tests were conducted for the company by Jeffrey Ho and Donald Dawes, emergency room physicians who are paid medical consultants to Taser.
They tested Tasers on both pigs and people.
To evaluate the X3, volunteers were drawn from police training sessions. They were impaled with darts fired from 10 feet. Each got a Taser as compensation.
An ultrasound technician monitored their hearts. Seven subjects got 10-second shocks without apparent problem. Subject No. 8 was another story.
No. 8 was 23, slightly built and distinguished by one feature – pectus excavatum, a sunken breastbone. His heart was close to the surface.
One dart embedded in his right hip, the second in his sternum less than an inch from his heart. His heart rate, 61 pre-test, shot to 240 when the shock hit.
Ho and Dawes watched. No. 8 did not appear to lose consciousness. But, near the end of the 10-second test, he closed his eyes briefly.
When the electricity stopped, his heart rate fell to 57.
The doctors halted the study and notified Taser. The company reconfigured the X3 and put it back to the test. This time, 42 officers took shocks, including No. 8. Everyone appeared to come through okay. But researchers were only able to get heart rhythm readings on 27 subjects, a sample size too small, they noted, to detect a rare event.
The date stamp on the digital readout of No. 8’s racing heart is July 13, 2009.
At the end of September 2009, the company issued a bulletin, advising police against aiming at the chest – the target inscribed into cops’ muscle memory through firearms instruction and, until then, Taser training.
Taser’s bulletin also introduced the “extremely unlikely” possibility that the weapons could affect the heart. It said “changes in heart rate and rhythm,” as well as fibrillation, had been observed in small pigs. The advisory made no mention that a significant change in the heart rate – capture – also had been observed in a cop, Subject No. 8.
Smith addressed the new bulletin in an October 23, 2009 conference call with U.S. police officials.
“Are chest hits with the Taser dangerous?” he asked rhetorically.
“Definitively no.”
Back in 2004, Smith had given stock analysts a public preview of favorable unpublished study results in response to critical media reports about Taser safety. He treated the No. 8 result differently, opting to wait before disclosing the episode.
“Until that is published in the peer-reviewed literature, it's considered in review or confidential,” he said in a February 2010 deposition. “It's not for public release until the study's released.”
A CANINE CARDIAC
Smith revealed in that same 2010 deposition that there had been more to the company’s original dog study a decade earlier – the one he had cited in his first sales letter to police and again to counter safety concerns in 2004.
The disclosure came in a conference room across town from Taser’s headquarters. The occasion was the case of a Watsonville, California, man catastrophically injured in a 2006 Taser encounter.
Police had shocked Steven Butler with an X26 when he refused to get off a bus. Butler, then 45, was drunk and off his psychiatric medication. His heart fibrillated; his breathing stopped. Paramedics revived him, but almost 20 minutes had passed. He was left permanently disabled, unable to care for himself.
Treating physicians attributed his heart episode to the Taser shock, medical records show. Taser told the court the episode could have been caused by other factors, including a history of drug and alcohol abuse and an electrolyte imbalance, according to a report by Westlaw, the legal research service of Thomson Reuters.
The company also said research had not well established that Tasers could trigger ventricular fibrillation or cardiac arrest.
The February 25, 2010 deposition was the third showdown in two years between Smith and the Pasadena lawyer representing Butler. This time, lawyer John Burton teased out something new.
Burton asked: Did the company ever induce fibrillation in the heart of a test animal with a standard Taser?
“Yes,” Smith replied. A dog had gone into fibrillation in 1999.
“Did you tell anybody?”
“That result was not published,” Smith said. The early dog test involved a 5-second shock from a standard M26 Taser, he said. But it was delivered via a catheter into the heart – too extreme to be relevant to police work, he said.
The case settled before trial, with Taser paying Butler $2.85 million; it denied wrongdoing.
In March 2010, eight months after No. 8’s heart was captured, Taser’s research team submitted to a peer-reviewed journal an article about the field test in which it occurred.
In January 2011 – 18 months after the No. 8 episode – Forensic Science International published the piece, “Human cardiovascular effects of a new generation conducted electrical weapon.” The researchers said the episode raised the possibility Tasers could contribute to fibrillation by capturing the heart.
Co-author Ho, who serves as Taser’s medical director, said in an email that his research team is “the world's leading group” studying the Taser’s effects on people. “We consider all of our findings to be scientifically significant,” he said.
Asked about No. 8, Tuttle said Taser was forthcoming about the episode. "A full case report was published," he said, citing the journal article. Taser’s view, he said, is that the risk is limited to people with physiques similar to No. 8’s and impaled in precisely the same way.
Three months after publication, the U.K. government advisory committee on less-than-lethal weapons alerted British police organizations about the episode. The committee warned that – even though the case involved an unreleased prototype – all Taser models, including the widely used X26, should be considered as potent.
Because Taser’s police weapons are virtually unregulated in the United States, there was no such official warning in the company’s biggest market.
In Taser-sponsored risk management presentations, the episode was introduced to some police departments with a slide that noted there had been “one capture case” among humans. The slide said nothing more about Subject No. 8.
In March 2013, more than three years after the capture episode, Taser issued a warning that a shock “near the heart has a low probability of inducing extra heartbeats.”
“In rare circumstances, cardiac capture could lead to cardiac arrest,” the bulletin said, again without mentioning No. 8.
An immediate bulletin to cops explaining, in plain English, what happened to No. 8 would have had more impact than the scientific journal article, said Michael Leonesio, a retired Oakland police officer who ran the department’s Taser program. He has served as an expert witness in wrongful death suits against the company.
“Most cops aren’t going to take the time to go out and read these studies and talk to the researchers,” Leonesio said. “Cops are accepting. All they want to hear is it’s safe.”
Additional reporting by Jason Szep, Peter Eisler and Tim Reid
Next: The quiet exit of the X26, Taser’s most potent stun gun
Shocked by a Taser: “Overwhelming.” “Helpless.” “Excruciating pain.” When the Taser’s electrified darts struck him, Carl Bryan felt a shooting pain up his back that rattled his whole body, shaking his brain like a “peanut in a jar.” “If you were to shake that jar a hundred times as fast as you can and multiply that by a thousand,” he said. For Christa Keeton, getting shocked by Taser barbs felt like bees “crawling” through her skin. Eligio Torres Jr. likened the Taser’s electrical jolt to a “horrific electrical current just flowing through your body.” “You’re just shaking,” Torres said in court testimony. “You’re helpless. You can’t do much. You lose control.” Their comments illustrate an unmistakable truth: Tasers are painful. People shocked by them often call the experience the most painful of their lives. “Every inch of your body is going through excruciating pain,” said Bryan in a court deposition. On July 24, 2005, when he was 21, he was pulled over for driving without a seatbelt in Coronado, California. He had been stopped earlier that day for speeding and was upset as he stepped from his car. Officer Brian MacPherson testified he told Bryan to stay seated and that he defied his orders when he took a step toward him, which Bryan denied. MacPherson pulled the trigger of his Taser. One of the barbs struck so deep Bryan needed surgery to remove it, court records show. He fell face-first, knocking out four front teeth. He sued the Coronado Police Department for excessive force, but lost. The court granted the officer “qualified immunity,” a limited protection from liability. In standard “dart” mode, the gun-shaped Tasers – also known as electronic control devices or conducted electrical weapons – use compressed nitrogen to fire a pair of barbed darts connected by thin wires. When the darts hit someone, a pulsed current causes a neuromuscular response that paralyzes the target for several seconds. The idea is to give police a chance to get handcuffs on a suspect. “It’s overwhelming, not just physically but psychologically. You are no longer in control,” said Michael Leonesio, who developed a training program for Taser use as an officer in the police department in Oakland, California. In “drive stun” mode, the Taser works more like a conventional stun gun: An officer can press it against a person, pull the trigger and deliver a powerful shock. Drive stun is akin to a cattle prod: It sends an electric jolt that causes intense pain. Most often, it is used to get a resistant subject to abide by an officer’s orders. Torres, 40, said he was stunned with Taser darts twice by plainclothes officers who mistakenly believed him to be a suspect or a witness in a nearby shooting in Chicago, according to court documents. In an altercation after the shooting, Torres was shot in the side with a Taser, the court records show. He was jolted a second time on the ground. “Like an ongoing current. It’s never ending. When I thought it was going |
capitalism, regarded as a success, not a failure. ®Black Flag Protest against High Court Infiltrator Ruling, By Yoni Kempinski, Gil Ronen, Arutz Sheva, October 5, 2014
This story continues-
Residents of working class Tel Aviv expressed their anguish and anger Sunday following the High Court decision striking down the Infiltrator Law, by marching with black flags. Organizer May Golan said that the residents are taking down the Israeli flag and flying the black flag in protest of the dictatorship of “bagatz” – the Hebrew acronym for the High Court for Justice…a week after the High Court controversially shot down the so-called "Infiltrator Law", which sought to tackle the problem of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa residing in Israel
I particularly sympathized with the opinion expressed by the bearded gentlemen at 1:04. He said that “Bagatz” is more dangerous to Israel than ISIS and Hamas because it was not letting the Government deal with the problem of illegal immigration and was destroying the country from inside.
Americans, after U.S. Federal Court interventions to destroy democratic attempts to protect communities by State and local ordinances – to say nothing of the catastrophic Plyler vs Doe decree – will applaud this response:
The High Court's decision was widely condemned by legislators, who saw it as an infringement on Israel's democratically-elected leadership by an unelected institution notorious for judicial activism in favor of "left-wing" causes. Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar noted that the decision marked the second time in a single year that the High Court intervened in legislation regarding infiltrators, which was approved by large majorities in two different Knessets. The previous Infiltrator Law was completely annulled by the High Court. Following this, a new law was passed, and now the court has effectively annulled it as well.
Judicial Imperialism and Kritarchy are not just American problems it seems.
But (unlike Americans) Israelis have statesmen willing to defend them. Prime Minister Netanyahu, fresh from stomping on an American questioner who dared query his policies as I reported in Israel’s Netanyahu: “We Don’t Have To Open Our Doors To Be Swamped” has drawn his sword:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered ministers on Tuesday to draft new legislation to tackle illegal immigrants after the High Court overturned a law allowing their extended detention without trial…. "It is in the highest national interest to prevent the entry of new infiltrators to Israel and to encourage the departure of those who are in Israel and that is what we shall do," the statement quoted Netanyahu as telling Tuesday's meeting.
Any new policy toward illegal migrants must include jail time, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Monday, calling to limit the High Court’s ability to overturn laws… “We need to see the big picture,” he said. “Does Israel want to keep its character as a Jewish and democratic state? Does it want to protect its borders? Then we need to be clear on this matter.”
But the question remains: U.S. Amnesties Illegals, Israel Deports. Why The Difference?General view of the NCAA logo at midcourt. (Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
The NCAA may face financial consequences for its decision Monday to relocate seven championship events from the state of North Carolina, according to a review of contract documents and interviews with local officials.
On Monday, the NCAA Board of Governors — a group of college and university CEO’s that oversees policy matters across all three of the association’s competitive divisions — voted to take the action as a result of the state's controversial House Bill 2. The law prevents cities and counties from passing protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And public schools must require bathrooms or locker rooms be designated for use only by people based on their biological sex.
The NCAA has championships scheduled for North Carolina beyond 2016-17 but has only taken action for this school year.
Among the events affected are first- and second-round games of the Division I men’s basketball tournament, which had been set for Greensboro Coliseum on March 17 and 19.
The lease and bid-specification contracts covering those events do not appear to allow the NCAA to terminate the arrangement for the reason it announced. USA TODAY Sports obtained the documents from the Greensboro Coliseum Complex under an open-records request.
Both agreements were signed by representatives of the Coliseum Complex and the Atlantic Coast Conference, the events’ nominal host, In August 2014 — well before House Bill 2 came along.
The bid specification document states that in deciding where to award the games, the NCAA will consider factors including a site’s “ability to promote an atmosphere of respect for and sensitivity to the dignity of every person.”
But the termination provisions of the venue lease agreement state that the agreement can be terminated by the NCAA without liability to the NCAA only if one of three conditions are left unaddressed after the NCAA provides notice and a 30-day period to remedy the issue. The conditions include the venue’s failure to “retain its status in the industry as a top-tier facility … through a deterioration of physical structure” and “material breach by any one of the entities that made representations relied upon by the NCAA in awarding” the events.
In 2014, the Coliseum Complex and the ACC could make the necessary representations.
The lease agreement does not allow for legal remedies through the courts. It requires any disputes that the parties cannot resolve between themselves to be addressed through mediation and, if necessary, arbitration.
Scott Johnson, the Coliseum Complex’s deputy director, said that members of the coliseum staff are scheduled to have a conference call with NCAA on Wednesday to discuss a variety of matters, including how to work with people who already have purchased tickets and with area hotels that have been holding the rooms host sites are required to provide.
Johnson said he did want to get into legal matters, but he noted that it is “very unlikely” the coliseum will be able to get a multi-day event booked to cover the five days it was contractually required to set aside for the NCAA’s use. He said officials are trying, but only be able to secure a one-night concert or two.
According to the contract, the NCAA pays a rental fee that’s based on a percentage of the gross ticket revenue, but that fee basically covers the venue’s required expenses, Johnson said — perhaps with money left over if those expenses are managed well. Johnson said “the opportunity for upside is concessions and parking” and that early round NCAA tournament games the facility has hosted in the past have been “revenue positive” for the facility.
Johnson said that because “we want to host this event again in the future, we want to be as cooperative with (NCAA officials) as possible. … We want to see through this transition. But for now we are where we are. We need to move forward and deal with it.”
NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn referred comment back to the association’s statement Monday in which Georgia Tech president G.P. “Bud” Peterson, who chairs the board of governors said: “As representatives of all three divisions, the Board of Governors must advance college sports through policies that resolve core issues affecting student-athletes and administrators. This decision is consistent with the NCAA's long-standing core values of inclusion, student-athlete well-being and creating a culture of fairness.”
In addition to the men's basketball tournament in Greesnboro, the NCAA's decision affects four championships that had been set for the Town of Cary, including Division I women's soccer and women's lacrosse.
Town spokeswoman Susan Moran said a combined total of 5,300 hotel nights had been reserved for these events.
"We have a great relationship with the NCAA," she said. "We feel caught in the middle. We've bid on future tournaments, and we want to keep that in mind. It doesn't mean we won't be looking at our contracts to see if something needs to be done. But those conversations haven't been had yet."by KEVIN GROSS
A $5 million project in Downtown Edgebrook to replace sewers in Devon Avenue and some sidestreets could snarl traffic in the area for months with the first phase of the work beginning in mid December.
City Department of Water Management officials, engineers, a consultant and Alderman Margaret Laurino (39th) announced at a public meeting on Nov. 29 at the Edgebrook Library, 5331 W. Devon Ave., that the first phase of the 8-month project would include work in Leoti Avenue from Le Mai Avenue to Spokane Avenue, and in Spokane from Leoti to Devon Avenue. The second phase of the project, which would take up the majority of time, would be in Devon from Spokane to Caldwell Avenue.
"I know it can be difficult to go through major infrastructure projects like this," Laurino said. "But we really aren’t doing this to torture you. We genuinely need new sewers in this area."
The work in the first phase of the project will include replacing a 12-inch clay pipe with a 54-inch reinforced concrete pipe, according to project coordinating engineer Kevin Carpenter who also represents DB Sterlin Consultants.
The second phase is scheduled to begin in February and take about 6 months to replace a 42-inch brick pipe with a 54-inch reinforced concrete pipe, Carpenter said. The second phase of the project will take much longer because it involves complex engineering work including work under the Metra train tracks between Kinzua and Lehigh avenues near the Edgebrook Metra station.
"There’s always going to be access on Devon, except there might be a short closure when we’re first coming from Spokane to Devon, maybe a week or two where we might have to close down eastbound Devon and detour it for a short period," Carpenter said.
Devon Avenue work will be concentrated around the road median which will be removed and replaced, allowing for at least one lane of traffic in each direction throughout most of the project, according to V3 Companies project contractor resident engineer Ed Benesh.
Road closures are expected to take place on a rolling basis starting from east and southeast to west and northwest areas of the project, with sewer crews occupying a block to a block-and-a-half at a time and road repair following suit, Benesh said.
"What we’d love to do, we could get the concrete crews and start restoring the road right behind us too," Benesh said. "So maybe for a two to three block section, we could have what we call the ‘pipe train,’ with the restoration as the caboose rolling down the road."
The project is expected to reduce flooding for residents and businesses stretching far from the project area, including areas bounded by Caldwell Avenue to the north, Le Mai Avenue to the northwest, Tahoma and Hiawatha Avenues to the south, and Wildwood Avenue to the southeast.
Northwest households are slated to benefit due to lying on higher ground from the work areas, creating natural runoff flow to the new sewers, Carpenter said.
"It’s a very large area benefiting from what we’re spending," Carpenter said. "It’s a high bang- for-your -buck type of project."
Carpenter said that the project will be funded by a loan from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and repaid over time with funds from the city’s water and sewer taxes, which were increased in the past years.
The area was chosen for sewer replacement due to numerous factors, which Carpenter said included modeling of high flood risk areas on a heat map, monitoring 3-1-1 records to gauge resident complaints, and accounting for a cost-benefit ratio. Benesh said that the old pipes were built in the 1930’s and require repair.
"In engineering terms, if you have a 100-year flood, it’s a 1 percent chance of that happening in a year," Carpenter said. "Those 100-year floods get worse over time. With all the continuous construction, there’s less permeable area for rain to go in, and it needs to go into the sewer system since less rain will seep into the ground naturally." He referenced a storm in 2012, which flooded a part of Albany Park, as a recent 500-year flood.
Some residents expressed concern about child safety due to a large amount of student crossings at the Devon intersection and Minnehaha and Central avenues.
Benesh said that there is the opportunity to bring extra traffic personnel from Chicago Department of Transportation, and that for past projects near schools they had "staging plans where our trucks came in and out of the neighborhood rather than parents going around to drop off kids."The Cult of Two
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
That quote describes perfectly the radical psychological process of brainwashing. A person involved with a psychopath was manipulated, but they certainly weren’t brainwashed — that only happens to people indoctrinated into a cult, right?
Nope. It can also happen in a one-on-one situation. Think of it as a cult of two.
Brainwashing (also known as mind control, coercive persuasion, thought reform and thought control) refers to a process in which a group or individual “systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated.”
“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
Steven Hassan, a licensed counselor and former member of the Unification Church, is considered one of the foremost authorities on destructive mind control. Hassan operates the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, which works to extricate individuals from cults… and from controlling relationships. Hassen says that destructive mind control takes the ‘locus of control’ away from an individual. The word ‘locus’ means position or place. When our locus of control is removed from us, it goes to a new location — our abuser’s hands.
Psychopaths are adept at gaining control. They begin to gain control by creating an illusion of love, and then they gain complete control by creating the fear of losing it. That point — when things take a turn from a seemingly wonderful relationship to an inexplicably troubled one — is known as the manipulative shift, and that’s when the downward spiral begins. Because they’re at the controls, we just go along for the ride. It’s a crazy and damaging one, piloted by someone with callous disregard and a ruthless desire make us lose so they can gain from our losses.
“It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control,’ they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink.'”
~ George Orwell, 1984
“The effects of living under a controlling person or in a relationship where you didn’t feel that you could think or act for yourself are long-lasting. Getting away from the relationship is important, but just the first step.
Those still recovering from a difficult relationship often experience a variety of psychological and relationship problems—anxiety disorders, panic attacks, sleep disorders, lack of trust, paranoia and feelings of alienation. Getting the support you need can help you move beyond these.
Many therapists don’t understand or minimize the “mind games” “played” by controlling individuals. Clients are mistakenly directed by their therapists to look at childhood issues to explain their concerns, ignoring the fact that many clients were deceptively seduced by their “partners” and had phobias drilled into them.”
~ StevenHassen
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
Brainwashing (mind control) — whether exercised over hundreds or just one — is achieved using four tactics (for which Hassen coined the BITE acronym):
Control over behavior, information, thoughts and emotions.
In the situation we experienced, the psychopath controlled information by withholding the truth about their real identity and motivations, which allowed them to gain entrance to and establish a foothold in our lives. They continued to control information through deception. Without the facts, we didn’t know what we were really dealing with and could make no meaningful decision of what to do about it.
They controlled thought by punishing questions or criticism with fear, which they induced by withdrawing affection, becoming angry or with other tactics. To deal with it, we rationalized, denied or engaged in wishful thinking. They led us to think we were involved in something wholly different from what is actually was.
They controlled behavior with covert rules and regulations we unknowingly complied with: We refrained from acting in ways that would anger them or cause them to question our trust, commitment, character or sanity. They may also have controlled how we spent our time or our money, or even what we wore, what we ate or how much sleep we got.
They controlled emotion by restricting it, which only led to more extreme emotion. They even purposely provoked emotion simply so they could restrict it, in order to cause distress and to create a reason to punish using withdrawal, anger, denigration or accusations. Through deception, they induced guilt, fear, anger and sadness.
“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
‘Brainwashing’ sounds much more serious than ‘manipulation,’ but when you recognize that you experienced it, you can better realize the extent and severity of what you endured and the trauma that it caused. When you realize you have soap bubbles coming out of your ears, the confusion, doubt, guilt, self-blame, anger, loss of confidence — and the persistent love and longing — can finally make sense.
[/sf_iconbox]
Brainwashing overcomes an individual’s free will and ability to think critically.
According to renowned psychologist and cult opponent Dr. Margaret Singer, “Victims gradually lose their ability to make independent decisions and exercise informed consent. Their critical thinking, defenses, cognitive processes, values, ideas, attitudes, conduct and ability to reason are undermined by a technological process rather than by meaningful free choice, rationality, or the inherent merit or value of the ideas or propositions being presented.”
We’ve heard how hard it is to get out of a cult. It’s just as hard to get free of a cult for two.
♥ Share your thoughts by leaving a comment!
Related PostsShutterstock
There's been chatter about the awful comments that people make to mainstream-media poly articles, and some are saying "never read the comments." I disagree, for reasons I'll get to, but first here's a heartening counterexample. Voxxi is a big new news site for Latinos whose primary language is English. (It did a fine article on safer sex among polys last month.) A few days ago a book reviewer there wrote about a novel that has a doomed attempt at an open love triangle; her review bore the dreadful title "Polyamory, the kind of love that always hurts." Links to the article popped up here and there.Our side jumped into the breach. I was proud to put up the first comment while riding the train home from the Poly Living conference. More of us piled in, and we've swamped the place. The book reviewer has come in too, backpedaling and thanking us for our thoughts and saying she was only discussing someone else's book (which she wasn't really, but never mind). I don't think she'll make these mistakes again.See Polyamory, the kind of love that always hurts (Feb. 9, 2014), with the comments at the end.This shows what we can do. And not for the first time. The way to win the comment wars, or at least to place respectably, is to step in, say your piece politely and intelligently, and leave. It will stand out from the crap and impress the undecided.In addition, if you fail to look at what the other side is actually saying, you will become ignorant about them. Politics is full of this, and the side that does it the most ends up looking stupidest.So don't be scared to witness people saying we're ugly and fat or too rich and thin ; dumb losers or privileged winners, STI breeders or prudes about always using condoms, sex sluts or "all talk and no action," old hippies or naive millennials. Say your piece politely and thoughtfully, and leave.Having a thin skin on the internet is20th century.Oh, and don't wait for me to post things here. Catch news faster through Google Alerts, using the search-query terms polyamory, polyamorous, etc. You can limit your alerts to "news," or include other types of sources to be monitored.And another thing: If it's a print newspaper or magazine, once you've posted your comment, copy and paste it to the Letters to the Editor. A printed letter still gets hundreds of times more readers than an online comment. If looking up the letters address is too much trouble, just mail it to letters@[].com and it's almost sure to get there.You'll probably have to include your real name and a way for them to contact you for verification, but they will honor a request for a letter to be printed anonymously.
Labels: activismIn a remarkable case of agenda politics eclipsing science, America’s largest LGBT group has threatened harm to Johns Hopkins University if it doesn’t censor the scientific findings of leading scholars on the origins of homosexuality and transgenderism.
In a recent major study titled “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” researchers from Johns Hopkins found that there is virtually no scientific evidence that people are born gay or transgender.
In response, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the most powerful lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer advocacy group in the country, labelled the report an “attack on LGBT communities” and threatened to penalize Johns Hopkins University if it does not distance itself from the study.
HRC Foundation’s Healthcare Equality Index has begun rating hospitals with a numerical score this year and will evaluate whether hospitals’ practices reflect “responsible citizenship” (read: LGBT-friendly). If Hopkins’ leadership refuses to censor the study, “its Healthcare Equality Index score will be reduced substantially,” the LGBTQ group stated.
To their credit, University officials replied that while they remain committed to supporting the LGBT community they are also committed to academic freedom.
In a letter to the Johns Hopkins Medicine community, Paul B. Rothman, dean of the medical faculty, and Ronald R. Peterson, president of Johns Hopkins Health System, defended the right of scholars to publish their findings.
As an academic medical research institution, they wrote, “academic freedom is among our fundamental principles — essential to the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry, and a privilege that we safeguard.”
Academic freedom, the officials noted, is “designed to afford members of the community the broadest possible scope for unencumbered expression, investigation, analysis, and discourse.”
The scholars conducting the study bear the highest credentials in the field. Dr. Paul R. McHugh is arguably the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century, and served as director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Johns Hopkins University for 27 years. Importantly, during McHugh’s tenure, the institute pioneered work with transgender individuals.
McHugh’s co-author is Dr. Lawrence S. Mayer, an epidemiologist trained in psychiatry and a scholar in residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
In their 116-page report, the scholars analyzed research from the biological, psychological, and social sciences, and concluded that many of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence.
“Some of the most widely held views about sexual orientation, such as the ‘born that way’ hypothesis, simply are not supported by science. The literature in this area does describe a small ensemble of biological differences between non-heterosexuals and heterosexuals, but those biological differences are not sufficient to predict sexual orientation, the ultimate test of any scientific finding,” the report said.
Ever faithful to its agenda, the Human Rights Campaign wants to bully Johns Hopkins into stifling free scientific inquiry when the results run contrary to its deeply held beliefs and desires. It is willing to punish a world-class institution for protecting academic freedom.
Fortunately, officials at Johns Hopkins seem to have enough integrity to reject these heavy-handed attempts, at least for now.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsromeLast week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions assigned a federal civil rights lawyer to Burlington, Iowa, to help prosecute the murder of Kedarie Johnson, a genderfluid 16-year-old whose body was found in an alleyway in March 2016. Sessions had personally made the decision, surprising those who believe the attorney general, and the Trump administration more broadly, are instinctively hostile to trans people.
"This spring, the attorney general directed Civil Rights Division attorneys to dedicate themselves to proactively investigate a certain set of cases of individuals who were murdered because they were transgender," Department of Justice spokesman Devin O'Malley told me in an email. "This is just one example of the attorney general's commitment to enforcing the laws enacted by Congress and to protecting the civil rights of all individuals."
Sessions, who first publicly proclaimed his intent to prosecute hate crimes against transgender individuals in a June speech, noted that "hate crimes are violent crimes" and that he had met "personally" with leaders of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division "to discuss a spate of murders around the country of transgender individuals."
Though the move attracted headlines across the country, both LGBTQ advocates and Sessions's supporters warn not to interpret too much from his decision, which they say is an attempt to prosecute violent crime and to comply with the law, rather than a move forward in the fight for transgender rights.
Conservatives argue that Sessions is following the letter of the law and that moving to protect trans people from discrimination in the workplace, as Barack Obama's administration tried to do, is an overreach.
"This simply suggests that the Justice Department is going to be interpreting the law as it is written and not distorting the law to advance a political objective, which the Obama Justice Department did all the time," said Roger Clegg, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Clegg said that the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 added gender identity to the categories encompassed by hate crimes—but other civil rights laws have not been updated to include gender identity. Clegg said Sessions had rightly denied transgender individuals employment and educational protections because the Civil Rights Act only explicitly protects people on the grounds of "sex, race, color, national origin, and religion."
"There is no good way to interpret those laws as covering discrimination of transgender individuals," said Clegg of Title VII (addressing employment) and Title IX (addressing education) of the Civil Rights Act. "I'd expect and hope that the administration is going to be interpreting all civil rights statutes as written."
LGBTQ advocates and former Obama administration staffers argue that that narrow reading of the law is incorrect and that the Civil Rights Act actually includes gender identity, since it is bound up in expectations of how people of a certain sex should act or identify. And they say Sessions offers little hope in his prosecution of Johnson's murder as a hate crime.
"Let's please not overstate the significance of this, particularly against the backdrop of what Sessions has been doing to lead an anti-LGBT crusade," said Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under Obama, who told me the hate crime prosecution would have no impact on transgender individuals' civil rights.
Gupta, now President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, noted that Sessions had instated one sweeping measure after the next to reverse progress made by the Obama administration protecting LGBTQ individuals.
Just this month the attorney general overturned the Department of Justice's policy providing employment protections to people based on their gender identity and issued a "protections for religious liberty" directive allowing people to deny LGBTQ rights on the grounds of their religious beliefs.
He's also sided with cake makers refusing to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples in a Supreme Court lawsuit, and told the Christian Broadcasting Network last week the Christian baker had a "fundamental right" not to be "required to participate in a ceremony in some fashion that he does not believe in." And Sessions has reversed nondiscrimination policies for transgender students that guaranteed they can use the bathroom of their gender identity.
"There's a direct line between discrimination and hate and that hate can sometimes lead to violence."
–Vanita Gupta
Critics say that what Sessions is doing is essentially defending trans people after they've been the victims of violent crimes—but not protecting them beforehand.
"The Attorney General's whole shtick is his focus on violent crimes but he refuses to connect the dots between the policies he's pushing that promote violence," said Gupta. "There's a direct line between discrimination and hate and that hate can sometimes lead to violence."
Some advocates say they've seen an increase of crimes against transgender individuals this year, which they link to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies of the current administration.
Emily Waters, senior manager of research and policy for the New York City Anti-Violence Project, said her organization's legal department had seen a 24 percent increase in overall clients seeking legal services this year, including a 10 percent increase in clients facing hate violence.
"People feel more emboldened in their biases," said Waters of the tone under the current administration. Her clients' fear of attacks had also increased, which she said "has a very real impact on our communities."
"It's incredibly hard to believe this is anything but a ploy and in our mind what we fear is that this will be used as a way to push Sessions's pro-policing agenda," Waters told me. "If we are really going to be talking about addressing hate violence it's not going to happen by only increasing hate crimes prosecutions."
The ACLU's staff attorney for the LGBT and HIV Project, Chase Strangio, echoed Waters's dismay at Sessions's policies, claiming that there was "nothing to see here other than a law enforcement official believing in the power of punishment." Strangio said the DOJ's lack of protections for transgender people meanwhile perpetuated a lack of healthcare, housing, and employment for the population.
Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said Sessions's office had "made it clear from the beginning that they're interested in prosecuting murders," but that his prosecutions "did not ameliorate the damage" he had done to the transgender community. And Gerry Hebert, director of voting rights and redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center, who testified against Sessions's civil rights record when he was nominated as attorney general, said it was "too early to take one example and say it's an awakening" for Sessions's perspective on civil rights.
The DOJ declined to comment on the criticisms advocates made about the agency's treatment of LGBTQ civil rights.
The increase of hate crimes prosecutions combined with a failure to acknowledge civil rights hearkens back to the era of the Reagan administration, said Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"I think it reflects a pattern where we're going after the most egregious cases of hate and violence," said Cohen, "but ignore the more systemic problems against a vilified community."
Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.Romain Grosjean believes his ability as a driver runs parallel to Haas' own progress, encouraging the Frenchman to remain at the US outfit in the coming years.
As he concludes his second season with Haas which joined the grid last year, Grosjean says he is happy at his team despite a justified reputation for moaning and groaning on a regular basis over the radio.
Beyond the race-day complaints however, the 31-year-old sees himself racing at the pinnacle of motorsport - preferably with Haas - for a good many years.
"We're growing up together," Grosjean told French radio RMC.
"I have the advantage of having started my career in F1 at 27, and now I'm 31.
"I see myself continuing until I'm 37, 38 or even 39. I still have many years ahead. If I can grow up with Haas, then yes why not?"
Grosjean initially believed he would perhaps be in with a chance of joining Ferrari, Haas technical partner, but those hopes have obviously dissipated.
Still, if Haas steps up to the challenge and delivers a good package in the future, he will hold up his end of the bargain and fight for an outright win.
"If I am given a car to win a Grand Prix, I am ready to do that today," he added.
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and TwitterGary Young fled to a Cherokee Indian reservation in Tahlequah, Okla. He said he has no intention of coming back to Massachusetts, where a judge ordered him to pay almost $4,000 a month in alimony. He says he does not have the money.
Just more than a year ago, Gary Young was sentenced to 120 days in Middlesex Jail in Cambridge for failing to come up with $20,000 for his wife’s lawyer during their divorce proceedings in Cambridge Probate and Family Court. He was found in contempt of court and led away in handcuffs and leg irons.
“It was the most humiliating thing,” says Young, who is from Sudbury. “I’m in there with gang bangers and drug addicts and felons. I had no criminal record. I have a pharmacy degree and an MBA. I was a Marine.”
Six days later he was released by Judge Patricia Gorman after family and friends raised the $20,000. But shortly after, before his divorce was finalized, Young, who was unemployed, took a dramatic step to protest the system he says failed him and the new alimony law he says isn’t being enforced.
Advertisement
He lit out for a Cherokee Indian reservation in eastern Oklahoma. Young, whose father was half-Cherokee, says he has no intention of coming back to Massachusetts, where the courts have ordered him to pay nearly $4,000 a month in alimony — money he says he doesn’t have and shouldn’t have to pay.
Get Metro Headlines in your inbox: The 10 top local news stories from metro Boston and around New England delivered daily. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here
It is 20 months since the state’s sweeping alimony law went into effect, replacing an old system marred by inequities and abuses, including, in some cases, alimony payments for life, even for short-term marriages. Critics said the old law discouraged recipients, most of them women, from supporting themselves, and from remarrying.
The new law, which went into effect March 1, 2012, was hailed as the most dramatic reform in family law in decades and as a model nationwide, with alimony based on need. Unanimously approved by the Massachusetts Legislature, it curbs lifetime payments and sets specific time limits on alimony for marriages of 20 years or less. In longer marriages, judges may still determine the length of support payments.
It also terminates alimony when the payor reaches full retirement age as defined by the Social Security Administration, though judges can extend alimony payments only for “good cause shown.” Such exceptions must be justified in writing by the judge.
Also under the new law, alimony is supposed to end when a recipient spouse has been living with another partner for at least three months.
Advertisement
“The message here is that everyone has to plan and be responsible for his or her own retirement,” says state Representative Gale Candaras, Democrat of Wilbraham, who cochaired the task force that wrote the new law. “The alimony law we had before discouraged people from rebuilding their lives and taking care of themselves after divorce.”
But the law, while a clear improvement, hasn’t been the hoped-for panacea. Judges, lawyers, claimants, and advocates complain that its language is unclear and confusing on key issues, leading some judges to misinterpret the law, and others to simply ignore it.
The previous law reflected an era when women kept house and men provided. There were no formulas or guidelines for Massachusetts judges to follow when determining the amount and length of alimony. The lesser-earning spouse, usually the wife, was often given lifetime support. David Lee, a Boston family lawyer who helped write the new law, says its purpose was to “bring the issue of alimony into the modern world.”
Susan J. Matthew, a family lawyer and mediator with Healy, Fiske, Richmond & Matthew in Cambridge, says the law provides consistency and specific guidelines for judges to follow and “has given us some real clarity in that sense.”
And yet, it’s not clear the law is being consistently interpreted or enforced. “How is the law working? The answer is not as clear as people had hoped it would be,” says Matthew.
Giving up on court system
Advertisement
Young says he fled a judge and a court system that refused to listen to him or review evidence that he could not afford to pay his own divorce lawyer, much less his wife’s.
Gary and Elaine Young were married in 1979 and have a grown daughter. He was a pharmacist and later a well-paid executive with a medical device company. He left his job in 2008 to launch a biotech start-up that ultimately failed in 2011.
Young has been unemployed since the business went under, leaving him deeply in debt. But he says the judge did not want to hear it. Through a spokesman, Judge Gorman, who was appointed by Governor Deval Patrick in 2011, declined to comment on the case.
“The very first thing she said to me was, ‘Well, Mr. Young, you’re successful, you’re well-educated, you made a lot of money, and you were in the Marine Corps. I’m going to keep all of this in mind.’ ”
When Young failed to report for a divorce hearing in December 2012 (he was already in Oklahoma by then), Gorman issued a warrant for his arrest. If Young leaves the reservation (the Cherokee Nation is considered a sovereign land with its own constitution, courts, and government), and is detained for any offense, including traffic violations, he could be sent back to jail in Massachusetts.
In April, Gorman sent Young a copy of the final divorce decree, ordering him to pay nearly $4,000 a month in alimony. The amount was established “by using an attribution of income to Gary in the annual amount of $125,242 and his Social Security income in the annual amount of $28,171,” as well as various calculations based on his former wife’s income, according to the order.
Gary Young scoffs at the “attributed income” total, which he believes is based on his income between 2005 and 2009. He says he made no money the two years he ran the start-up and has not made any since.
“This is now 2013,” he says. “I’m 67 years old and living on Social Security. Judge Gorman told me every time I went to court to get a job.”
Young says he tried, applying to various pharmacies, but got no offers, and that his former wife’s lawyer has copies of his applications. The lawyer, Amy Dawson, declined to comment on the case.
Under the new law, alimony payments are to end when the payor reaches “full |
becomes faeces, medium part becomes flesh and the subtlest becomes the mind in the ration of 10/16, 5/16 and 1/16 respectively. The grossest part of fluids become urine, the medium becomes blood and the subtlest becomes the prana (energy). Similarly, the grossest part of fats becomes the bone, the medium becomes the marrow and the subtlest becomes the speech. Unlike the modern scientists these findings are not based on animal experiments. They are purely based on personal experiments and experiences. A yogi named Shvetaketu lived on fluids for fifteen days and lost his power of thinking but regained it again as soon as he ate solid food. His power of speech diminished when he went without fats. This experience revealed to him that the mind is the product of food, energy of fluids and speech of fats.
The customary Indian food is based on some of these teachings of our ancestors. Some of my friends on facebook from China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Singapore mentioned few facts similar to this.
Contrary to this, the western food is totally different. Unlike the Indian food, western food is usually comprised of baked and dry foods like meat, pizza, burgers, and sausages served with salads, cream, catchup and sauces which contain less or almost no water content in them. Secondly, due to the cold weather conditions it is not possible for them to drink 5-6 liters of water a day and I suppose 3 liters a day is more than enough for them. Plenty of Dr. M.S. Raju's followers in the west are able to follow Dr. Raju's way of drinking water successfully because they make their food in Indian style even in America or any other State in the west. I am not yet sure on my part whether this is the exact reason why the people in the west believe that drinking water while eating helps digestion. I leave this up to the people who live there to experiment and experience the fact. As far as Indians are concerned they are enjoying the refined state of health after following the practice of avoiding water while eating.
Next time, hope to come up with another interesting topic on Natural Way of Living. Till then keep watching for updates…!I’m told that bats feature in many people’s nightmares (I’ve kept several species, including Vampire Bats, and have found all to be quite calm, and even trainable in some cases, but that’s just me!). If bats themselves have nightmares, then surely the Amazonian Giant Centipede, Scolopendra gigantea, must make numerous appearances…the video linked below of one hunting bats in a cave will illustrate my point. Another of these aggressive beasts gave me more than a few sleepless nights, and stress-filled days, as well.
Escaped Leopard Dealt with, Escaped Centipede…
My own Giant Centipede nightmare began when an 11-inch-long specimen destined for a zoo exhibit escaped in a holding room. Among the animal keepers working there at the time was a woman who had lost several fingers to a Gorilla, a man who had been gored by a Gaur (a giant relative of the cow), and another who had been chased by a Kodiak Bear and carried an Anaconda tooth buried in his wrist (yours truly).
Each of us had also helped round-up formidable escapees, including Spitting Cobras, Cassowaries and Snow Leopards, yet to the person we were terrified of picking up anything without first checking that the savage little invertebrate was not lurking below!
A Near-Perfect Defense
Such is the reaction of many who have witnessed first-hand an agitated or hungry Giant Centipede in action. The head rears up and whips violently back and forth, drawing attention to the huge, sharp, venom-injecting fangs (known as the forcipules, or maxillipeds), which seem almost impossible to avoid. Those who have seen the vicious wounds that these fangs can inflict on even large prey animals steer well clear of these ultimate invertebrate predators.
There is simply no place to grab a centipede, as its flexibility is unrivaled in the animal kingdom – most snakes pale in comparison (the animal being held in the photo is dead). Even if one succeeded in reaching the area just behind the head, the hard, pointed rear legs would be brought to bear on the skin, causing intense pain not only from trauma but also via irritating chemicals that are released in stressful situations…most enemies let go of the head, and are immediately bitten.
Centipedes belong to the Invertebrate Class Chilopoda, which contains over 3,000 species. Actually, we have no idea how many exist – several years ago a new species was discovered in NYC’s Central Park, in an area trod daily by thousands of people (please see article below)…imagine what lurks deep below tropical forest floors!
Further Reading
Arkive Video of a Giant Centipede hunting bats in a cave.
New Centipede Discovered in Central Park (Note: error in article – centipedes are predators, and do not consume leaf litter).
Centipede image referenced from wikipedia and originally posted by Tod Baker
Centipede head image referenced from wikipedia and originally posted by Fritz Geller-GrimmPANAMA CITY — Efforts to restore a passenger rail line between Orlando and New Orleans received a nod from Congress last week as representatives approved a bipartisan bill that would launch a study to explore the feasibility of the service.
Publicly funded rail company Amtrak operated a rail line between Jacksonville and New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina, but service has not been restored since the storm knocked out operations nearly a decade ago.
The rails have since been repaired, but are not currently used by passenger trains.
Developing the "Gulf Coast Passenger Rail" has emerged as a top priority for the Southern Rail Commission, a group charged with promoting safe and efficient transportation in the region.
The group is proposing a route that would run from Orlando to Jacksonville, and across the Florida Panhandle, Alabama and Mississippi to end in New Orleans.
SRC Chair Knox Ross said approval of the Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act, H.R. 749, marks the first step toward that goal.
"Probably our main focus right now is restoring the service between Orlando and New Orleans and Jacksonville and New Orleans," Ross said. "What we're looking at is doing something different and better than what was there before."
The previous rail line, the "Sunset Limited," had many flaws — running just three days a week and at odd hours, Ross said. The train did not stop in Panama City, but instead ran further north along the I-10 corridor with stops in Tallahassee, Chipley and Crestview.
Ross, who serves as mayor of Pelahatchie, Miss., a small town just outside Jackson, said access to transportation is essential in supporting economic progress in the many small towns along the Gulf Coast.
"It's become difficult for people to get where they're going for a reasonable amount of money," Ross said.Tempo Storm Heroes’ disbandment earlier this month led many fans to speculate whether Tempest would make a return or not, and if so, with what roster. Such guesswork intensified as Tempest’s participation in the Global Wildcard Qualifiers for the Netease Gold Club World Championship was announced. However, the new Tempest lost 2-1 in their head-to-head against MVP Miracle and thus failed to join the main tournament.
The new Tempest was composed of Hide, Lockdown, Modernlife, Hooligan, and BIRDSKING. While Hide and Lockdown need no introduction, the latter three will be unfamiliar to most foreign fans.
Modernlife is an IRL friend of Lockdown and a complete newcomer to Heroes of the Storm. Hide revealed that Modernlife was chosen to join the team because he had shown great promise in his first month of playing the game.
Hooligan, on the other hand, is somewhat well-known in the Korean scene: his career highlights include a quarterfinal finish in Superleague 2016 S1 (on RoMg), a third place finish in Powerleague S2 (on LeaveKongAlone), and a quarterfinal finish in Superleague 2016 S3 (on BooM). He is commonly considered one of the better second-tier melee flex players in the region.
The odd egg of the group is clearly BIRDSKING, an on-again-off-again streamer who has been criticized multiple times over his career for unprofessional conduct and despicable in-game toxicity.
Hide clarified that Tempest's most recent lineup was one hastily put together for the GCWC Global Wildcard Qualifiers, promising meaningful changes before the HGC 2017 roster lock deadline. The captain declined to reveal more about the team's future at this point in time.KRUGMAN: Right now, Mitt Romney has an ad blitz where he's accusing Obama of cutting defense spending, which is actually, you know, that's not really true, but and then he says and the reason this is terrible is it because it will eliminate jobs. So the Romney campaign's position is government spending can't create jobs unless it goes to defense contractors in which case it's the lifeblood of the economy...
PAUL: And that's an inconsistency. That's an inconsistency.
KRUGMAN: It's pretty major.
PAUL: And it's wrong. They are accepting Keynes with regard to military spending...
KRUGMAN: Weaponized Keynesianism.
There was a fascinating exchange on ABC'sRand Paul was on to promote his new book and also Mitt Romney, but Krugman nicely pulled out the problem of Romney as a " weaponized Keynesian," which forced Rand to distance himself from Romney. Nice job Krug! Something Ron Paul and the rest of us have had a difficult time doing.Here's a transcript of the exchange:Image copyright Reuters Image caption About 80 people died and many more were injured in the attack on Khan Sheikhoun
A fact-finding mission by chemical weapons watchdog the OPCW has concluded that the banned nerve agent Sarin was used in an attack in northern Syria in April that killed dozens of people.
A UN panel will now try to determine if the Syrian government was responsible, as the US has alleged.
The attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province was the most deadly in Syria in more than three years.
It prompted a retaliatory US missile strike against a Syrian air base.
The fact-finding mission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is based in The Hague, concluded that, after interviewing witnesses and examining samples, "a large number of people, some of whom died, were exposed to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance".
"It is the conclusion of the FFM (fact-finding mission) that such a release can only be determined as the use of Sarin, as a chemical weapon," a summary said.
The new report has been circulated among OPCW members but has not been made public.
A joint UN and OPCW investigation will now investigate who was to blame for the attack.
US President Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on Shayrat air base after US officials concluded that the facility was where a Syrian Air Force jet had been armed with a Sarin-filled bomb.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has previously said that the incident was fabricated.Hello, my name is Alice. This is my story. No no, Not the cliche story of falling down a rabbit hole into a mysterious unknown land with a Red Queen who cuts off heads and a man in a ridiculous hat who has tea parties. No this isn’t like that.
A few months ago while I was cleaning out a old sewing room in my grandmothers home I discovered something quite strange. I found what looked to be a small door in the wall. Not super tiny, More like something someone about my size could fit into comfortably. Given I was a rather small person. I thought it was something like a closet of sorts, so I never really thought much of it and went on cleaning the rest of the room without question. (Plus, the door had a key hole and was locked so not like I could be nosy anyways.)
I soon finished cleaning, gave the door another glance with curiosity sparking up into me, and I left. I debated asking my grandmother about the door and what was inside, She’s a nice woman and probably wouldn’t mind telling me I thought. Unfortunately she passed away two weeks after I cleaned out the room.
When going through her will, which was in alphabetical order, we came across my name after a couple other relatives. “To my precious and most deserving granddaughter, Alice Rodgers I leave my sewing tools, my song books and my old memento box from my childhood until death.”
That evening, after gathering my grandmothers things she left me I flipped through some of the songbooks, stashed away the sewing tools and opened up the memento box, which had me curious as ever. It had a bunch of childhood photos, some seashells, jewelry, nothing out of the norm for a memento box. As I looked through it though I found a envelope. On the back it said “Alice” Alice? Why would a envelope with my name be in here? I opened it and there was a letter and a key. “Dear Alice, I know we were never as close as I had hoped but I hope that through my departure of this world you find another very interesting to sooth that ever so adorable curiosity of yours.”
I was slightly confused but stared at the key. It was quite pretty, Silver with a Spade ending and a sapphire encrusted diamond. While inspecting it a flash of the door came through my mind. I ran upstairs into the room which was now filled with boxes and clutter. I moved a few boxes and found my way to the door. I put the key in the keyhole, and sure enough, it fit. I gave it a swift twist and without a second thought opened the door. Bad idea, and soon I’d find out why. For now my naive self wandered into the dark room which was illuminated by the light of the hallway outside. There were, boxes and spider-webs everywhere. Ick. Spiders, hate those things. Moving towards the back of the hollowed room I discovered the end. And, thankfully, a light switch as it’d been dark in the room since I’d long left the light of the hallway. I flipped the light switch and a blue light illuminated the room. Blue, weird I know but, my grandma always seemed a little…you know. Suddenly I dropped the key and jumped in fear, the door had slammed shut. I yelled out thinking that one of my family members had shut it thinking no one was in here. I ran over to the door banging on it and telling them to open up. They didn’t.
I wasn’t particularly afraid of the dark. And I did enjoy being alone. So I figured hey, some alone time before they figure out I’m in here. I wandered back to the end of the room and looked around. More boxes. I decided to open some. I found a couple perfume bottles, some old clothes, a teapot set and some canned fruits. Eh. This room wasn’t as interesting as I assumed it to be. I leaned against the wall in the back of the room and let out a sigh. Then I noticed. The wall seemed kind of hollowed out. I pressed up against it a few times to assure myself it was really hallow. It was. Curiosity again, got the best of me.
I found a loose end in the wall and pulled it. The wall fell and I looked in awe. I seen, people. Standing there. Not staring at me, but through me it seemed. Just, normal plain people. It took me awhile to get my barrings, but once I did I stepped through the hole in the now torn wall. I looked back and it looked as though the wall had…vanished. I was in shock. I seen what the other people were looking at. It was a big field. Not a normal field no. There were no daisy’s, no green grass, no butterflies, nothing of the sort. Instead it was a field of dirt, mud and….Human skulls. My curiosity was dead at this point. What did kick in was fear. Fear of what in the hell was this?! I looked back only to notice the faces of the people behind me were now either weeping with sorrow or contorting into sick ghoulish smiles. I was still unseen, though. So I did what anyone would probably have done and ran, I didn’t know what this place was and I frankly did not care anymore I just wanted out. The curious side of me died and all that was left was fear. Like when you think the boogeyman is under the bed or in the closet.
After what seemed like miles, I came upon a building. It was big, and black and eerie as fuck. “What the fuck is this shit, a bad LSD dream?!” I thought to myself. I entered the building to find it was sort of a “Palace” I guess you could say. Creeped me the hell out is all I know.
“Welcome Alice!” I heard a familiar voice as I turned around swiftly. “Grandma?!” I gave a confused shout. “Why yes Alice, we’ve been waiting for you for a long while now. Did you enjoy what you seen on the outside?” She had such an eerie tone in her voice…It almost didn’t seem like her.
“What? What do you mean?! It looks hellish outside!” I was getting unusually angry. “Oh ‘Hell’ is not the word I would use. More of a ‘Labyrinth’ maybe or and ‘Abyss’. Or as I like to call it…Wonderland.” Her face had a sick twisted smile on it and I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran out the door only to hear her say “You can run Alice, But you can NEVER EVER return home!” I felt my stomach sink. Tears coming out uncontrollably, I was shaking in fear. Then I suddenly hit my head on something…I don’t know what, but it made me black out. When I woke up I found myself in the front of the door in the old sewing room on the floor. My mother and father staring at me with sick grins and hungry looking eyes. I screamed and jolted up. What was this?! This was NOT my home. I. I can hear them, wandering around calling out my name in a sadistic evil tone. No no no no no no. I just want to go home, please. Please God. I fell asleep hiding in a old cubby hole I used to hide in as a child. and when I awoke, I was in a hospital room hooked up to an IV with my mother asleep in a chair and my father reading a book.
“Alice?! Thank heavens! Darling, Alice is awake!” My father said in a cheery voice. “Alice? ALICE! Oh God we were so worried about you.” My mother wept while hugging me. “The doctor said that you had a mild seizure due to a drug you had taken. Why didn’t you let us know you were taking drugs, Alice? Why would you do this?” I just blankly stared at them both. “Drugs?! DRUGS?! I’m not on drugs dammit, I’ve just been to hell and back.” I thought.
I tried to talk. But for some reason my mouth wouldn’t move, all I could do was lay there and stare at them blankly. I was paralyzed. My whole body from my neck down. They said due to a “seizure” from an overdose on a Acid kick I had paralyzed myself. I wish I could have said how much of a load of bullshit that was.
No, I knew what had happened. I could FEEL what had happened. I was just a shell of a person. My body, it was stuck in that ‘Wonderland’ my Grandma had confronted me in. I felt myself being tortured, I could feel being stabbed and bitten. But no marks would show up on my body. It was silent torment. I have nightmares every night of that place. Although I wonder if they’re truly nightmares. In my nightmares I’m not paralyzed, and I see every single mark on my body. In my nightmares I’m constantly running and hiding. I have to wonder if I’m not just asleep when I’m in that hospital room, like some of me has escaped into my old life. I don’t know anymore. All I can do is run and hide, in this Inverted Wonderland I am trapped in.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Charlotte police say shot man posed threat
North Carolina officers repeatedly warned an armed man to drop his gun before fatally shooting him, a police chief said after a night of protests.
Keith Lamont Scott left his car with a handgun when officers opened fire, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said during a news conference.
Mr Scott, a 43-year-old black man, was shot by a black officer and died at the Carolinas Medical Center.
His death sparked violent protests overnight, leaving 16 officers injured.
Chief Putney said Mr Scott first got out of the car with a gun and got back in when officers directed him to drop his weapon.
As he got out again, he said, officers shot him.
"It's time to change the narrative, because I can tell you from the facts that the story's a little bit different as to how it's been portrayed so far, especially through social media," he said.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Police cars attacked in Charlotte protests
Chief Putney added that officers did not find a book at the scene, contradicting claims by Mr Scott's family that he was reading a book in his car when he was shot.
He added while it was evident Mr Scott was armed, it was unclear whether he was pointing the weapon at officers.
Officer Brentley Vinson, who has been with the force for two years, has been placed on administrative leave over the incident.
Charlotte police were looking for a different suspect to serve a warrant at a block of flats when Mr Scott was killed, police spokesman Keith Trietley said.
When police saw Mr Scott leave the car with a gun, they deemed him as a threat and opened fire.
He died later in hospital.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Charlotte pastors urge black boycott
At a subsequent news conference of black leaders, a Nation of Islam leader called for an economic boycott of Charlotte.
BJ Murphy said: "We don't got nothing to lose."
Mayor Jennifer Roberts, meanwhile, called for calm after protests convulsed the city overnight.
Police used tear gas on dozens of protesters and arrested one in the unrest, which shut down part of Interstate 85.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Police say protesters appeared to loot semi-trucks on Interstate 85 and set their contents on fire
Following the shooting, a woman who claimed to be Mr Scott's daughter posted a video to Facebook saying her father was unarmed and had a disability, the Charlotte Observer reports.
She claimed Mr Scott was unarmed and reading while he was waiting for his son's school bus and was struck with a stun gun before being shot four times.
Police have not responded to her claims and her account could not be immediately verified.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Police face off with protesters after Scott was shot in a car park outside a block of flats
The protests came a day after police in the city of Tulsa, in Oklahoma, said a black man they had killed on Friday was unarmed.
The North Carolina and Oklahoma incidents are the latest in a string of police shootings that has gripped the US and led to mounting racial tensions across the country.
Mr Scott's family plans to hold a news conference later on Wednesday in the area where he was shot.FBI director James Comey has allegedly admitted to exaggerating the number of Hillary Clinton emails involved in the scandal that was blamed on her losing the presidency race.
In his sworn Senate testimony, the FBI chief told the judiciary committee top Clinton aide Huma Abedin made 'a regular practice’ of forwarding ‘hundreds and thousands’ of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner, ‘some of which contain classified information.’
But it is understood FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey’s testimony was false as a result of an inspection brought about by a DailyMail.com exclusive on Weiner's emails.
The bureau is also probing Comey's controversial decision to notify lawmakers just before the election that his team was re-examining its investigation into Clinton's emails by looking into messages found on Weiner's laptop.
The letter is viewed by many as costing Clinton the election, since she lost by less than a percentage point in key swing states after polling indicated she was well in front of her opponent before the FBI chief's move.
FBI Director James Comey (above) reportedly erred last week when he falsely claimed in testimony before Congress that top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded classified emails to the laptop of her husband, Anthony Weiner
The FBI chief told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Abedin (left) had made ‘a regular practice’ of forwarding ‘hundreds and thousands’ of Clinton-related emails to Weiner (right), ‘some of which contain classified information’
Revealing the controversy last week, Comey said his agents had uncovered thousands of new emails that it had not yet reviewed in its Clinton investigation, because they ended up on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Weiner.
Now it appears that he misspoke in his testimony.
An investigation by ProPublica revealed that FBI officials now acknowledge that Abedin forwarded 'just a handful' of emails - not 'hundreds and thousands' as Comey stated - to her husband so he could print them out.
It has also become apparent that none of the emails forwarded by Abedin contained markings that would indicate they were classified.
FBI officials are now said to be trying to figure out how to correct the record in light of the revelations, according to ProPublica
FBI Director James Comey speaks to the Anti-Defamation League National Leadership Summit in Washington, Monday, May 8, 2017
Clinton email timeline March 2015: Becomes publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications and FBI opened investigation. May 2016: The State Department's Office of the Inspector General released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. July 2016: FBI director James Comey announces the bureau's investigation had concluded that Clinton was "extremely careless" in handling her email system but recommended that no charges be filed against her. Two days later the State Department reopenes its probe into the email controversy. October 2016: Eleven days before the election, Comey notifies Congress the FBI is reopening the case due to emails found on laptop linked to Clinton aide Huma Abedin's husband, Anthony Weiner, November 2016: Comey notifies Congress the conclusion is unchanged. May 2017: Comey'misspeaks' in Senate testimony, exaggerating email details.
Weiner's laptop was seized by the FBI as part of an investigation into a matter unrelated to the Clinton emails - the former Congressman's sexually explicit online relationships with young women - as a result of a DailyMail.com story.
After Comey's letter which revealed the existence of the emails on October 28 - just days before the November 8 election which Clinton would eventually lose to Donald Trump - the investigation found that the emails contained no incriminating information.
Comey was asked by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz about the 'hundreds and thousands' comment during his testimony why Abedin and Weiner weren't charged with mishandling classified information.
'You said Ms Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of classified emails to her husband on a non-government, non-classified computer,' said Cruz.
'How does that conduct not directly violate the statute?'
Comey backtracked, saying: 'If I said that, I misspoke. She forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.'
He acknowledged that both Abedin and Weiner 'potentially' may have violated the law, but no charges were brought because the FBI could not establish that they acted with criminal intent.
The FBI chief said the bureau was unable to interview Weiner about the issue 'because he has pending criminal problems of other sorts'.
Anthony Weiner announcing his resignation on June 16, 2011 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The resignation comes 10 days after the congressman admitted to sending lewd photos of himself on Twitter to multiple women
Anthony Weiner was spotted in New York (left) three days after FBI Director James Comey revealed the email controversy and arriving with his wife at the Costume Institute Benefit last year
Anthony Weiner (left) with his wife Huma Abedin (right) as they speak at a press conference
Returning to Capitol Hill to get grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey was immediately challenged by the top panel Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California – and ended up giving his most detailed explanation of the cross-currents he faced.
Addressing his decision to announce the investigation into the emails, Comey told Senators he had no choice but to reveal new developments in the bureau's investigation just days before the presidential election, as he faced only bad options.
Comey was asked about his controversial decision to send a letter to lawmakers just before the election announcing that the FBI was re-examining its investigation into Clinton's (above) emails by looking into new emails found on Weiner's laptop
'Why was it necessary to announce, 11 days before a presidential election, that you were opening an investigation on a new computer without any knowledge of what was in that computer? Why didn’t you just do that investigation as you would normally, with no public announcement?' Feinstein asked him.
Comey laid out the details of the investigation, saying in detail why he felt he had no choice but to divulge information to Congress, which ultimately made it public.
'I could not see a door labelled "No action here",' Comey responded.
Laying out his mindset at the time, he said: 'There's an election in 11 days. Lordy that would be really bad.
'Concealing in my view would be catastrophic.'
The FBI director was asked to explain the moment he was faced with the decision of revealing the email scandal or keeping a lid on it, with less than a fortnight left to run of the race for The White House.
He said: 'Whether it's a dog catcher election or president of the United States, but I sat there that morning and I couldn't see a door labeled no action here.
'I could see two doors and they were both actions. One was labeled speak the other was labeled conceal.'Story highlights Hannah Anderson is rescued in the Idaho wilderness, authorities say
That's where an FBI tactical agent shot and killed her alleged abductor James DiMaggio
The alleged captive's mother, brother was found dead after a fire at DiMaggio's California home
The teen appeared to be OK when she was helicoptered out
A massive manhunt that spanned 1,000 miles ended in gunfire in the Idaho wild late Saturday afternoon -- shots that ended the life of the family friend who was suspected of abducting 16-year-old Hannah Anderson and killing her mother and brother.
The teenager was rescued near Morehead Lake, Idaho, where an FBI tactical agent killed her alleged kidnapper, James DiMaggio, around 5:20 p.m (7:20 p.m. ET), authorities said.
"It's now healing time," Brett Anderson, Hannah's father, said in a message to CNN.
Hannah Anderson had last been seen in San Diego County, California, at her cheerleading practice August 3. The bodies of her mother, Christina Anderson, and 8-year-old brother, Ethan, were found the next day about 45 miles east in DiMaggio's Boulevard house; lab tests were needed to identify the boy because his remains were so badly charred.
That horror spurred a manhunt, which turned to central Idaho after a telling tip from a horseback rider and the discovery of DiMaggio's blue Nissan Versa in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, about 15 miles outside Cascade, Idaho.
JUST WATCHED Kidnapped teen search still underway Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Kidnapped teen search still underway 02:13
JUST WATCHED Hannah Anderson's aunt speaks Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Hannah Anderson's aunt speaks 02:29
JUST WATCHED Does Amber Alert suspect have IEDs? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Does Amber Alert suspect have IEDs? 02:00
By Saturday morning, there were more than 250 law enforcement agents on site scouring 300 square miles of rough terrain.
By late Saturday afternoon, they'd accomplished their first mission: finding DiMaggio and his alleged captive.
The pair's campsite was first spotted from the air, then law enforcement personnel moved in on the ground, said San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore. He said that there had been a "confrontation," though authorities speaking a short time later in Idaho declined to say whether there had been a shootout.
However the scene unfolded, it ended with an FBI tactical agent fatally shooting the suspected murderer and kidnapper.
"Obviously we would have liked for Mr. DiMaggio to surrender and face justice in the court of law," Gore said. "But that's not going to be the case."
Saga starts in California, ends in Idaho
The suspect's car was found after a man on horseback reported he had a brief conversation with two campers in the Idaho wilderness on Wednesday.
The horseback rider was not aware of the manhunt at the time, but he called the Amber Alert tip line after he saw a news account that night and realized the pair matched the description of DiMaggio and Hannah Anderson, according to Ada County, Idaho, sheriff's office spokeswoman Andrea Dearden.
The rider's impression was that the pair "seemed odd," though he wasn't alarmed, she said.
"They did speak and exchange pleasantries. I don't think there was a lot of information exchanged," Dearden said. "He left the conversation believing they were camping in the area."
The rider said the man and girl were on foot, hiking with camping gear, Dearden said.
DiMaggio's car was found unoccupied Friday -- hidden by brush and its license plate removed -- spurring authorities to intensify their search in that area even further.
This massive effort included law enforcement personnel from a host of federal, state and local agencies, with Dearden saying they'd "use every single resource possible." Still, despite the numbers, they faced a daunting task given the expansive, rugged nature of the area.
Ultimately, DiMaggio was spotted and killed not far from where he left his car, according to Dearden.
JUST WATCHED John Walsh on missing 16-year old Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH John Walsh on missing 16-year old 04:28
JUST WATCHED Sightings of suspected kidnapper's car Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Sightings of suspected kidnapper's car 02:16
Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Michaela Joy Garecht – Witnesses saw a man grab 9-year-old Michaela Joy Garecht outside a store near her home near Oakland, California, in November 1988. Here, Michaela is seen in a childhood photo next to an image of what she might look like today. If you have seen Michaela or any of the faces in this gallery, please contact your local FBI office or call 1-800-THE-LOST. Hide Caption 1 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Ashley Summers – The discovery of the three young women missing for a decade in Cleveland immediately raised hopes for Ashley Summers, who went missing in July 2007 at age 14 within blocks of the other three. Here, she is shown next to an age-progressed rendering of her on the right. Hide Caption 2 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Christina Adkins – Christina Adkins was last seen in Cleveland in January 1995. She was 18 years old and five months pregnant when she disappeared. Hide Caption 3 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Jessica Heeringa – Jessica Heeringa, 25, was abducted in April from an Exxon station in Norton Shores, Michigan, where she was working alone, sometime around 11 p.m., police said. Police have released a sketch of the suspect, described as a white male, about 6 feet tall, between 30 and 40 years old, with wavy hair parted in the middle. Hide Caption 4 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Madeleine McCann – Madeleine McCann was a few days shy of her 4th birthday when she disappeared during a 2007 family vacation in Portugal. Despite a huge police investigation and massive media coverage, she remains missing. Hide Caption 5 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Haleigh Cummings – Haleigh Cummings, 5, was reported missing from her family's home in Satsuma, Florida, in February 2009. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children released the age-progressed photo to show what she might look like at age 8. Hide Caption 6 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Amir Jennings – Eighteen-month-old Amir Jennings was last seen with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina, in November 2011. Both were reported missing by a family member in early December 2011. Amir's mother was located a few weeks later after she was involved in a car accident. Amir was not in the car. Amir's mother has been convicted of being involved in the toddler's disappearance, but the boy has yet to be found. Hide Caption 7 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Morgan Nick – Six-year-old Morgan Nick went missing in June 1995 after playing with other children after a Little League game in Alma, Arkansas. Police believe Morgan was abducted by a stranger. Hide Caption 8 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Kara Kopetsky – When high school junior Kara Kopetsky didn't come home from school one day in May 2007, her parents filed a missing person report. Police in Belton, Missouri, told them they believed she was a runaway and would return in a few days. Shortly before she vanished, she told her parents her former boyfriend was stalking her. Hide Caption 9 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Kyron Horman – Seven-year-old Kyron Horman was last seen in June 2010 at his Portland, Oregon, elementary school after attending a science fair. While there has been intense speculation surrounding the boy's stepmother, who told police she dropped him off, no charges have been filed in the case and no one has officially been named a suspect. Hide Caption 10 of 14 Photos: The faces of some of America's missing Still missing: Lisa Irwin – Lisa Irwin's father arrived at their Kansas City home from work to find the door unlocked, the lights |
rug right?
Wrong.
Brock Turner, the rapist, was released after serving only three "miserable" months of his joke of a six-month sentence. (Remind yourself that this is for a crime in which the jury asked for six years and can actually carry a sentence of ten to fourteen.)
Brock Turner, the rapist, is already being labeled "swimmer" and "former Stanford swimmer" across national headlines. Brock Turner, the rapist, is already having media attention diverted away from who and what he really is.
The father of Brock Turner, the rapist, came forward and said that his son's life had been ruined over a "20-minute mistake." The friend of Brock Turner, the rapist, blamed party culture, alcohol, and the college environment on the'mistake' his friend made. Hundreds of comments online scream that horrible "she was asking for it" and "she was drunk and didn't say no" stance that we as a country have unfortunately become accustomed to – all the while defending the'mistake' this 'young kid' made.
All of these sources giving him all of these different titles and names – all slowly creeping away from the one he deserves.
Brock Turner, the rapist, and this horrific tragedy will eventually go on a shelf with other horrific crimes in history that "didn't turn out quite as expected." Over the years, when other tragic and mortifying incidents happen to women and children – and have the rare occurrence of being made a national headline – Brock Turner, the rapist, will be mentioned. People will look back and say, "This reminds me of that boy who raped that girl a few years back." "The swimmer?" "Oh yeah, that one. He only served three months. He was just some kid who made a mistake."
Over the years, people will remember the Stanford swimmer – the bright kid with the bright future – who was let out early because he made a mistake.
I hope that's not what we remember.
I want my generation to remember that statistics show that in a single year, almost 2 million women report incidents that are considered rape and that nearly 65,000 children are victims of sexual abuse. Remind yourself that those are only the women who come forward. Remind yourself that the child reports are only the ones that are noticed or brought forward. Remind yourself that these numbers do not include male victims who have and have not come forward.
The next time you see an article entitled "Brock Turner, Swimmer" or hear someone say "the kid who made a mistake" please correct them, if only to remind yourself that a main reason such a low amount – yes, unfortunately 2,000,000 in this case is a low amount – of rape incidents are actually reported is because society blames the victims and excuses the attackers.
The next time a news site or a loud mouthed opinion flies through the media airways claiming that this is due to party culture, college life, alcohol, or mixed signals – I hope that people remember that under no circumstance, ever, is it the victims fault. The blame of a sexual perpetrators attack is 100% the attacker, child molester, sexual offender, and rapist's fault.
I myself have been guilty of pushing the blame away. As long as we allow media and tabloids to continue labeling abusers anything but what they are, we allow victim blaming to become an all too regular event. When people remember the dutiful sons and swimmers, they start criticizing the victims and the circumstances. As long as we make excuses for attackers, we never fully come to terms with who they are.
That ends now.
The three people who molested me when I was six years old were not naïve, sexually curious teenagers who made a mistake. They were child molesters.
The drug addicted, woman and child beating, sperm-donor who stuck his hands down his daughters pants at eleven years old was not a sleepy, confused father. He is a sex offender.
Brock Turner, the guy who raped and assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, is not a dutiful son, good friend, or Stanford swimmer who made a mistake.
Brock Turner is a rapist.
This is not an opinion. This is a fact.
Meg V. Jones
itsmegnotmegan@gmail.com
Twitter: @ItsMegNotMeganEvery day, across the country, someone is replaced by a piece of software. An assembly line worker is replaced by a more effective robot, or an accountant is replaced by an app on someone's phone. That encroachment of automated labor begs the question: Am I next?
That depends. Are you a dude?
In a recent paper titled "The Future of Employment," Oxford researchers determined that 47% of all jobs in the United States were at risk of being replaced by some sort of automation, either by algorithms and software or literal robots. But a close look at the fields most ripe for automation are fields in which men hold most of the jobs, careers like driving and construction.
Men just experienced a economic cataclysm. We might just not have noticed it. The Great Recession decimated jobs in traditionally male sectors like financial services. In the recession, men accounted for almost three quarters of the 7.5 million lost jobs, according to the Atlantic, and many of those losses will never be recovered.
The Atlantic thinks that these factors combined will result in a sort of gender cataclysm that will overhaul the entire workforce:
On a mass scale, this pattern may result in an involuntary shift in the division of labor, with husbands tending to household duties after dropping their wives off at the office. Superficially, that may sound cheery, but the reality will be much grimmer, as families struggle to make ends meet on one income, and men struggle with the emotional upheaval of no longer having a place in the world of work.
The most obvious flaw with this reasoning is the idea that if men lose their jobs, our centuries-long cultural expectations and patriarchal norms will suddenly fall off their shoulders in a single breath. What's more likely is that remaining jobs in female-dominated sectors of the workforce will see an influx of new candidates.
Meanwhile, anyone feeling immune from the supplanting of male workers should consider that corporate administrative work is still done, in the vast majority, by women. Tweet
Manual labor isn't the only kind of work that robots are coming for. When most people imagine a glistening army of robots coming to relieve us of our commands, they see human beings stepping away from their hammers, wrenches, rifles and big rigs. But automation is going to kill plenty of white-collar jobs as well. In fact, simple online services are well on their way to replacing armies of HR representatives and accountants.
"Computers can't generally do creative things yet. If there's a job where you genuinely create something new all of the time, you're safe for the foreseeable future," Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots, previously told Mic. "But most people do relatively routine, formulaic work."
Instead, the jobs in which we should be looking for security — besides building robots and flying drones — are those that necessitate human ingenuity and sensitivity.
"A good example is a home health aid and taking care of the elderly," Ford told Mic.
Anyone feeling immune from the supplanting of male workers should consider that secretarial and administrative work is still done, in the vast majority, by women. Still, the question you should ask when wondering if your job will be automated is this: Does a corporation benefit from turning my job over to a piece of software? Because automation of jobs will continue to affect everyone in the modern workforce, regardless of gender or race.
But first, they'll be coming for the fellas.AltspaceVR is opening it’s doors to creators today with the release of their SDK.
The SDK brings with it the ability for developers to port in existing 3D web pages into the platform, as well as allowing them to create brand new experiences using JavaScript and three.js. Developers will have the ability to utilize AltspaceVR’s APIs granting access to the platform’s key components like synchronized multiplayer capabilities, networking, and social interactions.
“Using only standard web technology and our SDK,” says Gavan Wilhite, Founder and Director of Engineering at AltspaceVR, “ developers can now quickly and easily import their creation into VR. Whether you have a game, hobby project, architectural model, museum exhibit, art gallery, retail store, or something else entirely, AltspaceVR offers a way to reach your audience online in the most natural and effective way possible – VR.”
A few developers have already began making experiences for the platform but AltspaceVR wants to encourage. In an effort to encourage developers to create apps for their platform AltspaceVR is opening up a developer fund with $150,000 available in grant money. Developers will be able to apply with a prototype and a plan and those admitted will continue in the program until they complete their projects. The developers will retain all ownership of projects made in the program, as well as with the SDK in general.
We reached out to AltspaceVR with a few questions:
Does this represent a step towards making AltspaceVR a more open platform?
Yes, the SDK uses standard and open web technology to allow developers to share their VR applications and content in AltspaceVR – an industry first. As a result, VR becomes within reach for a wide variety of developers.
Why release this now, rather than earlier with the alpha tests?
We have been working closely with developers (we already have apps in AltspaceVR that were developed by them in just a few days). Meanwhile we have improved the SDK and support so that it is ready for general release. We also were able to include an important capability–live programming–that is of particular benefit to the developers. It is a powerful aid to creativity and productivity, and a natural fit for the social nature of AltspaceVR
What kind of applications are you looking for with the grant?
We are looking for proposals that leverage the unique capabilities of AltspaceVR and the open web, and have a good plan for successful completion. Though we encourage individual developers to apply, we are especially excited about supporting small cross-disciplinary teams.
What will the workflow be to create things for AltspaceVR? Is it something non developers can do?
We have enabled and tested a number of workflows that leverage modern web development tools. If you already have experience in this area, your tools should work out of the box. If you are new to development, we have a great on-boarding path using live-coding tools.
To download the SDK, or apply for AltspaceVR’s Developer Initiative Program, you can visit the AltspaceVR Developer Portal at http://developer.altvr.com/.
Tagged with: SDKThe Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has not ceased to claim that they are providing ample opportunity for public stakeholders to participate in negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Agreement (TPP). One such supposed opportunity is a "stakeholder presentation" where representatives from various organizations and companies can discuss an issue of their choosing relating to the content of the TPP.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with several other civil society organizations and concerned individuals, will be in Leesburg, Virginia next week to attend these stakeholder events. We will be there because the TPP is a multilateral trade agreement that has been negotiated in secret and contains a chapter that could have wide-ranging impacts on our Internet freedom. A few days ago, we wrote about how the USTR sent all stakeholders an update: that we would be given a mere eight minutes to present to negotiators, down from the 15 minutes we had in San Diego.
Today, we have received a new email from the USTR that they would actually give stakeholders 10 minutes to make our presentations. That is an entire two more minutes for us to express our concerns to trade delegates over what could become the most powerful trade agreement of the 21st Century. More than 600 corporate representatives have already had access to the official text of the TPP, while public interest organizations only know what is being discussed at the secret TPP meetings based upon leaked documents.
Here is the email in its entirety:@ustr.eop.gov>
Dear Stakeholder, We would like to thank you again for your interest in participating in the TPP stakeholder events in Leesburg, Virginia. We are delighted by the strong response and our negotiators are looking forward to the opportunity for one-on-one engagement at the tables, which they found extremely valuable in the previous two rounds. In addition, we have received more requests than anticipated from stakeholders seeking to make presentations underscoring their key messages. We have been working to accommodate everyone to the best of our ability, given logistical constraints, and have arranged for 10 minutes per presentation – an increase from our initial announcement. The presentations will be held in the Dogwood Rooms on September 9th, from 11 am- 2 pm. For your convenience, each room will be supplied with a laptop, projector and microphone. A presentation schedule will be sent out as soon as possible. Have a enjoyable Labor Day weekend and we look forward to seeing you in Leesburg on Sept 9.
While this remains to be an excuse for participatory rulemaking, this does show that the USTR has finally begun to hear our calls that the secrecy over TPP must be stopped. Our message to Congress to demand transparency in these negotiations has now been taken more than 25300 times and users around the world are pressuring their governments to do the same.
Please continue to tell your representatives to demand true transparency in this process, and help us spread the word about this disasterous agreement that will trade away our Internet freedom.
~
If you live in the United States, join EFF and more than 25,000 people in sending a message to Congress members to demand an end to these secret backdoor negotiations:
You can also check out other ways of taking action here.New Texas rules requiring a dignified burial of aborted babies’ bodies will go into effect on Dec. 19, state health officials said this week.
The new rules, introduced in July by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, require that abortion facilities, hospitals and other medical centers either cremate or bury the remains of aborted and miscarried babies. State officials said the rules do not apply to miscarriages or abortions that take place at home.
The Washington Post reports the health commission finalized the rules on Monday. State health officials previously said the rules will bring about “enhanced protection of the health and safety of the public.”
The new rules are part of pro-life Gov. Greg Abbott’s L.I.F.E. Initiative, a four-point plan to increase life-affirming support, eliminate all taxpayer funding to abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and curb abortions in Texas.
Aborted babies’ bodies should not be “treated like medical waste and disposed of in landfills,” Abbott said previously. “… it is imperative to establish higher standards that reflect our respect for the sanctity of life.”
During a commission hearing in August, supporters said the rules are necessary because abortion facilities treat unborn babies’ bodies like garbage and sometimes dump them down public sewer drains, Fox 7 reported. State Rep. Mark Keough mentioned a gruesome case in 2005 when a woman who worked near a Houston abortion facility saw tiny aborted babies’ limbs and other body parts in a parking lot when a sewer line broke.
SUPPORT PRO-LIFE NEWS! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation during Giving Tuesday!
Abortion activists oppose the rules, claiming that they will create additional costs and burdens for abortion facilities. There also are rumblings that they may file a lawsuit.
David Brown, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Texas Tribune the rules are an “unnecessary burden and an intrusion” on women’s rights and beliefs.
“These new restrictions reveal the callous indifference that Texas politicians have toward women,” Brown said.
However, health department spokesperson Carrie Williams said their research indicates that the rules will not increase costs.
“While the methods described in the new rules may have a cost, that cost is expected to be offset by costs currently being spent by facilities on disposition for transportation, storage, incineration, steam disinfection and/or landfill disposal,” Williams said.
Previously, abortion facilities could dispose of aborted babies’ bodies in landfills or give them to research groups.
More states are moving to require dignified burials of aborted babies’ bodies after undercover videos revealed evidence that Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities may be selling aborted babies’ body parts. The Center for Medical Progress videos prompted a number of states and the U.S. House to open investigations into the matter.
In Ohio, the state attorney general’s investigation found that Planned Parenthood was “steam cooking” aborted babies’ bodies before dumping them in landfills. An investigation in South Carolina also caught Planned Parenthood facilities illegally dumping aborted babies’ bodies in public landfills, and fined them for it.
John Seago, Legislative Director of Texas Right To Life, previously told LifeNews that the rules are strong attempt to restore the dignity to the victims of abortion. However, he noted that they are just one small step toward the ultimate goal of protecting unborn babies’ lives from abortion.
“Texas Right to Life is in favor of the proposed rules to clarify the manner in which abortion clinics handled the bodies of these victims of abortion,” Seago said. “However, Texas Right to Life strongly believes that the pro-life movement must go far beyond simply regulating the disposition and donation of these bodies after abortion. Texas must take positive steps to stop the horrific injustice of elective abortion instead of just regulating the aftermath.”This article is from the archive of our partner.
Saudi Arabia is seeking to add some new money into their $745 billion economy, as they are finally allowing foreign investors to buy and sell shares on their stock market, starting next year.
The country's Tadawul All Share Index hit a six-year high today, after the Capital Market Authority announced that foreign dollars would begin flowing soon. The move is set to bring in as much as $40 billion in foreign cash.
This move comes as Saudi Arabia moves to boost their non-oil industries. As the biggest exporter of oil in the world, it has been the driving factor of their overall economy. Nonetheless, other industries are becoming increasingly important, and the government has decided to spend $130 billion to help improve the non-energy sectors. The economy has been "expanding at an average rate of 6.4 percent in the past four years even as Middle Eastern neighbors from Egypt to Iraq grappled with political turmoil," according to Bloomberg.
“The move by Saudi Arabia helps accelerate efforts by the Gulf into becoming a more mainstream destination for international investors,” Ryan Huang, a market strategist, told Bloomberg. “Opening up the market will be a liquidity boost for Saudi corporations.”
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.Rachael D'Amore, CTV News Toronto
A teen who drowned during a school trip to Algonquin Park last month did not pass a mandatory swim test prior to embarking on the trip, the Toronto District School Board has confirmed.
The school board says that of the 32 students who went on the trip, 30 were recorded as taking the swim test. Of those, 15 students did not pass.
Fifteen-year-old Jeremiah Perry was one of those students.
Perry was swimming with classmates in Big Trout Lake on July 4 when he suddenly went under water and did not resurface.
His body was found the next day.
In the days following the tragedy, Malloy said the school board retained a “highly experienced and respected” investigation firm to interview students, staff and volunteers who attended or were involved in planning the camping trip, which was expected to last several days.
Malloy reiterated that, as per the TDSB’s expectations for school trips, each student was required to pass a swim test before being approved for the trip.
The test, a canoe tripping swim test, was held at a third-party facility at a lake. If any student failed the canoe tripping test, Malloy said they were given a second chance and required to complete a series of swimming lessons and one-on-one swim coaching in the C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute pool.
Not only did Perry fail the initial test, Malloy said he was not recorded as having participated in swimming lessons before the trip.
Malloy said those who failed the tests “should not have been” allowed on the trip but, inexplicably, were permitted to go anyway.
“I am deeply troubled by these findings and that such a critical safety requirement in our proecuderes appears not to have been followed,” Malloy said. “In sharing this news with Jeremiah’s family earlier today, I said to them, and I will say public now on behalf of the TDSB, I offer our most sincere apology and regret.”
“I also want to apologize to the families of the other studdents who went on the trip even though they did not pass the required swim test,” he added.”
As a result, two teachers involved in organizing the trip are on home assignment.
Malloy said both have “exercised their legal right” and have declined to speak with investigators at this time.
While the investigation is ongoing, Malloy said that the board has already implemented new measures surrounding the vetting of students and their abilities before going on school trips.
Perry’s family has also urged the TDSB to strengthen their expectations and policies in order to stave off future tragedies.
The new measures include:
All future trips of this kind will be approved only after the principal of the school sees and reviews documentation showing that only those students who passed the appropriate tests will attend
All students participating in a pre-trip canoe or swim test will be given the results of the test
All parents of children taking part in trips that include swimming and/or canoeing will receive their children’s test results prior to the trip
The TDSB will be conducting a full third-party review of excursion procedures, specifically as it pertains to “high-care” activities such as multi-day canoe trips
“We have clear expectations of what needed to happen. We have now learned that some of those expectations were not followed (and) their children did not pass the test and, in light of that, should not have been on that trip. We will work with those families if they have any further questions about that,” Malloy said.
“Our interest is to be as honest as we possibly can with the information that we have at this moment so that we can do everything that we can – not only for Jeremiah’s family but for our broader community – and to ensure that our process’s allow us to ensure our public that this will never happen again.”
Malloy said that all other TDSB trip scheduled for the days following Perry’s death were scrutinized and reviewed. He said “no issues” were found and therefore none have been cancelled.
“Although this has obviously been a tragic and difficult time for all involved, I do want to reassure TDSB students and parents that the TDSB intends to continue to provide all students access and opportunities for outdoor education,” he said.
“These programs provide students with valuable learning experiences and skills; however, we will not do so at the expense of student safety.”
The two teachers, four volunteers and 33 students, including Perry’s older brother Marrion, returned home soon after he went missing.
Marrion previously told CTV News Toronto that he and his brother did not know how to swim and that they were wearing life jackets during the swim test conducted by the TDSB.
Jeremiah was not wearing a life jacket when he drowned.
The Ontario Provincial Police and the Office of the Chief Coroner have also been investigating Perry’s death.
Malloy said that the school board and investigating bodies will provide more information as it becomes available.
“I think it’s an important message for me to share with our public and community that, as I said, we trust our staff, our staff are professionals and they do great work for kids every day,” he said.
“We have procedures in place to ensure safety and effective programming and anytime that doesn’t happen as it should, it’s exceptionally troubling and very upsetting and it’s tragic... and that’s what we’re dealing with today.”**********
Translator: TranslationChicken
**********
Editor: TranslationChicken
(Thank you Roanz, Aaron, Luis, Hunter, Orion, Joe, *Russian name I can’t type*, for helping with the proofreading!! <3)
**********
ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO TAPPEI NAGATSUKI, THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR OF RE:ZERO, THIS IS A TRANSLATION OF THE FREE JAPANESE WEB NOVEL INTO ENGLISH
JAPANESE WEB NOVEL SOURCE: HTTP://NCODE.SYOSETU.COM/N2267BE/206/
Previous Chapter: https://translationchicken.com/2017/08/07/rezero-arc-4-chapter-39-friendt-part-22/
ARC 4
THE EVERLASTING COVENANT
Chapter 40 [Accomplice]
A whole variety of words flashed through Subaru’s mind at this sudden, abrupt and unexpected meeting, but――
[Subaru: Is looking like this what you call a “safe return”!?]
Sticking a finger at his right eye――the destroyed organ, Subaru indignantly pointed this out to Ram.
Currently, the whole area around Subaru’s right eye was bandaged with cloth ripped from his sleeve, creating something that might be rather popular with junior high-schoolers. If this Date Masamune look was just for fashion, it might be something to laugh about later, but since Ram should know what kind of awful state Subaru was in, that reaction was utterly inappropriate.
Hearing Subaru’s objection, Ram slightly tilted her head and gently brushed her peach-colored hair that was swaying with her motion.
[Ram: Sorry, I didn’t pay proper attention to what you usually look like so I can’t tell the difference]
[Subaru: Well thanks for that devastating remark, but did you know that humanoid lifeforms usually have two eyes, two ears, and two nostrils?]
[Ram: In other words, Barusu is currently not a humanoid lifeform, but instead some random unintelligible lifeform?]
[Subaru: You turned that on its head!?]
Having this usual exchange with Ram, Subaru scanned over his surroundings with his left field of vision. While checking whether there was anyone else lurking in the shadows besides Ram, he was also searching for possible escape routes. Must buy some time and determine where to run.
[Subaru: Otto, on one-two-three we split and run. Your job’ll be shouting and drawing the pursuers’ attention. My job’ll be keeping quiet and slinking away. Any objections?]
[Otto: Yes, lots, but before that, why’re you so wary all of a sudden, Natsuki-san?]
[Subaru: What’re you, stupid? They’re onto us. Just look at that Ram’s eyes. She wants to kill us. No mistake about it. I see those eyes every day at the Mansion, trust me]
[Otto: What is there to trust about a man who’s looked on daily with murderous disdain!?]
Subaru anxiously whispered his escape plan and task-assignments to Otto, but Otto didn’t seem to get the point. “Crap.” Subaru briefly considered leaving Otto to die and escaping alone, but, remembering their talk about friendship earlier, he couldn’t help but hesitate on the matter.
[Subaru: Damn it, just when I thought I was freed from my cuffs, I got tied down by the fetters of friendship! What d’you want with me……!?]
[Otto: You’re the one who should explain yourself! If you don’t express yourself more clearly, there’s no way for conversation to take place! Also since the potential for misunderstanding here is incredible, I want you to please do something about that!]
[Ram: If you two could please wrap up your comedy skit, can we move things along? In fact, things are already moving along. We don’t have time for this. This is a waste of time, in other words, a waste of life]
Faced with the two men trying to push responsibility onto each other, Ram shot them a look of contempt, before taking a step forward and cutting into the main subject. However, Subaru wasn’t entirely joking. In fact, he was quite earnest in trying to drag on the conversation while looking for an escape route. Because,
[Subaru: Honestly, I thought the moment you saw my face you’d try to kill me no questions asked]
[Ram: If we had met directly after you laid your violence upon Roswaal-sama, it might have turned out that way. But the passage of time has tempered my anger somewhat. ……Be grateful to Garf]
[Subaru: Even though it’s thanks to Garfiel that I’m not dead right now, I can’t just change my opinion of someone who did this to my face so easily…]
Still not letting down his guard, Subaru scratched his neck as he replied to Ram. On the other hand, watching him, Ram seemed quite relaxed and without any sense of hostility.
At least, she didn’t look like she was going to literally attack him no questions asked. Then the next question on Subaru’s mind would be,
[Subaru: Otto said we’re supposed to meet with someone here, but……]
[Ram: Yes, I know]
[Otto: Natsuki-san. I know it might be difficult to believe, but the fact is exactly what you see]
Seeing his roundabout question answered with a nod, Subaru turned to Otto, who gave an identical answer. Crossing his arms and bending his lips, Subaru made a [Hmmmmm],
[Subaru: If I accept what I see, since you are the one who showed up here, you would be Otto’s accomplice…… the person helping the people of Arlam village escape?]
[Ram: You’re not wrong there. Both Garf and Lewes-sama are presently occupied with Emilia-sama’s Trial. With all the major players gathered at the Tomb, now is our only chance]
Emphasizing that they don’t have much time, Ram laid on the pressure to hurry. But Subaru still couldn’t shake the sense of incongruity. Seeing him hold up his hand to stop her, Ram shot him a silent glare. And, pulling himself together so as not to get crushed by that sharpened gaze, Subaru went on with [Tell me],
[Subaru: Why would you be helping with the villagers’ escape? Even if we take a hundred steps back and assume you’re just doing this out of good will, it still makes no sense getting me involved. And just since when did you become the kind of person who gives up on screwing with me once your anger cools off? The questions are endless]
[Ram: That is indeed a lot of questions. Verbosity does not make men popular, Barusu]
[Subaru: That doesn’t sound very convincing when you’ve got a crush on a man even chattier than I am. ……Answer me, Ram. I can’t imagine a situation where you’d be able to put your grudges aside and work with me. And yet here you are, which could only mean this is…]
Taking a deep breath, Subaru himself was afraid of what he was about to say.
If things were really as Subaru imagined, then his actions here would be――
Firmly closing his eye, he clenched his teeth so as to not let out any noise from his weakness.
Don’t be afraid. Don’t be frightened. Don’t show weakness. Steel your heart and do not waver.
――Right now, it will be fine if he just held back his emotions, didn’t show that he was wavering, and turned himself to steel.
[Subaru: ……all on Roswaal’s instructions. That’s the only plausible explanation. But after the violent way I acted towards him, why would he help me? ……You probably know more about that than I do]
[Ram: …………]
Confronted with Subaru’s reasoning, Ram became silent.
But the only image within Subaru’s mind was Roswaal with his Gospel. If he had been in possession of that book of prophecies all this time, then his loyal, devoted confidant, Ram, must have surely known about it.
Of course, she would not know the details. If she really did know all its contents, then that would mean Ram had allowed a future where Rem was left to die.
[Subaru: ――――]
But that is an impossible supposition. Subaru knew it was nothing more than supposition. When she lost Rem, before there was any special circumstance where she had forgotten Rem’s existence, Subaru saw first hand the older Oni sister’s reaction at the loss of her younger sister.
For that reason alone, Subaru was convinced that Ram could not have known of any prophecies where Rem would be left to die.
But then again, just how much was she involved in Roswaal’s plots? Roswaal had yet to reveal the full extent of his plans. And Ram, being his closest confidant, just how much did she――
[Subaru: Answer me, Ram. Why are you helping us? If all this is following that bastard Roswaal’s scripts, then sorry, Otto and I can take it from here. You won’t be needed]
[Otto: W-, Natsuki-san――!?]
[Subaru: Quiet, Otto. There’s no time to explain the details, and I won’t be able to guarantee your safety if you knew so I won’t tell you, but frankly, this time I am crazy pissed. At least I know I can’t hear Roswaal’s name and still keep a clear head!]
Touching the bandage over his throbbing right eye, Subaru stomped on the ground as he shouted at Otto for trying to stop him.
The sensation of flying at Roswaal and strangling his slender throat lingered in Subaru’s palms. The sensation of the impulse to take another person’s life, and of acting upon that impulse, remained present and tactile.
It was accompanied by a raw and grotesque vividness, and now that he had regained his senses, recalling it only brought out the urge to vomit, along with the piercing ringing in his ears and aching of his skull like the memory of a nightmare.
Subaru had no desire to ever repeat that scene again. But,
[Subaru: I know what I did was wrong, but whether I regret it is a different story. He trampled on something I must not permit to be trampled on. And for that I dealt him pain]
[Ram: ……By that logic, I doubt Barusu could protest if I chose to exact revenge upon you?]
[Subaru: That’s why I got ready to turn ass and run the moment I saw you. But that ended up in failure because Otto’s a klutz]
[Otto: Why was I needlessly defamed just now!? And I’ll have you know, if I really turned ass and ran, I’d have disappeared so fast that even Natsuki-san’s ass couldn’t catch up!]
[Subaru: Enough with the ass ass, is potty humor all you’ve got? Pottymouth]
[Otto: I don’t know what that means but I get the feeling I’ve just been horribly slandered! It feels like it!]
Seeing Subaru and Otto descending into their usual banter, Ram cleared her throat and put a stop to that. Subaru resumed narrowing his eye, glaring at her, and, receiving that gaze, Ram spilled out a sigh,
[Ram: ……You can relax. This act, at least, is not related to Roswaal-sama’s will]
[Subaru: Not related…… to Roswaal? No, but that means……]
Hearing Ram deny Roswaal’s involvement, Subaru could not conceal his shock.
In that case, it would mean Ram had independently chose to help with the escape. But that wasn’t the only problem.
[Subaru: If Roswaal isn’t involved, then this wasn’t written in the Gospel……? Wait, in that case, just how much is written in the Gospel in the first place?]
Because Subaru flew into a rage immediately after they came to the topic of the Gospel, he hadn’t managed to learn more about the book itself.
However, if this so-called complete “Gospel” was truly an omnipotent prophetic book capable of describing the entirety of the future, then――
[Subaru: How detailed are the texts recorded inside, and how large does its volume get……?]
If its scope was the entirety of the world, and detailed everything that happened and will ever happen, then the sheer volume of information would surely not fit inside a single book. Besides, the human mind is far too small to comprehend every single event that will happen in this world.
Therefore, Subaru judged that the Gospel would have picked and chose which information about the future it would record in its pages such that it would be within range of what its owner could comprehend.
[Subaru: The contents of Petel-kun’s incomplete Gospel were appended one after another……it seems. But I haven’t actually seen it happen so I can’t be sure]
That fanatic’s Gospel, with its latter half blank, seemed to have text appended to the empty pages every time there was a new prophecy.
At least, Subaru was certain that the number of pages had changed from when he first acquired it after defeating Petelgeuse. Later, he had tried to investigate it further, but was incapable of reading the words. Moreover, due to its sinister nature, he had hoped to investigate it in Roswaal’s presence, but that was no longer possible under the present situation.
And so, even if Subaru wanted to take this any further, with so little information to sample from, it remained nothing more than empty conjecture. Nonetheless, Subaru did have his doubts about just how reliable and precise the completed Gospel could be.
Seeing this, Ram placed a hand over her lips, as if in thought,
[Ram: ……I am not authorized to speak on this matter. And although my presence here is not due to Roswaal-sama’s will, the fact that Ram’s heart is wholly devoted to him remains unchanged]
[Subaru: That’s some head-over-heels overload, get a room, damn it]
[Ram: However……]
Cursing, Subaru lamented that his route for gathering information had been closed off. But, inserting that word, Ram watched Subaru’s face rise in surprise, and in a quiet voice,
[Ram: What is certain is that this situation was not written. And it is precisely because it was not written that I am able to be here]
[Subaru: ……I don’t understand what that means. In the end, what are you trying to do? To help us? And even if you want to help, is that by your own volition?]
[Ram: I will help the evacuation. That is Ram’s own intention. Roswaal-sama… now that it has become like this… will not do anything to stop us]
[Subaru: Now that it has become like this?]
Those |
, a research programme with University College London Hospital was announced with the aim of developing an algorithm that can automatically differentiate between healthy and cancerous tissues in head and neck areas.[71]
There are also projects with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to develop new clinical mobile apps linked to electronic patient records.[72] Staff at the Royal Free Hospital were reported as saying in December 2017 that access to patient data through the app had saved a ‘huge amount of time’ and made a ‘phenomenal’ difference to the management of patients with acute kidney injury. Test result data is sent to staff's mobile phones and alerts them to change in the patient's condition. It also enables staff to see if someone else has responded, and to show patients their results in visual form.[73][unreliable source?]
In November 2017, DeepMind announced a research partnership with the Cancer Research UK Centre at Imperial College London with the goal of improving breast cancer detection by applying machine learning to mammography.[74] Additionally, in February 2018, DeepMind announced it was working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in an attempt to use machine learning to predict the onset of acute kidney injury in patients, and also more broadly the general deterioration of patients during a hospital stay so that doctors and nurses can more quickly treat patients in need.[75]
DeepMind developed an app called Streams, which sends alerts to doctors about patients at risk of acute risk injury.[76] On 13 November 2018, DeepMind announced that its health division and the Streams app would be absorbed into Google Health.[77] Privacy advocates said the announcement betrayed patient trust and appeared to contradict previous statements by DeepMind that patient data would not be connected to Google accounts or services.[78][79] A spokesman for DeepMind said that patient data would still be kept separate from Google services or projects.[80]
NHS data-sharing controversy [ edit ]
In April 2016, New Scientist obtained a copy of a data-sharing agreement between DeepMind and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. The latter operates three London hospitals where an estimated 1.6 million patients are treated annually. The agreement shows DeepMind Health had access to admissions, discharge and transfer data, accident and emergency, pathology and radiology, and critical care at these hospitals. This included personal details such as whether patients had been diagnosed with HIV, suffered from depression or had ever undergone an abortion in order to conduct research to seek better outcomes in various health conditions.[81][82]
A complaint was filed to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), arguing that the data should be pseudonymised and encrypted.[83] In May 2016, New Scientist published a further article claiming that the project had failed to secure approval from the Confidentiality Advisory Group of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.[84]
In May 2017, Sky News published a leaked letter from the National Data Guardian, Dame Fiona Caldicott, revealing that in her "considered opinion" the data-sharing agreement between DeepMind and the Royal Free took place on an "inappropriate legal basis".[85] The Information Commissioner's Office ruled in July 2017 that the Royal Free hospital failed to comply with the Data Protection Act when it handed over personal data of 1.6 million patients to DeepMind.[86]
DeepMind Ethics and Society [ edit ]
As of October 2017, DeepMind has expanded its focus to also include AI ethics. With the former Google UK and EU policy manager Verity Harding co-leading this new team with Sean Legassick,[87] their goal is to fund external research of the following themes: privacy transparency and fairness; economic impacts; governance and accountability; managing AI risk; AI morality and values; and how AI can address the world's challenges. As a result, the team hopes to further understand the ethical implications of AI and aid society to seeing AI can be beneficial.[88]
This new subdivision of DeepMind is a completely separate unit from the large partnership of major tech companies of the name Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society which DeepMind is also a part of.[89]
See also [ edit ]The company behind Angry Birds lost a fifth of its market value on Thursday after investors saw its first set of earnings since an initial public offering just two months ago.
Rovio Entertainment's third-quarter earnings report delivered what FIM analysts called a "brutal disappointment," sending the shares down more than 20 per cent.
Angry Bird characters Chuck, voiced by Josh Gad (left) and Red, voiced by Jason Sudeikis (right) in a scene from 'The Angry Birds Movie'. Credit:Rovio Animation
FIM said the bad performance was "caused by a strong increase in user-acquisition investments and clearly softer revenue than expected." Rovio spent €22.2 million ($34.5 million) in an effort to draw in new users for its games last quarter, or more than four times the amount it invested a year ago.
That pushed down profitability, with its earnings falling 29 per cent to €6.1 million. Earnings as a percentage of revenue slumped to 8.6 per cent from roughly 17 per cent.Today we're spotlighting what we think is the greatest comedy of the year. The Bullseye staff has poured over plenty of records, including industry veterans, newcomers and lesser known talents. Now we're ready to showcase what we think is the best stand up comedy of 2014.
You can find all of these albums available for purchase, except for the set from the Atlantic Ocean Comedy and Music Festival.
Patton Oswalt - Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time
Cristela Alonzo - Some Of The Hits
Cameron Esposito - Same Sex Symbol
Jasper Redd - Jazz Talk
Jim Gaffigan - Obsessed
Hannibal Buress - Live From Chicago
Tommy Johnagin - Stand-Up Comedy 3
Nadia Kamil at the the Atlantic Ocean Comedy and Music Festival
Chris Gethard - My Comedy Album
Andrés du Bouchet - 20-Sided Guy
Bob Odenkirk - Amateur Hour
Jackie Kashian - This Will Make an Excellent Horcrux
Sarah Silverman - We Are Miracles
Hari Kondabolu - Waiting for 2042
Did we miss your favorite stand up special this year? Add your recommendation to the list! You can discuss this episode on our forum. You can also talk about it at Maximum Fun's sub Reddit, or join our lively discussions in the Maximum Fun Facebook group. Or you can just Tweet us -- @Bullseye.
New to Bullseye? Subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or with your favorite podcatcher to make sure you automatically get the newest episode every week.
And if you're looking for a particular segment to listen to or share, check us out on Soundcloud.Image caption "Some of the firms which take most advantage of international tax rules are technology companies," Mr Carney said.
The governor of the Bank of England has said powerful technology firms are among those who take advantage of international tax deals.
Mark Carney said: "The amount of tax that's actually paid by technology companies is very small relative to the returns."
He was speaking at a BBC-hosted debate at the World Economic Forum, in Davos.
Tackling tax avoidance is high on the agenda of several organisations at the moment, including the G20 and EC.
"We should recognise, actually, some of the firms which take most advantage of international tax rules are technology companies," Mr Carney said.
Technology industry body TechUK said that international tax deals were used by many organisations.
"These issues extend far beyond the tech sector, and predate the internet economy," said a TechUK spokeswoman in London.
"Global corporate tax rules have become outdated, complex and opaque," she added. "The way to remedy this is for governments, working collaboratively, to take action to bring the rules up to date, and make them simpler and more transparent."
Tax talk
The debate in Davos was on how to combat economic inequality, and whether capitalism benefitted most people, or just the richest 1%. Taxation was one of the major strands running through the debate.
Oxfam International executive director Winnie Byanyima called for global tax reform, saying a study had suggested that business had $18 trillion "stashed out in tax havens".
Klaus Kleinfeld, the chief executive of aluminium giant Alcoa, said that tax systems should be set up so firms have a "level playing field".
Deals hammered out between technology firms and countries such as Apple and Ireland and Amazon and Luxembourg are among those being investigated by the European Commission.
The firms say they have done nothing wrong and the deals were made in accordance with tax laws.
Meanwhile, the OECD has been lobbied by representatives for technology firms over recommendations to the G20 group of countries to close tax loopholes.Just a very quick update on things inside Contact List. One of the major missing features before KDE Telepathy (yes, we still have no cool project name..ideas?) release can be made is groupping support in contact list. I've been working on this for the past few days and I'm proud to announce - Groups are working! Oh yes and that's not all. We support cross-account groups, that means, that the account the contact belongs to really does not matter. Just think groups. You can also have one contact in multiple groups (though there's currently no GUI way how to do that).
This is not yet in master as it is still bit like a minefield currently, but I'm so excited about this that I had to share :) It's getting really close now. I also hope that after some discussion with Collabora guys I can have this model included in Telepathy-Qt4-Yell project, which host various models (and we are already using the AccountsModel in Cotnact List) which will hopefully one day get merged back into Telepathy-Qt4 master.
As pictures say more than thousand words, behold...
I'll post a longer blogpost about all the new fancy things we're working on after the groups are all finished (this is a priority #1 now). So stay tuned.
By the way, the historicaly first release of KDE Telepathy is really imminent now ;)Ahead of the Munich Security Conference, the Prime Minister answered questions from Editor-in-Chief Sven Afhüppe and international correspondent Mathias Bruggmann.
Transcript:
Dmitry Medvedev’s interview for Handelsblatt, Germany
Question: Mr Prime Minister, thank you for finding the time to meet with us. You will come to Munich to attend the Conference on Security. Handelsblatt will cover the proceedings and primarily your participation in detail. We are happy to be able to talk to you in detail on important subjects – Russia and security. Mr Prime Minister, the world seems to be plunged into several geopolitical crises: Ukraine, Syria, and North Korea with its bomb testing. There are no clear solutions to many crises. What risks do you see in this new chaos that has engulfed the world?
Dmitry Medvedev: First, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to talk with Handelsblatt. On behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation and the people of Russia, I’d like to convey, through you, our sincere condolences to the readers of your newspaper in connection with the tragic rail accident in Bavaria.
The world is a fragile thing, and in addition to manmade disasters, against which no one is safe, we are really not in the best stage in terms of ensuring international security. At any rate, my own experience tells me that we have known more productive times. What is the reason for this? I think there is a combination of reasons. First, some of the national and regional threats, of which my country, for example, warned as early as 10 or 15 years ago, have turned, in effect, into global threats.
I remember our fight against terrorism in Russia’s Caucasus when we said that the people who fired at our military servicemen and our police were members of foreign religious extremist organisations, no one was quite willing to listen to us. We were told that they were just people displeased with the regime and fed up with corruption and that they were fighting for freedom. They drew a distinction between extremists and insurgents. But let’s admit it honestly: we found passports on them from many countries, including, for example, Turkey. So, what was at that time characteristic of one country or a group of countries, for example, the Middle East as a whole, where one feared to walk in the streets… I remember well my first impressions from a visit to Israel. It was perhaps in 1993, when I wasn’t involved in politics; I was an ordinary lawyer and a teacher at a law department. We just traveled to that country to see what it was like. Well, when everyone carries arms and tells you, “Keep in mind a bomb can explode at any time,” that was a disturbing impression. I thought then that they were all heroes living in that environment.
Today, regrettably, this refers to all of Europe. And this is, perhaps, the main problem. Today one cannot feel safe in any country in the world. This means that terrorism has become a real global threat, transforming itself from an ordinary criminal pursuit that sought to achieve certain goals, including those of an extremist nature, into something more. In a number of countries, terrorists regard themselves as legitimate authorities and rule these countries through terrorist methods. If you don’t like it, we’ll cut your head off; if you don’t like it, we’ll cut you into pieces. In the name of what? Either in the name of certain religious dogmas, or just because “we think this is the right way.” This is the primary threat that, let’s face it, society has failed to deal with.
Second, we have a lot of problems of our own on the European continent. They are of an economic nature, although at one point we even learned to face them together. I remember well what was happening in 2008 and 2009, and how we came for the first G20 meeting, and how the outgoing US president (George W. Bush) told me that Wall Street was to blame for everything that had happened. The new president, Mr Obama, said: look, we are sitting at the G20 table, we can come to terms, there are very different countries here – America, Russia, China, but we are discussing these problems together. This did work, but, regrettably, a lot has happened since then. We have many economic problems left in Europe (I’m not distinguishing between EU and Russian problems, or the world’s economic problems right now), but today we are not even communicating. Yes, there are G20 meetings, but they are mostly formalities or result in recommendations that are not always followed. The close contact that used to unite us – we used to discuss all economic problems with the German, French and UK leaders almost every month – this communication has been suspended and has been stopped. Is that good? I think it’s bad for our countries and our people, and for the economy.
Question: What is the reason for the current split, and how do you propose mending it? We see a deep divide. You and Barack Obama initiated a reset policy, but neither country has taken advantage of this opportunity. How can we overcome this problem, this antagonism between the West and Russia? What solution can you suggest?
Dmitry Medvedev: I will speak about this later, but now I’d like to finish answering your first question. All of this has resulted in a situation where the EU, individual EU countries and Russia have almost completely severed or at least seriously weakened their ties. Still, we have rather strong ties with Germany, but they are not what they used to be. Our economic activity has slumped by 40 percent. Who has benefited from this? It makes me wonder.
We do maintain political contacts. The Russian President regularly holds talks with the Federal Chancellor, but they concern a rather small group of issues. They only discuss the situation in Ukraine. It’s true that this is a very serious European problem. But that’s almost all they talk about. In some cases they discuss Syria. But we no longer conduct the comprehensive dialogue we used to. I can assure you that this is the case because I participated in that process. And the conclusion is that the world has not become a better place, the number of problems has increased, and to boot some countries have stopped talking with each other altogether.
As for the latter question, I don’t think the blame resets with us. We never shirked contact, and we were ready to talk in any format possible. But all contact has been deliberately curtailed by the EU, and then the same happened to Russia-NATO cooperation. So, my conclusion ahead of the Munich conference is that the world has become a more dangerous and darker place.
Question: Who is to blame for this? Not Russia, you say. People in Europe feel that trust in Russia has weakened because of the Ukrainian crisis.
Dmitry Medvedev: I agree that the issue of trust is of key importance, but let’s talk about the ways trust is created and the value of trust. Yes, we are suffering a crisis of trust. By the way, there was a crisis of trust also during the economic crisis of 2008-2009. How can this crisis be overcome? Only through contact, whereas our relations with a number of our European partners and the United States are frozen or are half-hearted attempts at dialogue. This is my first comment.
Second, trust cannot develop in a matter of weeks. In fact, it took us 25 years since the establishment of new Russia as a state in 1991 to develop relations with our European partners. There came a time when I thought we were friends, that we talked the same language literally and figuratively, be it Russian, German or English, and that we understood each other well. There’s nothing left of this trust now. What makes me especially sorry? Of course, opinions may differ, including on the developments in Ukraine. But why derail absolutely all contacts, from political to economic ones? Look, the Soviet Union was not the easiest partner and not the friendliest country for Europe and for other countries, yet parliament speakers were never declared personae non grata before, not even during the most difficult conflicts, like during the Cuban missile crisis or the Afghan war. We can close the curtain and refuse to talk with one another. I believe that this would be a huge political mistake. They shouldn’t have done this as this hasn’t benefited anyone. We have our policy, for example, with regard to Ukraine and Crimea, and European countries have theirs. But we have stopped talking. Who has been punished?
Question: How can this crisis be overcome?
Dmitry Medvedev: This is the most difficult issue. Unfortunately, being a practical man I can tell you that there is only one way: to restore relations and contacts, to abandon stereotypes and to coordinate reasonable compromises. But then again, it’s not Russia who must walk the greater part of this path, because it was you who told us that we are bad; that our decisions contradict international law; that you won’t invite us anywhere; that you wouldn’t trade with us; and that you would introduce sanctions against us. Now that I’ve said all of this, tell me, has this changed Russia’s stance at least one tiny bit?
I always provide the following example. As I said, the Soviet Union was not the best form of government and we definitely never tried to revive it. I know everything about the Soviet Union, for I was born, just as you, in 1965, and I was a young man during the Soviet period. Sanctions were introduced against the Soviet Union at least a dozen times (I counted them), in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1970s. Did this change the Soviet Union? No.
In other words, regrettably, we are on the wrong path. But it is our European partners, and first of all the leaders of the EU countries, who must walk the greater part of this path. I say this openly so as to avoid any misunderstandings. Even though the EU countries are also NATO members, and even though the United States is the largest global player, the EU and Europe have their own destiny, and so the leaders of European countries – not business people who want to trade, and this is clear – must decide if they want to repair relations with Russia.
Question: You have made it very clear that it would not be in your interests if the iron curtain came down again and that you would like the political tensions to be resolved. As far as I understand, a major strategy for this will be worked out in Munich. However, my question is this: The Minsk Agreements are a key prerequisite for a resumption of closer ties. The German government’s stance is clear: all parts of the agreement must be fulfilled for the sanctions to be relaxed or lifted. Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, in his interview to Handelsblatt two weeks ago, said that this is a mistake and it would be better to meet Russia halfway already now because the first parts of the Minsk Agreements have already been fulfilled. Do you agree with Gerhard Schröder? Is that the outcome you expect, that these countries will begin to cooperate with Russia sooner?
Dmitry Medvedev: Gerhard Schröder is right. He’s absolutely right. It was a mistake. He’s an experienced politician, he headed the German government, but that’s not the only point. His view is fundamentally correct.
I think right now European countries just need to get together and make some difficult decisions. The EU is not a monolithic structure, we all realise that. There are countries that feel phantom pain when it comes to the Soviet Union. They constantly suspect Russia of something. Hopefully, Germany is not one of those countries. The history of our relations went through two bloody wars in the 20th century. However, we are now close partners. Just recently, Germany was our biggest trade partner in Europe.
Therefore, I believe this view is correct and they need to find courage to admit it. President Putin has said it repeatedly and I have said it too, we don’t see an alternative to the Minsk Agreements. The reason is simple: we are practical people and we don’t have any other option. If we had five agreements we could say, this one is good and that one isn’t. But we have only one.
With contribution from the Normandy Four, we have reached some serious compromises. And I believe that during that period our partners – both Ms Merkel and Mr Hollande – demonstrated great responsibility. It is very easy to slam the door and say: we don’t hear each other, we don’t understand each other. However, we managed to work out a roadmap. And now we are moving forward according to this roadmap, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. At least, there are no active exchanges of fire.
Some other terms of the agreement have been fulfilled. But what is the problem? One clause on political settlement is still pending. But it’s not Russia’s responsibility. To be honest, our European partners can hear us, unlike the decision-makers in Kiev.
Elections, the amnesty and future government of Ukraine are not the issues for us or France or Germany to decide. These are Ukraine’s issues. However, these processes are deadlocked now. Yes, the talks continue and now the United States got involved. I think that is good because, let’s be honest, Kiev is listening very closely to what Washington says and the country’s leadership is, as we know, divided into those who look up to Europe and those who look up to the United States. At any rate, the Minsk Agreements are to be fulfilled since we don’t have any other option. But let me point out that the Russian leaders believe it is Ukraine’s turn to act.
Dmitry Medvedev’s interview for Handelsblatt, Germany
Question: You are saying that the Europeans should act. Wouldn’t it be a goodwill gesture on Russia’s part to lift some of its import bans, which would make it easier for Europe to decide on mitigating sanctions?
Dmitry Medvedev: You see, the issue of bans has been demonised somewhat. First, you know Russia well, so you are aware that we are going through a difficult economic period, although it is far from catastrophic. Last year, Russia’s GDP decreased two and a half times slower on 2009, when things were much more complicated. In 2009, we faced no external restrictions, and the oil prices were not hovering at the $25-$30 mark. Nevertheless, everything came crashing down, and the slump was much more pronounced.
Second, we are facing problems which are mostly linked with a critical fuel and energy price slump. Our budget largely depends on energy revenues, and, of course, mutual restrictions have exacerbated this process. Why am I talking about this? We didn’t impose these restrictions. They were imposed on us, and we introduced our own countermeasures – this is absolutely true. As you know, this came as a response. To be perfectly frank, these countermeasures are restricting our progress to some extent, but they are also helping us in some areas. I have been working on agricultural issues for many years, say, eight years, starting back when I was president. We faced a very dire situation, although Russia is an agrarian country, it has more arable lands than any other country in the world. Now we are able to feed ourselves. At some point, Russian farmers and our large agribusinesses came to believe that they can produce their own food, that they will not face competition in the form of food being dumped by some European countries at knockout prices (I repeat – at knockout prices), and they have expanded their own production capacity.
In 2014, we spent around 240-250 billion roubles on support for agriculture, and we’ll spend the same amount again this year. In effect, we see this as a window of opportunity. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we are determined to draw out the sanctions. Our European partners should simply understand that nature abhors a vacuum. Someone is bound to fill this vacuum.
The same applies to some other goods. We used to buy a lot of high-quality German production machinery, as well as cars. Germany now exports about 30-40 percent less of these mechanisms and machinery to Russia. This is bad because companies have fewer opportunities for implementing their own production modernisation and retooling programmes. On the other hand, we were forced to shift our focus to Asian markets. The quality of their goods is often worse than of German equivalents, but they have also learned how to make many goods. And we are also beginning to manufacture these goods.
Question: But the economy and geopolitics have a global scale. Isn’t it dangerous to fence yourselves off in some areas, as you have said, including in the economy, even when this implies a response to foreign restrictions and sanctions? Any country, be it China, the United States or Germany, will have to play a certain role in this globalised world and to accept the roles played by other countries. You see, closing off borders – be it to refugees or goods – is an obstacle to economic success.
Dmitry Medvedev: I am also a supporter of an open market economy, and I proceed from the assumption that Russia joined WTO and accepted all principles of an open economy. Indeed, the economy is global. But Russia didn’t fence itself off; we were told that certain goods will not be sold to us. Moreover, our potential decreased after European banks stopped lending to us.
On the one hand, it is holding us back, and, on the other hand, it is helping us. Regarding high-tech goods, I agree that it is very hard to get anything done in isolation. The world is so permeated with all this; electronic communications systems, high-tech and digital solutions have become so commonplace that it’s impossible to imagine that we’ll renounce all this. Russia is not a country to fence itself off in this respect, the way the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is doing.
But, in some cases, this really benefits us. Let’s be honest, why should we buy Polish apples when we have exactly the same climate? Our Polish friends started actively delivering their apples to Russia; they saturated the entire Russian market and charged low prices for them. Great work! Although Poland is not a southern country, it has thriving agribusiness. Since the EU countries weren’t too enthusiastic about buying their produce, they sold all their apples on the Russian market. But we have the same orchards, so why should we buy anything from them? In this context, I believe that import substitution projects are absolutely essential and justified.
Question: During the latest major economic crisis, Russia asked the International Monetary Fund for assistance, and received it. Can you rule out another bad crisis that would require IMF aid again?
Dmitry Medvedev: I think you mean the crisis of the 1990s – 1998, to be precise – because we did not address the IMF in 2008, 2009 or 2010. Actually Russia is itself a benefactor. I believe the chances of our appealing to the IMF again are miniscule at best. We would like something different. As you and I have already discussed, many of our problems are artificially created. It would be easier to address many of them if the European capital markets were open to us. That’s the objective truth. Now we have to make do with domestic loans and subsidies.
Question: Nature abhors a vacuum, as you have just said. Can we say that Russia has embarked on a strategy that has caused it to make a U-turn from Europe to Asia? But then, Russian-Chinese trade has also decreased by 30 percent. So is this strategy efficient at all?
Dmitry Medvedev: Any nation might have problems. China and the EU are no exception, and neither is Russia. It isn’t so much a matter of making U-turns. In fact, it’s Russia’s destiny to look both ways, to face both east and west, and we have always said so.
However, we were very active in trade and investment partnerships with Europe in the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century. Our trade hit the 450 billion euro mark and, on the whole, the European Union remains our principal trade partner to this day. We paid tremendous attention to this partnership, and Asia might have receded from the list of our top priorities. Yet, the latest developments and the dynamism of the Asia-Pacific market prompt us to develop closer contacts. China is our strategic partner. But then, you are right that however huge China and its economy might be, it has its own problems, too, and it cannot save the world. Be that as it may, today Russia and China enjoy advanced and versatile cooperation. I visited China at the end of last year and had intergovernmental consultations with our partners there.
All this holds not only China but also all the Asia-Pacific countries. We visited several of them in connection with the APEC summit – the Philippines, Malaysia. I also paid a short visit to Cambodia and have been to Vietnam before. All of them are our trade and investment partners. By the way, Russia and Vietnam have reached an understanding for the creation of a free trade zone – something we have failed to achieve with other countries. The Russian-Vietnamese market is open, and Vietnam, as a rapidly developing economy, very much wants this.
To be in contact with both Europe and Asia simultaneously is not a political decision but rather a merely pragmatic necessity. If our European colleagues determine to resume a normal partnership with us, we will gladly return to our one-time close cooperation in many areas.
Question: As for foreign political decisions, what role in the world is Russia after? Can it afford a leading geopolitical role, considering its current economic situation?
Dmitry Medvedev: I don’t think we are after geopolitical leadership. Let those who are out for leadership assume responsibility for the whole world. Let them answer for wars and for migrants wandering about Europe by the hundreds thousands. That’s not what we want. We overcame that infantile disorder in the Soviet era. Now we don’t want to be global managers any longer.
However, Russia should occupy the place it deserves in the world due to its history, geography, opportunities, Security Council membership, and other aspects of its formal status. Last but not least, Russia is a major nuclear power. All this places a measure of responsibility on us.
We are not trying to rule the world or impose our regulations on it, though we are accused regularly of having such ambitions. Really, some people say that we are such and such, only out to take control of everything. That is not so – we are a pragmatic people who realise that no one can shoulder responsibility for the whole world, not even the United States of America.
Question: But there are crises in the world, including the fight against ISIS and the civil war in Syria, which cannot be stopped without Russia. How can Russia help to stop the civil war in Syria? I think it is the biggest challenge, and it has led to the migrant crisis in Europe. Germany is one of the countries that has to deal with its consequences. What could be Russia’s contribution? We have been hearing about Aleppo shelling in recent days. Perhaps, you could tell us whether the reports that somewhat confused the West are real? What is Russia going to do next, step by step?
Dmitry Medvedev: Russia became involved in the Syrian conflict in order to secure its own national interests. Obviously, we would not be doing it had the Syrian leadership not requested our help and military support. I always give an example that nobody can object to because most of the people talking about Syria have never been there. I was in Syria on an official friendly visit before the war. I can tell you that at the time Syria made a lasting impression on me. It is an ancient country with many ethnicities and faiths living successfully together. It was a peaceful and mostly secular country – you could see it from the way women dressed, the way people looked in the street, and so on.
What happened later is a compelling lesson of how easy it is to create a problem and how difficult it is to solve it. At some point, it occurred to our colleagues that Mr al-Assad is not behaving as he should (if such terms can be used in foreign policy). I will tell you exactly who I am talking about: our partners in the United States, some of our European and Arab partners, including Saudi Arabia, for example. We may differ in our opinions of certain political leaders but it is not a good enough reason to begin intervention or to stir up unrest from within. Now the country is being torn apart by a civil war. Everybody is fighting with each other, the Shias with the Sunnis, the Sunnis with the Druze, Christians and Alawites. Does anybody benefit from this? Perhaps, al-Assad is not an exemplary democrat but the solution was to insist on an election instead of starting a military campaign. Everybody lost in the end.
Why are we securing our national interests there? As you know, Russia is a multinational and very complex country. We have our own religious extremists, whom we have fought for a very long time, generally with success, in the Caucasus. They still manage to leak into other countries from time to time. I’m thinking about the unfortunate Mr Mubarak (Hosni Mubarak, former President of Egypt), who told me during one of my visits: “For your information, there is a huge number of immigrants from Russia and some CIS countries here. You should thank me for being tough, otherwise we would have a bloodbath here.” Then the Arab Spring happened and we all know the destiny of poor Mubarak because our American ‘friends’ – those he was loyal to for decades – stitched him up and let the extremists take over power. It is only now that Egypt is starting a new chapter in its history and there is a revival.
Therefore, we understand that the people who went to Syria (and there are at least several thousand of them now although we don’t have accurate figures because we can’t count them all up, who left when, but their number runs into thousands) will come back as completely brainwashed murderers and they will do the same as what they did in the past in the North Caucasus, in Moscow and other Russian cities, what they did in Paris and all over the world, including the United States.
Question: Did you say there are thousands of Russians (in Syria)?
Dmitry Medvedev: Yes, there are thousands of people from Russia there. This is why President Putin decided to respond to the Syrian President’s appeal to take part in this combat operation. It is not an unlimited but a temporary operation. And it is a local operation involving the use of aircraft and, in some cases, missiles. That is, we don’t want to take part in the land operation; we’ve only sent our advisers there. In other words, we consider this to be a localised, though very important mission.
As for forms of cooperation, I will certainly speak about them in my speech in Munich. We cannot agree on Ukraine and on some other issues, for example BMD, and there are other problems in our relations. But why cannot we agree on Syria? Those bastards are doing their vile deeds everywhere now, including in Russia and in Europe. But our Western partners refuse to maintain contacts with us, curtailing them whenever they can. Ties at the level of defence departments are only sporadic, and they don’t want to create a coalition, claiming that we are fighting the wrong forces. I’ve said this more than once: Let’s sit down at the negotiating table, hammer out an agreement, invite all those who are fighting terrorists (this has been done in Geneva, though not very successfully) and decide how we can fight this evil together.
We tell them: Show us the maps, show us where the so-called moderate opposition is located. This is a separate and very complex matter. We remember how it was in Afghanistan, when we were told that there are good and bad Taliban groups, and that we should befriend the good Taliban and the bad ones should be destroyed. And then there was 9/11 and other tragic events. It’s all very complicated. And it’s not a fact that those who describe themselves as moderate are actually so. But we are willing to discuss all of this. President Putin has told this to his partners again and again. This means we must sit down at the same table, but our partners avoid this. That is, there have been some occasional meetings, telephone conversations and contacts between our militaries. But in this situation we should create a full-scale alliance to fight this evil. Meanwhile, the problem has developed into a migration crisis.
I must say what I think on this issue. My European colleagues may not like this, but I believe that this is an all-out and total failure, an all-round fiasco of the European immigration policy. Complete washout. Couldn’t they have foreseen this several years ago? Are their analysts this bad?
We also feel sympathy |
#7 I like how in the skype conversation he says he never got the email. Its such an obvious bullshit response. ^O^
MaSsan Profile Joined June 2009 United States 143 Posts #8 On October 04 2013 06:28 shinyA wrote:
I thought he was letting you live with him free of charge out of niceness, doesn't seem like he would try to steal from you after giving you so much I thought he was letting you live with him free of charge out of niceness, doesn't seem like he would try to steal from you after giving you so much
HaHa. I'd like to read skype first before you say that... HaHa. I'd like to read skype first before you say that... @MaSsanSC
Ctone23 Profile Blog Joined December 2012 United States 1813 Posts #9 A mans word is all he has at times.... you told them you wouldn't say anything yet you did.
Hey it's your life, but trust is uncommon these days so I don't know why you chose to break that.
Good luck in everything you do. Gauntlet Esports
shinyA Profile Joined November 2008 United States 468 Posts #10 On October 04 2013 06:29 1MaSsan wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 04 2013 06:28 shinyA wrote:
I thought he was letting you live with him free of charge out of niceness, doesn't seem like he would try to steal from you after giving you so much I thought he was letting you live with him free of charge out of niceness, doesn't seem like he would try to steal from you after giving you so much
HaHa. I'd like to read skype first before you say that... HaHa. I'd like to read skype first before you say that...
I didn't read skype notes yet, in game. Will after ^_^ I didn't read skype notes yet, in game. Will after ^_^ twitch.tv/ggshinya
Aeromi Profile Blog Joined August 2012 France 13982 Posts #11 That's sad, I hope you will find a decent team. :/ O'Gaming Esport manager at O'Gaming | https://twitter.com/DrAeromi | Updates on live tournaments: @StarCrafteSport
oberkapo Profile Joined July 2012 United States 41 Posts #12 I'm curious as to what he meant when he said that Hwangsin and Apoc suffered from you being at the house.
Rickyvalle21 Profile Joined July 2012 United States 320 Posts #13 This evidence is irrefutable. I expect and immediate response from Simon Boudreault or something will down. people say practice is perfect but if nothing is perfect whats the point in practicing?
Achilles.Sc2 Profile Blog Joined September 2013 Germany 11 Posts #14 sucks when something like this happens to such wonderful personalities... i feel really sorry for you...
reikai Profile Joined January 2011 United States 357 Posts #15 GL to you, Massan. I think TL will be behind you~ Et Ducit Mundum Per Luce. :T:
MaSsan Profile Joined June 2009 United States 143 Posts #16 On October 04 2013 06:29 Ctone23 wrote:
A mans word is all he has at times.... you told them you wouldn't say anything yet you did.
Hey it's your life, but trust is uncommon these days so I don't know why you chose to break that.
Good luck in everything you do.
I didn't know he was going to frame me. I didn't know he was going to frame me @MaSsanSC
Strat4lyfe Profile Joined October 2010 Singapore 125 Posts #17 wow... holy shit~~~ MVP_MarineKing IM_Mvp Acer_MMA
InfCereal Profile Joined December 2011 Canada 1462 Posts #18 Jesus.
I'm regretting buying the Quantic sweater now. I was kind of dubious, but that skype log... Cereal :: AllThingsZerg.com :: SC2Overwatch.com
warshop Profile Joined March 2010 Canada 487 Posts #19 This seems to have gotten out of hand over something that should have been trivial. A shame, gl.
MaSsan Profile Joined June 2009 United States 143 Posts #20 On October 04 2013 06:30 oberkapo wrote:
I'm curious as to what he meant when he said that Hwangsin and Apoc suffered from you being at the house.
Upon that: I have given information I was fed by Simon and Wolf(quantic's sales management at the time) to Hwangsin and APoc about how things are being held together, and it wasn't all double rainbow. Simon is telling others that I have been making lies up about how awful organization is to others, to cover what I said in past. Unfortunately, I didn't lie to my teammates. However, I'd like to keep that part of conversation away, since it has confidential information like player salary, spending of the organization, which is what we shouldn't be focusing on. I don't want to hurt the teammates that I left behind.
Upon that: I have given information I was fed by Simon and Wolf(quantic's sales management at the time) to Hwangsin and APoc about how things are being held together, and it wasn't all double rainbow. Simon is telling others that I have been making lies up about how awful organization is to others, to cover what I said in past. Unfortunately, I didn't lie to my teammates. However, I'd like to keep that part of conversation away, since it has confidential information like player salary, spending of the organization, which is what we shouldn't be focusing on. I don't want to hurt the teammates that I left behind. @MaSsanSC
1 2 3 4 5 21 22 23 Next AllMy first ever crochet project. It’s Fractal doily pattern by Essi Varis, available on Ravelry. Being my first project, I decided to go for a larger hook than the pattern calls for so that I would easily be able to see the stitches. So, instead of petite doily, I ended up with a tablecloth. I’m happy with it, regardless!
The pattern is actually pretty simple to follow and is mostly double-crochet. After a couple of rows working on the veins, I got in the swing of the pattern and didn’t have to check the instructions. The instructions are all written out, so my next crochet project will be to tackle something with a chart!
I used a small part of a giant cone of 50% wool/ 50% silk undyed fingering yarn and used a 5mm size H hook. The pattern calls for a gauge of 10sts and 5.5 rows of dc to 1 inch. For me, the same number of stitches is 2.75″ x 3.5″ (much larger than 1″, which I knew would happen, but not square, which I didn’t know would happen). So, my design is stretched. I don’t know enough about crochet to say why my gauge is much longer than wide (any ideas, anyone?), although it could be influenced by my blocking, as I did stretch it that direction to block.
I pinned and blocked the tablecloth a bit at a time since it would all fit on my blocking mat. I steam blocked, as I almost always do. This yarn responded nicely to the steam block, locking itself into place without a struggle.
I had a hard time blocking this into a nice shape. I think one side turned out larger than the other (like I said, first crochet project), and the center has a few wonky spots, but laid out as a tablecloth with something in the center, I think it all hides pretty well.
The only unfortunate part is that my cat seems to like to attack it, so it can’t be left out unsupervised!
Share this: Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
EmailWhy do French strikers throw food?
“How come French babies sleep through the night?” “Why do French children happily eat what is put in front of them?” Such topics have been quite the fascination for us Anglo-Saxons of late.
Books about how the French raise such well-behaved children are legion. A host of best-sellers are revealed after a quick glance at Amazon (independent book sellers I mean you no offence, it was simply faster). “French Children Don't Throw Food”, “Why French children don't talk back”, “French Kids Eat Everything”, “French Parents Don't Give In”.
A veritable cottage industry has emerged as French mothers preach how their superior parenting skills are a gift to the world and the solution to producing a generation of better behaved citizens.
Switching attention away from Amazon to any news site recently however will reveal a host of French adults who do not seem to be as well behaved as their infant brethren. Within the last week we have seen French tobacconists dumping tonnes of carrots in Paris, French farmers barricading the borders, striking ferry workers blocking train-lines to name just three.
Where did it all go so wrong for these once impeccably-mannered ‘citoyens'?
(Farmers leave apples during a protest in Avignon. Photo. AFP)
Having read several of these books on why the French make such great parents, it boils down to the need to impose strict boundaries from the start. Do not rush to give attention to a crying baby, don't replace a toddler's plate with something different. In a nutshell, be cruel to be kind.
Relax - you know what is best for you and for baby, whatever the protest at that moment. Stick to your guns or the future is going to get worse. According to the books, this comes as second nature to French parents, which in most cases tends to mean French mothers (more on this later).
When only last week France's farmers were on the streets again, scarcely had they started to wreak chaos that the government announced fresh subsidies and loan cancellations to the tune of €500 million.
Not even a mention of the urgent reforms required in the French agricultural sector. In parenting terms this was the equivalent of reaching straight for the Kinder eggs.
It is however simply following type, and repeats years of similar climb downs. If you are a French tax-payer, read the small print on your tax return; there are special exemption cases galore for everyone from farmers to fishermen. All hard-earned by protestors at some point in the last 30 years.
Those same tobacconists who were dumping tonnes of carrots in Paris last week have benefited from billions of euros in state aid over the last ten years and seen their average incomes rise massively as a result. And yet, like spoilt children, they still scream and shout and demand more.
(Farmers throw milk and fruit on the ground in July, in Lyon. Photo: AFP)
You‘ll see where I am going with this. As individuals running households, French parents manage to make the sorts of smart decisions which their politicians are incapable of doing.
Children who learn good lessons at home and reach adulthood the better for it, soon realize that the reality of French working life is that it is easier (and more lucrative) to unlearn those lessons. French workers are encouraged by striking rights enshrined in law, a unionized police force who will not mobilize against strikers and, above all, by seeing all the concessions which have been wrung out of successive governments by the actions of others in their situation.
My advice for what remains a predominantly male-dominated political class who tackle these disputes is to look for solutions closer to home. Ask their partners how they would handle their own children, or for the more enlightened among them, apply some of the parenting skills they use at home themselves.
No knee-jerk reactions to the first night of crying and certainly no reaching for the cheque book as soon as the first carrots hit the pavement. Think of the long game, and don't forget that a bit of resistance is quite normal. Don't rush for that quick fix, however tempting it might be in the short-term. Generations of parents have shown you the way forward. Be strong!
I admit, the first few strikes tackled in this way might not be too pretty, but just like with that crying infant, a bit of strength at the right time saves countless sleepless nights in the future. Your neighbours happily forgave you for their lost sleep because they understood what was going on.
The French electorate would show similar respect. Who knows, in a few years time we might be reading books on French labour relations not French babies, as we ask how come their strikers don't throw food anymore?
Martin Dixon is a Director of the Franco-British Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) writing in a personal capacity, and his opinions do not reflect those of the FBCCI or any other organization with which he is connected. THis opinion was first published here. For more information about the FBCCI, click here.Don't use drugs, stay in school — kids hear this kind of advice all the time. What they don't hear is that not having a good education could be just as dangerous to their health as smoking.
That's the takeaway of a new study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. The authors of the study calculated the health risks of low educational attainment in the U.S. and found that more than 145,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2010 if adults who did not finish high school had earned a GED or high school diploma — comparable to the mortality rates of smoking.
In addition, another 110,000 deaths in 2010 could have been saved if people who had some college went on to complete their degree.
[What does your education say about your health?]
The death counts are an estimate of education's impact on mortality, and do not indicate direct causality.
These figures are based on health risk associated with low education, which is a figure calculated through existing data on mortality rates for different levels of educational attainment. The data is adjusted to different populations and then multiplied by the population to get a number of deaths.
There are factors, such as childhood health or genetic predispositions, that are not accounted for to inflate the counts. Still, it's the same method used to calculate deaths associated with smoking and diet behaviors, so the numbers are comparable.
"As a scientist, the onus is on the researchers to demonstrate causality," said Patrick Krueger, an author of the study and a professor at the University of Colorado Denver. "Our paper doesn't look at causality directly, but we rest on previous studies."
There have been scores of papers published, the study says, establishing that poor education can lead to riskier behaviors, inadequate health care, poor nutrition and poor housing and working conditions. That leads to increased stress levels, affecting things like the immune system and cardiovascular health.
It's a complicated causal link, but Krueger says the evidence is strong enough to say there is a strong inverse relationship between educational attainment and adult mortality. In general, that means a better education translates to higher quality of life.
[How well-educated is your home county?]
There's been an increased interest over the past decade in academic communities to see how social factors contribute to the diseases that affect death rates. The push is in part to examine what's causing deaths beyond direct medical problems. Originally it started with more obvious behavior factors, like food and drug consumption, but it's expanded over time to include things such as segregation, poverty and income inequality.
"It's hard to get an individual to quit smoking, but it's easier to do on a population level," Krueger said.
Broader impact estimates, he suggested, are easier to spur policy changes, such as taxing products linked to harm. In terms of education, he said, that could mean putting a greater emphasis on expanding high school degrees, which he said is the strongest piece of data in the study.
"It's pretty reasonable for everyone to get a high school degree," he said. "It wouldn't be reasonable for everyone to get a doctorate degree."
Read more:
The 3 hot spots in the U.S. with the highest colon cancer death rates
Should you have to be 21 to buy cigarettes? Most Americans say yes.
I had a big pain in the neck. Then I ate a bunch of tart cherries.
Study of 1,000 38-year-olds shows biological age ranges from 30 to 60Story highlights The Guardian and Channel 4 News have revealed papers leaked by Edward Snowden
They show the UK let the U.S. access data from Britons not suspected of wrongdoing
The incidentally collected digital data, like e-mail records, could be stored by the U.S., they say
Before 2007, agencies could only keep the details of landline numbers collected incidentally
Britain allowed the United States to access and store digital records of Britons not suspected of wrongdoing in a deal agreed in 2007, according to UK newspaper the Guardian and broadcaster Channel 4 News.
The media outlets say a National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden describes a deal allowing it to keep and analyze personal data such as phone, internet and e-mail records collected "incidentally," while spying on actual targets.
In its television report, Channel 4 News suggested this could mean that if a suspect received a group e-mail, the U.S. could analyze the data of all the other recipients of the same e-mail.
Prior to the 2007 deal under then Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, U.S. agencies could only keep the details of landline numbers collected incidentally, they say.
The Guardian said the memo stated that the information would be put in databases accessible to other U.S. intelligence and military agencies.
The media outlets also pointed to a paragraph of a 2005 NSA memo, which they said had been marked for U.S. distribution only and suggested the U.S. was prepared to spy allies' citizens unilaterally "when it is in the best interests of the U.S. and necessary for U.S. national security."
In response to the reports, an NSA spokesman said: "NSA works with a number of partners and allies in meeting its foreign-intelligence mission goals, and in every case those operations comply with U.S. law and with the applicable laws under which those partners and allies operate."
JUST WATCHED Snowden: NSA reform justify leaks Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Snowden: NSA reform justify leaks 03:21
JUST WATCHED Greenwald: US spying not about terrorism Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Greenwald: US spying not about terrorism 07:25
JUST WATCHED Lawmaker: Snowden wants to testify in US Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Lawmaker: Snowden wants to testify in US 02:50
JUST WATCHED Dick Cheney on NSA spying on allies Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Dick Cheney on NSA spying on allies 05:00
Britain's national security agency GCHQ said it had no comment on the allegations.
The British media claims are the latest in a series of revelations stemming from documents released by Snowden.
Earlier this week, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and Guardian Australia reported that Australian intelligence services had tracked the phone calls of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2009. Indonesia withdrew its envoy to Canberra and summoned the Australian ambassador Monday to voice its anger at the allegations.
The country had previously expressed outrage over reports that Australia's Jakarta embassy was used as part of a U.S.-led spying network in Asia.
Snowden, 30, has admitted in interviews he was the source behind the leak of classified NSA documents, which revealed the existence of top-secret surveillance programs.
He is wanted in the United States on espionage charges and is currently living in Russia, which has granted him asylum.The scandal over Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been covered extensively in the United States. But, to continue a theme we've used previously on Canada stories (borrowed from Slate's Joshua Keating), how would the American media write about this if Ford were from almost any other country? Here, then, is a satirical take on the story you might be reading if Ford were from China or Afghanistan. To reiterate: Satire.
Canadian regime official Rob Ford (Mark Blinch/AP/The Canadian Press)
TORONTO – A powerful Canadian official has become entrenched in scandal after admitting to using crack cocaine, a taboo in this socially conservative society. In a country where dissent is limited by traditional mores, the transgression has sparked rare public outrage and raised concerns about the stability of the Canadian regime.
The official, Rob Ford, reigns over the restive border town of Toronto, a multi-ethnic hotbed known for its bustling markets and history of violent conflict.
Though long known for an ostentatious lifestyle, Ford had entrenched power by championing populist ideals that are seen as a direct challenge to the central government planners in Ottawa. Analysts who study the opaque Canadian political system warned that Ottawa may seize the opportunity to finally move against the weakened Ford. Though fears of a military coup remain low, it is still unknown how his allies within the regime will respond should the scandal spread.
In what many are taking as a sign of Ford's impending fall from power, the normally restrained Canadian state media are now openly covering the political scandal and even showing some signs of criticizing the now-besieged official.
Canada's political system is a complex and often inscrutable web of legislative bodies, executive offices and deeply entrenched local officials like Ford. Though it is nominally democratic, analysts warn that elections here can be "volatile."
The country's government is officially overseen by an ancient monarchy located thousands of miles away. The system's contradictions are a reminder that, though colonialism ended long ago in most of the world, this colony has yet to fully throw off its European overlords.
Worsening fears of instability, Toronto is mere hours from the strife-torn province of Quebec, which has been marked by decades of political unrest and separatist movements.
Though Toronto's streets remained quiet on Wednesday, a palpable sense of tension and uncertainty hung in the air. An American Embassy official here declined to comment but urged all parties to exhibit restraint and respect for the rule of law. In Washington, Pentagon planners were said to be preparing for a possible military intervention should political instability spread to Canada's oil-producing regions.President Obama proposed new safeguards for the government's vast surveillance of communications in the U.S. and abroad, adding additional judicial review and disclosure requirements, but largely leaving in place programs that he said were needed to "remain vigilant in the face of threats."
His proposals, unveiled in a long-anticipated speech on Friday, drew warm reviews from intelligence officials, but expressions of disappointment from many civil liberties activists and some prominent technology company executives.
Under Obama's plan, the Maryland-based National Security Agency still would have broad authority to intercept e-mail and other Internet communications overseas, even when its dragnet pulls in the communications of Americans who are corresponding with foreigners. Intelligence officials say this power has been key to counter-terrorism investigations.
Obama proposed more significant changes for the program that has generated the most public controversy: The government's database on nearly all telephone calls in the United States, which shows when calls took place and which numbers are connected to which other numbers.
Under Obama's plan, the government no longer would hold the so-called telephony metadata, but he left undecided who would. Telephone companies have resisted taking on the cost and liability of holding the data themselves, and some prominent members of Congress say that involving a private party would increase the risk of leaks and other problems.
Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that he agreed with "many" of the president's proposals — but did not specify which ones.
Ruppersberger's district includes NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. The Army base in Anne Arundel County is the state's largest workplace.
"The solution to regaining the public's trust will center on strengthening oversight, promoting transparency and safeguarding Americans' civil liberties," he said. "These are not mutually exclusive goals."
Obama intended his speech to quell concerns about U.S. spy practices. He said he recognized the unease many Americans have felt in the seven months since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began to reveal details about the agency's activities.
Obama pledged greater transparency, and said leaders could not simply say: "Trust us, we won't abuse the data we collect."
But he staunchly defended the nation's intelligence agencies, saying they had not misused their vast powers in the effort to detect and disrupt terror plots.
After repeated reviews, "nothing that I have learned," Obama said, "indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens …. They are not abusing authority in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails."
He told listeners the country faces "real enemies and threats, and that intelligence serves a vital role in confronting them."
Obama gave the Justice Department and the Director of National Intelligence until March 28 to decide who would hold the telephone data. He left unanswered the question of whether the government would continue to collect the data if no solution is found. Officials said that issue had not yet been decided.
In a related decision, Obama surprised some intelligence officials by directing that for now, they seek a judge's approval before mining the voluminous cache of records.
The president added that to his speech less than a day before delivery, officials said. But the last-minute move was an exception. Most of Obama's proposals resulted from months of negotiations within the administration and were carefully honed to avoid interfering with the work of the intelligence community.
"We think these are reasonable, moderate steps," said one senior intelligence official who was involved in negotiations with the White House and asked for anonymity in order to speak freely.
By contrast, civil liberties advocates and officials of technology companies had hoped Obama would go further in curtailing surveillance.
"We are disappointed that President Obama chose not to end the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone call records, nor to provide any specifics on how he would significantly alter it," said Virginia Sloan, president of the bipartisan Constitution Project. "We hope to see Congress act decisively to end all bulk collection of our private records. …
"As long as the NSA continues to hold this sensitive data, or to map and sift through it without tighter restrictions, the phone call collection program poses an unacceptable threat to our fundamental freedoms."
Others said they would wait to see more details.
Obama "has opened the door to ratcheting back NSA surveillance of innocent Americans and non-citizens alike," said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "But for every answer he gave, there are several new questions about how he plans to implement these changes."
Obama said nothing about two of the technology industry's biggest concerns: government efforts to defeat encryption of communications and its exploitation of so-called "back doors" that allow access to computer programs. Technology firms worry they may lose business to overseas competitors if customers think they are too susceptible to NSA eavesdropping.
In one move that had been urged by civil liberties groups, Obama said he wants to set up a new panel of privacy advocates who can counter the positions of government lawyers before the special court that oversees intelligence gathering.Dr Ntlotleng Mabena, of the Centre for HIV and Prevention Studies, shows the PrePex circumcision device. Picture: Puri Devjee
Durban - A new circumcision device will be piloted in the country in the next sixth months after success in other African countries. The non-surgical PrePex device was officially pre-approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in May.
A media briefing on the device was held as the Sixth SA Aids 2013 Conference began in Durban on Tuesday.
The conference, at the Inkosi Chief Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre (ICC) and attended by more than 3 000 delegates, is believed to be the second-largest Aids conference in the world.
Speaking about the device, said to be safe and easy to use, Dr Ntlotleng Mabena, of the Centre for HIV and Prevention Studies, said they had conducted pilot projects on the PrePex in several African countries, including Rwanda and Zimbabwe, and were impressed with the results.
Mabena said with the PrePex, a patient did not have to be put under local anaesthetic, but anaesthetic cream was applied for comfort.
She said the PrePex used a ring to create pressure on the the foreskin and took less than five minutes, compared with a forcep-guided method, which required between 10 and 15 minutes.
“Once the ring is on, the man will have it on him for seven days, during which time it gradually stops the blood supply. The foreskin then dries up and it is then carefully cut off and the man is circumcised,” she said. The benefits of using the PrePex were that there was no bleeding, there were no stitches, and patients were not at risk of infection after being circumcised as the skin healed during the time that the ring was on, Mabena said.
“Men also take less time off work because they heal quickly, as opposed to surgical circumcision.
“It is a device that is easy to use as long as the person fitting it was properly trained,” she said. “There are obviously the traditional methods and there are issues of safety when it comes to traditional circumcision. Sometimes people who have undergone traditional circumcision have to redo it in order to remove the foreskin that has been left behind.”
Mabena said each PrePex device cost about R200 and was intended for men aged 18 and older. One of the risks associated with the device was that men could forget that they had the ring on and engage in sex.
“The ring will then move and if that happens, medical circumcision will then be required. Our other fear is that if the device is not socially accepted, it cannot be introduced properly,” she said.
Mabena’s PrePex pilot project would be run in Orange Farm, North West, or Mpumalanga. She said when they conducted their study on medical male circumcision in Orange Farm, HIV incidence decreased by 76 percent.
“We now have to train staff on how to fit the PrePex. We need to make it acceptable to communities,” she said.
The chief director for HIV, Aids and sexually transmitted infections in the national Department of Health, Dr Thobile Mbengashe, said they would watch the PrePex pilot programme with interest.
Mbengashe said they hoped to circumcise at least 4.3 million men by 2016. “We have managed to have 1 million males circumcised, but we still have a lot to do. The PrePex has, however, addressed a lot of questions done by surgical procedures.
“Circumcision can prevent new infections by 60 percent. If we have many males who are circumcised, we are also reducing the number of infections,” he said.
Mbengashe said their goal was to reduce the number of infections by 50 percent.
“We cannot afford new infections. We spend R11-billion every year to treat people.” - Daily News* Security business one of Cisco’s fastest growing
* Cybersecurity market expected to grow 60 pct by 2020
* Cisco to continue to pursue M&A in security -executive (Adds quote from executive, background details)
By Abhirup Roy, Anya George Tharakan and Liana B. Baker
June 30 (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc said on Tuesday it would buy OpenDNS, a privately held cloud-based security firm, for $635 million, the latest move to boost its security business as cyber attacks increase in number and sophistication.
Cisco has been buying a number of security companies, which has made its relatively tiny security business one of its fastest growing areas in the past two years.
OpenDNS uses predictive intelligence to block malware, botnets and phishing threats that antivirus and firewalls miss. Cisco was a minority investor and was one of the backers that invested $35 million in OpenDNS in May last year. (bit.ly/1KqDMjV)
When Cisco buys stakes in startups, it often receives defensive rights that give it an edge to acquire companies it has invested in ahead of competitors.
The acquisition of OpenDNS is Cisco’s first after it said in May that veteran sales executive Chuck Robbins would replace John Chambers as CEO in July.
“M&A will continue to be an important part of what we do,” said Hilton Romanski, Cisco’s chief technology & strategy officer, adding that the M&A strategy of being an active investor and potential acquirer will continue under Robbins.
The company, whose security business is known for its firewalls, expanded into intrusion detection and prevention systems with the $2.7 billion acquisition of Sourcefire in 2013.
“We’re going to continue to focus on deals that allow us to complement what we’ve done with Sourcefire in the area of intrusion prevention and we’ll continue to look at malware and other key verticals inside the security domain,” Romanski said in an interview.
The global cybersecurity market is estimated to grow to $170.21 billion by 2020 from $106.32 billion in 2015, according to market research firm MarketsandMarkets.
Cisco’s shares closed down 8 cents or 0.3 percent Tuesday.
Cisco, which has acquired dozens of companies over the years, is transitioning towards high-end switches and routers and investing in new products such as data analytics software and cloud-based tools for data centers.
It bought malware analysis company ThreatGRID in 2014 and security advisory firm Neohapsis this year.
San Francisco, California-based OpenDNS has partnerships with network gear makers such as Aruba Networks Inc and Netgear Inc as well as cybersecurity companies such as FireEye Inc.
The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2016, Cisco said in a statement. (Editing by Savio D’Souza and Phil Berlowitz)The marijuana industry may be booming in Colorado, but pot entrepreneurs face a very big problem: pesticides.
Two marijuana users, including a cancer patient, filed a lawsuit last week against a pot business that they claimed used an unhealthy pesticide to grow its weed. The pesticide in question is Eagle 20 EW, a fungicide often used on grapes and hops.
The chemicals, used to stave off mites, mildew and other pests, could also be harmful to humans when used on a product that is later burned for inhalation. Eagle 20, in particular, contains a chemical called myclobutanil that produces toxic hydrogen cyanide gas when burned.
The lawsuit alleges that LivWell, a pot company in Denver, should be penalized for using a pesticide that was not listed by the state as safe for use on marijuana.
The state of Colorado lists pesticides that are approved for use on food and tobacco crops, but it doesn't specifically outlaw Eagle 20 and other pesticides.
"We believe that the people behind this effort do not want the commercial cannabis industry to succeed and that LivWell was targeted because of its success. We value the health and safety of our customers and patients and have no interest in compromising on that," said Dean Heizer, chief legal strategist for LivWell, told CNBC Thursday.Another hockey season is upon us. As NHL training camps open, many hockey players across the country, young and old, are registering for yet another season in the amateur ranks of the sport in the United States. In all likelihood, there will be more players from the mini mites to old-timers playing hockey in this country than ever before.
Utilizing USA Hockey’s public playing membership numbers, American hockey participation has been on a precipitous rise since the early 1990s. When looking at the numbers over a 20-plus-year span, the growth is rather remarkable. However, it is just as impressive when looking at a shorter window.
In the early 1990s, there was much more room to grow. As demand for the game grew, so did the number of facilities, which allowed hockey to flourish in the United States. Though the potential for growth stalled during an economic downturn, hockey didn’t stop moving forward.
After reviewing 20-year growth in 2010 (here and here), I decided to take another look at how hockey has fared over the last decade (using the 11 seasons between 2002-03 and 2012-13) and also broke it down into a five-season span (2008-09 to 2012-13).
Coming up after the jump, a look at hockey participation in each state since 2002-03.
Editor’s Note (Updated for clarity, 9/13): All statistics have been taken from USA Hockey’s annual public membership statistics. You can peruse them for yourself here. These statistics are for all levels of amateur hockey, which includes adult leagues as well as women’s and girls’ hockey. For reference, in 2013, nearly 70 percent of USA Hockey’s playing membership was boys and girls under the age of 18 and thus classified a “youth” player.
Though USA Hockey’s membership is representative of the largest number of players in the United States, the numbers are not totally comprehensive as some adult and high school leagues are not USA Hockey affiliated. There are also some youth leagues affiliated with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and not USAH. Players in those leagues, in all likelihood are not USA Hockey-registered. Seeing as the vast majority of players are indeed registered with the national governing body, however, these numbers provide a strong representation of where hockey participation stands in this country. It is important to note that these numbers are not meant to be taken as the official number of hockey players nationwide, rather an extremely close representation.
Summary
In 1990-91, USA Hockey’s national membership stood at 195,125 players. In just 10 years, that number ballooned to 439,140 in 2000-01. Just last season, USA Hockey boasted 510,279 members, the second most all-time and just under 1,000 less than the record 511,178 set in 2011-12.
Despite the economic downturn over the last decade in the United States, hockey has hit more peaks than endured valleys. This all despite the fact hockey can be a cost-prohibitive sport. More is being done to make the game more affordable and accessible, which has helped.
The success of the NHL has also led to a bump in membership. In areas like Western Pennsylvania, Chicago, the Potomac Valley, California and Texas, hockey is flourishing thanks in part to an NHL presence. Additionally, the fruits of the league’s expansion to the south has helped bring hockey to more areas than ever before, building a solid base of playing membership.
More than anything, however, the growth can be traced back to the tireless work from volunteers at the grass-roots level. Providing programs for kids of all ages and skill levels is opening doors like never before. USA Hockey has also come up with several strong initiatives that have helped facilitate growth as well.
After decades of niche status, the game at the youth level is becoming more mainstream in more locales throughout the country. As the number of players grow, so too should the quality of play, which in turn could provide better results at |
. As in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, the brawling mechanics will still yield the same rewarding rhythm fans felt when clearing rooms of foes by carefully balancing attacks, counters, dodges, and cape-stuns. Rocksteady Studios’ dynamic duo pulled off what no previous Bat-games had—they actually made players feel as badass as Batman—and WB Games Montreal isn’t about to mess with that successful formula.
That said, the new studio wishes to evolve the tried-and-true mechanics while also putting its own mark on the series. Mattes and gameplay director Michael McIntyre believe this means not just training players to be good at combat, but making them black belts. “We’ve created specific, memorable challenges that force them to be good at things in order to progress. They really focus on challenging core skills, slowly inching players toward becoming much better at the game.” explained McIntyre.
These so-called challenges conveniently tie into Origins’ prequel tale. As Mattes described, Batman is at his best when the game begins. “It’s year two. He knows how to fight, he’s got the suit, he’s donned the cowl, he goes out at night and he beats up bad guys. But generally speaking, it’s organized crime—pimps, drug dealers, gang members. No one has thrown anything more challenging at him than a shotgun. That’s all going to change the night that our game takes place.”
Exit Theatre Mode
The impetus of the change Mattes refers to is a 50 million dollar bounty put on the Bat by main antagonist Black Mask. Not only does this hefty reward for the hero’s head attract eight of the DC Universe’s top assassins—including Bane, Firefly, Copperhead, and Deathstroke—it also provides the developers with the narrative opening that allows Origins to, as Mattes put it, ”Train players to be good at being Batman.”
As with previous Arkham entries, Origins will pit Bat fans against tough odds, playing fast and loose with the free-flow combat system until large groups of foes are whittled down to one whimpering bad guy. This time around, however, these multi-thug showdowns will serves as mere warm-ups to mano-a-mano boss battles with assassins that are as well-trained as Batman. Sure, the series has seen its share of epic encounters with the biggest bads from DC’s rogues’ gallery, but previous melees with madmen like Mr. Freeze and the Joker have been more story-pushing, cinematic set pieces than thumb-blistering battles.
Boss fights are common to the franchise, but, as Mattes explained, encounters against single enemies who are as hyper-focused on free-flow combat as Batman are new. Each of these dedicated showdowns will focus on a specific aspect of free-flow fisticuffs, forcing players to master it if they wish to progress.
I got a taste of this tough-love approach during one of the game’s early assassin battles against Deathstroke. With a PS3 controller clutched in my mitts, Mattes peered over my shoulder and returns to rally mode to remind me the one-eyed merc isn’t another “guy with a gun” and that glorified button-mashing won’t cut it. “Deathstroke is an augmented, incredibly capable hand-to-hand melee fighter with access to great weaponry and technology. He’s incredibly vicious, willing to kill, and has all the capabilities of Batman but none of the inhibitions.”
Using a metal staff, smoke bombs, and a grapple gun that occasionally snatches an exploding barrel to collide with Batman’s chest, Deathstroke easily lived up to the reputation Mattes painted for him. It was also clear I was on the receiving end of an ass-whuppin’ designed to teach me how to counter at just the right moment. In fact, countering too often—or too early—actually saw Deathstroke stealing the sort of in-the-zone momentum I’ve grown accustomed to enjoying from behind Batman’s fists.
Exit Theatre Mode
After two attempts—both of which saw me barely bring Deathsroke’s health bar to the halfway point—Mattes pointed out that I shouldn’t spam the counter button, nor should I try stunning him with my cape. Unlike the dumb bunnies polluting Gotham’s streets, Deathstroke’s apparently immune to such parlor tricks. With feedback doled out, Mattes took the controller and showed me how it’s done. In defense of my failed attempts to make Deathstroke cry uncle, however, it took Mattes several minutes—including a few close calls—to bring the gun-for-hire down. When he finally did, though, his persistence and skills were rewarded with Deathstroke’s grapple gadget, now rechristened as the Remote Batclaw.
On top of incentivizing these focused fights with cool loot, Origins introduces a new WayneTech upgrade system that provides plenty of tools—like detailed tutorial videos—for those who consistently find themselves slumped on the floor shortly after meeting assassins. While the developers really want players to be judicious in their use of attacking versus countering versus gadget use, they’re not just throwing them into the deep end without a utility belt. On top of WayneTech’s teaching tools, the game’s story-driven pacing promises to progress players in a way that trains them to be a badass without obvious hand-holding or frustrating trial-and-error. It’s a tough balance, but one the developers are confident they’ve nailed.
Exit Theatre Mode
My biggest takeaway was that these dedicated, combat-focused encounters felt like nothing I’d experienced in previous Arkham games, but more like the sort of multi-tiered boss battles I’d faced in the Metal Gear Solid series. More specifically, I hadn’t felt that focused or committed to a one-on-one battle since taking on Metal Gear Rising’s more punishing creeps.
I walked away from Origins after being defeated by Deathstroke only twice; whether or not I will ultimately experience the same controller-chucking frustration that followed Raiden’s more soul-crushing defeats remains to be seen. My rematch can’t come soon enough.
Matt Cabral is a freelance writer for IGN. His superpower is being unbelievably nice. Seriously, you can't help but like this guy. You can follow him on Twitter.FBI agents arrested Kevin George Poe of Manchester, Conn., for launching DDoS attacks against GeneSimmons.com over a five-day period in October 2010.
A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Poe last week on two counts – conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. If convicted on both counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison.
According to the FBI, Poe and others linked to Anonymous conducted a DDoS attack against Simmons’ computer systems, sending tens of thousands of electronic requests designed to overload the computer server and render the website useless. Poe used a favorite Anonymous software tool – a low orbit ion cannon, which is a computer program that is used to send extremely large numbers of packets over a network in an attempt to overwhelm a target computer.
Commenting on the arrest, Mike Paquette, chief strategy officer with Corero Network Security, said that the incident “once again sheds light on the increasing amount of DDoS attacks by criminals and hacktivists that are sometime out for financial gain or just looking to make a political or ideological statement.”
Paquette warned that DDoS attacks are becoming more sophisticated, targeting the application layer instead of bombarding the computer system with network packets.
“In 2012, IT administrators should update their business continuity plans and improve their overall security posture in preparation. The negative impact of business and productivity losses makes it essential to be diligent in preparation”, he advised.We assign a lot of bandwidth to the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast model, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing you should look at to get a sense for where the election is headed. So it’s time for a quick gut-check. How does the FiveThirtyEight model — where Barack Obama’s probability of winning the Electoral College recently ticked above 70 percent — compare against alternative means of forecasting the election?
There are a number of other statistical forecasting systems, most of which rely on polls, economic variables or some combination thereof.
I tracked down about every one of these models that I could find, subject to the condition that it couched its forecast in probabilistic terms (or that it was well-documented enough to allow this to be inferred with relative ease, like from the standard error that the model stated).
In my view, it’s in estimating the uncertainty in a forecast where most of the challenge and intrigue lies. To paraphrase Charles Barkley, any knucklehead can make a point prediction — but it takes brains to calculate a confidence interval.
These models are all over the map, forecasting everything from a nearly certain Obama victory to the substantial likelihood of his defeat. But more of them have Mr. Obama as the favorite. If you simply average their win probability estimates together, you get about a 61 percent likelihood of his winning the election.
This calculation combines models that estimate Mr. Obama’s chances of winning the popular vote (there are marked with “P.V.” in the chart) and those that make an Electoral College forecast. I list the FiveThirtyEight forecast twice since it provides both estimates.
The methods that make an Electoral College forecast are rather bullish on Mr. Obama — but be a little careful about reading too much from that. I do think Mr. Obama has a modest advantage in the Electoral College relative to the popular vote. But it isn’t more than modest: Mr. Obama is almost certain to lose the Electoral College if he loses the popular vote by more than a percentage point or two. Most of the models that make popular vote forecasts are more driven by economic factors, while those that make Electoral College picks rely more on polls, so they are not necessarily comparable.
The table also contains a couple of comparatively simple methods for forecasting the election. One, which I call “just G.D.P.,” is derived from looking at the growth rate of real gross domestic product in the first three economic quarters of election years since 1948, and comparing it with the incumbent party’s margin in the popular vote. As its name implies, the “just G.D.P.” method does not include any other variables apart from G.D.P.
Its companion, “just jobs,” looks at the growth rate of nonfarm payrolls in January through October of the election year, with no other variables or adjustments. For “just G.D.P.” and “just jobs,” I use consensus forecasts from The Wall Street Journal’s forecasting panel to fill in the economic numbers for the balance of 2012.
These simple methods predict a win for Mr. Obama — but with a lot of hesitation, by about 1 percentage point in the national popular vote. That translates to about a 55 percent chance of a popular vote victory, given the standard error in the models. It’s not precisely even, but close enough that poker players would call it a “coin flip.”
As for the rest of the models — as longtime readers will know, I’ve sometimes had harsh things to say about them. But really, I think they fall into about four different categories:
1) Models that are basically well designed. 2) Models that fall into the category of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t get into a flame war on Twitter about them.” 3) Models that are overly simplistic, but that form useful benchmarks precisely because of their simplicity. (“Just jobs” and “just G.D.P.” fall into this category, along with some of the others.) 4) Models that provide sensible projections of the margin between the candidates, and which are useful for that purpose, but which don’t do a very good job of translating that into probabilities.
What’s interesting, however — and perhaps not entirely coincidental — is that if you do take the average estimate from these models (Mr. Obama with just slightly better than a 60 percent chance of victory as of late Monday night), it almost exactly matches the consensus of gambling odds from different betting markets and bookmakers.
The second chart, below, provides a list of these. I looked up the odds for Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney at various futures markets, and at different sports books.
For this chart, I’ve provided two sets of numbers: the columns labeled “raw odds” list the numbers as-is from the betting sites, while the columns labeled “adjusted odds” tweak them so that the collective win probabilities for Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney add up to exactly 100 percent. (Why don’t the numbers add up to 100 percent to begin with? In the case of the futures markets, because they assign a small probability to candidates like Ron Paul or Hillary Rodham Clinton winning the election; for the sports books, because the unadjusted odds provide for a cut to the betting house and are intrinsically slightly disadvantageous to the bettor.)
The sports books are a smidgen more bullish on Mr. Obama than the betting markets. But both gravitate to a win probability of about 61 or 62 percent on an adjusted basis, just as the average of statistical methods do.
You do see that these markets aren’t terribly efficient. Mr. Obama’s win percentage is about four percentage points higher at Betfair than at Intrade, for instance, the two most liquid futures markets. And various sports books peg his odds anywhere from 59 percent to 68 percent, on an adjusted basis. In theory, there could be arbitrage opportunities based on the differences between these numbers.
The FiveThirtyEight model was quite close to the consensus until recently, but has now become a bit more bullish on Mr. Obama’s chances, listing his Electoral College odds at slightly over 70 percent — instead of slightly over 60 percent, as the consensus does.
I sometimes get asked whether I bet money on my forecasts — I don’t, since I would consider it a conflict of interest — or failing that, whether I would recommend a bet on them relative to the odds on offer at Intrade or Betfair.
My answer is probably unsatisfying. I think modeling a presidential election is a pretty hard problem. I think futures markets and sports books (like markets of any kind) can certainly go wrong. But I also think that the statistical methods can go wrong: all of them rely on a set of assumptions and choices made by the forecaster.
Some choices, in my view, are clearly better than others. One or two of the statistical methods, for instance, assumes that the outcome in each state is independent of the outcome in the next one. Ohio might move in one direction — and Michigan, just as easily, in the opposite one.
That’s simply not a credible assumption. The failure to appreciate correlations in risk is one of the things that led to the recent financial crisis. A change in economic conditions, or a substantial gaffe or scandal in the campaign, is likely to be reflected to some degree in all states, and move all of their numbers in the same direction. Our model assumes that the uncertainty in different states is largely, but not entirely, correlated. If you believe the contrary, you probably ought not be let anywhere near a job function in which you are asked to manage risk — although the credit-ratings agencies might be happy to hire you.
These pet peeves aside, elections forecasting is a challenging problem. More often, the assumptions in a model are intrinsically going to be educated guesses rather than being demonstrably right or wrong.
So my default is this: Bet on Vegas relative to the FiveThirtyEight model, but bet on the FiveThirtyEight model relative to Vegas. If you take the average between the FiveThirtyEight model and the consensus betting lines, you’d get about a two-in-three chance of Mr. Obama winning another term.HAMHUNG, North Korea (AP) — In the 10 years he has been digging up ordnance from the Korean War, Maj. Jong Il Hyon has lost five colleagues to explosions. He carries a lighter one gave him before he died. He also bears a scar on his left cheek from a bomb disposal mission gone wrong.
Sixty-four years after it ended, the war is still giving up thousands of bombs, mortars and pieces of live ammunition. Virtually all of it is American, but Jong noted that more than a dozen other countries fought on the U.S. side, and every now and then their bombs will turn up as well.
WATCH: U.S. lawmakers reach deal on sanctions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea
“The experts say it will take 100 years to clean up all of the unexploded ordnance, but I think it will take much longer,” Jong said in an interview with The Associated Press at a construction site on the outskirts of Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city, where workers unearthed a rusted but still potentially deadly mortar round in February. Last October, 370 more were found in a nearby elementary school playground.
According to Jong, his bomb squad is one of nine in North Korea, one for each province. His unit alone handled 2,900 leftover explosives — including bombs, mortars and live artillery shells — last year. He said this year they have already disposed of about 1,200.
Fortunately, there have been only a few injuries in the past few years. But Jong said an 11-year-old boy who found a bomb in May lost several fingers when it went off while he was playing with it.
READ MORE: U.S. to ban Americans from travelling to North Korea
North Korea is just one of many countries still dealing with the explosive legacy of major wars. In Asia alone, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and even Japan have huge amounts of unexploded ordnance left to clean up.
The three-year Korean War, which ended in what was supposed to be a temporary armistice on July 27, 1953, was one of the most brutal ever fought.
Virtually all of the 22 major cities in North Korea were severely damaged and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by U.S. saturation bombing. The tonnage of bombs dropped on the North was about the same as the total dropped by the U.S. against Japan during World War II. North Korea is probably second only to Cambodia as the most heavily bombed country in history.
By 1952, the bombing was so complete that the U.S. Air Force had effectively run out of worthwhile targets.
READ MORE: In 2016, North Korea’s economy grew at its fastest pace in 17 years
North Koreans claim 400,000 bombs were dropped on Pyongyang alone, roughly one bomb for every resident at the time, and that only two modern buildings in the capital were left standing. All told, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea during the war, most of it in the North, including with 32,500 tons of napalm.
Twelve to 15 percent of the North’s population was killed in the war.
Charles Armstrong, a historian at Columbia University, said the expansion of saturation bombing in North Korea marked something of a turning point for the United States and was followed by the use of an even heavier version during the Vietnam War.
“To this day, the North Korean government and media point to the American bombing as a war crime and a major justification for the continued mobilization of the North Korean people — as well as the development of nuclear weapons — in defense against future attacks,” he said.
WATCH: Report details public executions for petty theft in North Korea
Armstrong noted that the Hamhung area and the nearby port of Hungnam were hit particularly hard by U.S. bombers because they were an industrial center and home to the largest nitrogen fertilizer plant in Asia.
Nitrogen fertilizer can be used to make explosives, so the U.S. Air Force obliterated the area in late December 1950. Later rebuilt, the fertilizer plant is still functioning today and remains one of Hamhung’s most famous landmarks.
The bomb squads respond to calls when ordnance is discovered, check construction sites before excavation work begins and educate people, especially school children, about the dangers. Jong’s squad, which covers South Hamgyong province, has nine members. The largest, in Kangwon along the South Korean border, has 15.
One bomb was uncovered in March by farmers digging an irrigation canal near a railway that runs through Hamhung from Pyongyang to the northeastern port of Chongjin.
READ MORE: South Korea offers military talks with North amid rising tensions
“This railway was here during the war, so it was a target,” said Yom Hak Chol, manager of the 4th work team of the Pohang cooperative farm. He was working in the field when the bomb was found and watched the bomb squad remove it.
“We had to evacuate the area. The bomb squad blew it up over there,” he said, pointing to a narrow canal area where cows stood grazing between sprawling corn fields. “It left a hole 3 meters (10 feet) deep.”
Some bombs are not easily recognizable to the untrained eye. Jong said he has come across a surprising variety of bombs and explained in detail one in particular — a “butterfly bomb” that used wing-like attachments to disperse small “bomblets” over a wider area. The bomb was originally devised by the Nazis during World War II. The U.S. revised its design and used them in North Korea.
Jong said many aging bombs have become even more dangerous as rust erodes their detonators, and that some could go off with the slightest movement.
“I’m sure that my daughter’s generation will also suffer from this problem,” he said. “I want the world to know that.”
The rare access to Jong and the two sites on the outskirts of Hamhung was granted after repeated requests from the AP.
North Korea’s state media have also reported on the issue as part of a monthlong anti-U.S. propaganda campaign conducted in the run up to the anniversary of the end of the war.
The U.S. sent two B-1 strategic bombers on a training mission in the skies near the Demilitarized Zone after North Korea’s July 4 test of its first intercontinental ballistic missile. Such demonstrations of power are especially sensitive considering the historical legacy of the Korean War.Montgomery County authorities captured a 62-year-old federal police officer on Friday who is suspected in the shooting deaths of three people — including his estranged wife — and the wounding of three others in attacks in two counties over two days.
Eulalio Tordil, a Federal Protective Service officer from Adelphi, was arrested without incident just before 3 p.m. Friday at an Aspen Hill shopping center, where police say he patronized businesses after shooting a woman fatally outside a nearby Giant Food grocery store earlier in the day.
Witness James DeCarlo, 56, said he saw unmarked police vehicles ram Tordil's car, with officers jumping out and ordering him out of the vehicle at gunpoint. After what seemed like a few minutes, Tordil emerged with his hands up, DeCarlo said. He could be seen looking down at the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said Tordil was spotted by plainclothes officers who kept him under surveillance for an hour as he went from store to store in the Northgate Plaza Shopping Center. He visited a Dunkin' Donuts and ate at a Boston Market, authorities said.
"My officers had the well-being of the public in mind and kept him under surveillance and were ready to act if they needed to," Manger said. "Knowing his behavior today, and knowing of statements that he had made in the past, we did not want to endanger anyone and have a shootout when we took him into custody."
J. Thomas Manger, Montgomery County police chief, describes the shooting scenes at Montgomery Mall and an Aspen Hill Giant. A male from the mall shooting and a woman at Aspen Hill are dead. Two other people are injured, one seriously. They arrested Eulalio Tordil, 62, near the second scene. (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun video) J. Thomas Manger, Montgomery County police chief, describes the shooting scenes at Montgomery Mall and an Aspen Hill Giant. A male from the mall shooting and a woman at Aspen Hill are dead. Two other people are injured, one seriously. They arrested Eulalio Tordil, 62, near the second scene. (Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun video) SEE MORE VIDEOS
A flier circulated by Prince George's County police said Tordil had made previous statements about committing "suicide by cop," or wanting to be killed by police.
Less than an hour before the Giant shooting, three people were shot — at least one of them fatally — in a parking lot at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. One man was in grave condition and a woman suffered injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
Police knew of no links between Tordil and Friday's victims, who were not immediately identified.
The shootings began Thursday afternoon, when police say Tordil fatally shot his estranged wife, 44-year-old science teacher Gladys Tordil, in the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville as she picked up her children. A male bystander who tried to intervene was shot and wounded.
Separate shootings broke out about an hour apart at the Westfield Montgomery Mall, where three people were shot, and an Aspen Hill Giant grocery store, where police said a woman was pronounced dead.
Prince George's County Police Chief Hank Stawinski said officers worked through the night trying to locate Tordil and his vehicle, a rented silver sedan with Pennsylvania plates. He said they used phone-tracking and license plate reader technology, to no avail.
While thankful that Tordil was taken into custody without incident, he said it was "tragic we were not able to intervene before additional victims were harmed."
Prince George’s County Police said late Friday that Tordil has been charged with first-degree murder and related charges in connection with the shooting at High Point High School.
The shootings briefly recalled the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks, which paralyzed the Washington region as two gunmen shot random people in a series of incidents.
Amid a series of shootings in the Aspen Hill area in 2002, one of the gunmen, John Allen Muhammad, ate at the same Boston Market where authorities said Tordil had a meal before being taken into custody.
Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said Tordil had lived in the area at one point, and he believed Tordil was there because the area was familiar.
The Friday incidents prompted a lockdown of all Montgomery County public schools.
Just before Tordil's arrest, a number of officers were investigating the crime scene at the Giant, where an unidentified woman was shot while sitting in her vehicle. Police, meanwhile, were briefing reporters at the Bethesda mall.
Word crackled across the police radio that a suspect was in custody, and officers rushed across the street from the Giant to the Northgate Plaza center. Tordil could be seen with his hands behind his back, the front of his shirt wet.
"Our fear was that he was armed," said Manger, explaining why officers waited before arresting him. "We certainly didn't want to have other bloodshed."
Theresa Doyle, 55, of North Carolina had dropped off her husband at the Dunkin' Donuts and was driving around the parking lot when she said she noticed Tordil's vehicle. She said she had seen news reports of the shootings, as well as broadcasts of his vehicle description.
"I just had this heavy fear come over me," Doyle recalled.
Suddenly, she saw officers surround the vehicle. Doyle, a retired Army veteran, said the scene "was like being in the military again."
Scott Kennedy, 54, who was at the Giant amid the police presence, said his wife had worked at a Papa John's whose windows had been shot out in 2002 during the sniper attacks, which they recalled as word of Friday's shootings spread.
Tordil worked as a law enforcement officer with the Federal Protective Service, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, which guards federal facilities.
In March, he was placed on administrative duty after his wife, Gladys Tordil, had a protective order issued against him, according to a Homeland Security official. His gun, badge and credentials were removed. Tordil was later placed on administrative leave, the official said.
Homeland Security officials would not comment on the record about Tordil.
According to the protective order obtained by The Washington Post, Gladys Tordil said Eulalio Tordil once slapped her so hard that her glasses broke on her face. She also said he subjected their children to "intense-military-like discipline," such as push-ups and detention in a dark closet.
Tordil's current address is an apartment in Adelphi, and he previously lived in Nevada, Arizona, California, Georgia and Northern Virginia, according to public records.
In front of the high-rise apartment complex where Tordil lives, resident Dion Williams, 50, said Friday that he was glad Tordil had been captured.
Williams had recognized Tordil's picture on television, from having seen him around the building, and was surprised, he said.
"He was always quiet," Williams said.
Williams said all the high school-age kids who live in the building go to High Point, where the first shooting occurred and where "everyone knows each other."
Williams said the school had counselors on hand Friday to talk to students, and his wife also talked to his 17-year-old daughter about what happened.
"I guess you never know who you talk to or run into or who your acquaintances are," he said. "It could be anybody."
Another neighbor, Carine Ndiforngwa, said she was shocked that the suspect lived in her building.Info Constraining world trade is unlikely to help the climate 09/23/2012 - From rubber dinghies to television sets: the emissions of greenhouse gases in countries like China are to a significant extent caused by the production of goods that are exported to Germany or the United States. But this doesn´t necessarily mean that Western countries have relocated their emission-intensive industries and hence escape regulation for climate protection. This is shown in a study appearing in Nature Climate Change this week. Instead, researchers were able to pin down a number of factors explaining the pronounced imbalances between emission importers and exporters, the US current account deficit being one of them. Their conclusion: interventions in world trade, like CO2 tariffs, would probably have only a small impact on global emissions. The authors analyzed emissions transfers between regions. (Foto: Thinkstock) Steadily growing world trade leads – as earlier research has shown – to a substantial transfer of CO 2 from one country to another. The traded goods effectively contain the greenhouse gas, as it originates from the energy used during their production. “Typically, in the West we import goods whose production causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions in poorer countries – and it is a contested question to which countries these emissions should be attributed,” explains Michael Jakob from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), one of the authors. This is a delicate issue, because many Western countries have ambitious targets for emissions reductions. Simply transferring emission-intensive industries to third countries in order to achieve these goals would not serve climate protection – and might even damage the economy.
Almost half of the CO 2 transfers into the US are caused by the American trade deficit
“For the first time, we have now broken down the known emission transfers into their components,” Jakob says. The economic analysis is based on an evaluation of estimates that were determined by other researchers in earlier studies. “We can show that of the CO 2 flowing into the US in form of imported goods, almost 50 per cent are due to the American trade deficit alone,” Jakob explains. The US emits less CO 2 in the production of its exports than is contained in its imports, simply because it imports more than it exports. “And only about 20 per cent of CO 2 transfers from China into the US can be traced back to the fact that China is in effect relatively more specialized in the production of dirty goods,” Jakob says. But this is the only driver of emission transfers on which the currently controversially discussed climate tariffs could take effect.
Without world trade, the emission of greenhouse gases in countries like China could potentially be even higher than today, according to the study. Western countries often export goods like machines that need a lot of energy in the production process. Usually, this energy stems from comparatively clean production processes. On the other hand, China produces a lot of export goods like toys, whose production needs relatively little energy, but stems from emission-intensive coal power plants. If China with its fossil energy mix had to produce more energy-intensive goods itself instead of importing them, emissions would increase. “In the end, interventions in world trade could do more harm than good,” says co-author Robert Marschinski from PIK and Technische Universität Berlin.
"The crucial question is how clean or how dirty national energy production is in each case"
“Crucial for CO 2 transfers is not only world trade, but also the question of how clean or dirty national energy production is in each case,” Marschinski emphasizes. To look only at CO 2 transfers could be misleading. If for instance the European Union were to adopt new low emission production methods, its net imports of CO 2 could increase even though there is no relocation of production.
“To really justify trade-policy interventions like the much discussed CO 2 tariffs, further analysis would be needed – the observed CO 2 transfers alone are not enough as a basis,” Marschinski explains. “Such measures cannot replace what it really takes: more international cooperation.” Binding global climate targets could give incentives for investors to promote low-emission technologies. Innovations in efficiency could get financial support, and regional emission trading systems could be linked with each other, Marschinski says. “All this could help to achieve climate protection targets in an economically reasonable way.”
Article: Jakob, M., Marschinski, R. (2012): Interpreting trade-related CO 2 emission transfers. Nature Climate Change [DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1630] (Advance Online Publication)
Weblink to article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1630
Document Actions Print this Page
RSS Would you like to receive our press releases by e-mail?
Subscribe to the free PIK Press Release ListTwo men were shot and two others were detained by police Wednesday following an exchange of gunfire in a shopping center parking lot and one-vehicle crash on Martin Luther King Jr Way.
Police are still investigating at two different crime scenes and two men first exchanged gunfire in a parking lot near Martin Luther King Jr Way South and South Myrtle Street shortly after 2:15 PM.
One man was struck in the shoulder and was later found at the scene by police and transported to Harborview Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.
Detectives believe the second gunman fled to a green Toyota sedan, occupied by two other men, which sped off south on MLK Way. The Toyota crashed and two of the passengers fled, leaving one seriously injured man behind. Medics transported him to Harborview with life-threatening injuries, including a gunshot wound.
Police have detained the two other men who fled the crashed vehicle and gang detectives continue to investigate this developing incident.Global food prices fell sharply in May, dropping 4% from the previous month to their lowest level since September 2011, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization has said.
The FAO's Food Price Index, a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, was nine points lower at 204 points, a statement said.
That was "due to generally favourable supplies, growing global economic uncertainties and a strengthening of the US dollar," it added.
"Crop prices have come down sharply from their peak level but they remain still high and vulnerable due to risks related to weather conditions in the critical growing months ahead," FAO grain analyst Abdolreza Abbassian was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, the organization raised its forecast for global cereal production by 48.5 million tonnes, mainly on the expectation of a bumper maize crop in the United States.
The FAO now expects 2012 output to set a record of 2.419 billion tonnes, which would be 3.2% higher than the 2011 record.
"However, with planting still to be completed and much of the crop at very early stages of development, the final outcome will depend greatly on weather conditions in the coming months," the agency noted.
On May 30, the FAO warned that one in seven people worldwide suffer from malnutrition in a report released ahead of a summit on sustainable development to be held in Rio de Janeiro June 20-22.
An FAO report called on governments to invest in infrastructure and protect the rights of the poor to food resources.
Three quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas and most of them depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods, it said."I'm actually a Delhi girl," I start to say at a dinner party in Bangalore, when the pretty Marathi chick standing next to me interrupts: "Well, you don't look like one! And I should know because I lived there for six years."
But what does a Delhi girl look like? Fair, pretty, dumb, shallow, tame and, of course, Punjabi. Or so goes the stereotype, which was summed up recently by the now notorious blogger Shahana Nair Joshi in a string of negatives:
But let me remind you that I am from SOUTH INDIA and not SOUTH DELHI, so no, I am not scrawny, I am not fair, I don’t have straight hair and my topics of conversation go beyond the Fendi I saw in last month’s Vogue. I am olive-skinned, have lower–back-length lustrous cascading tresses that sometimes make me look like I fell out Jim Morrison's tour bus. Got a problem with that? Well just suck it up coz I was born into a society where a woman can whoop your Punjabi patoutie to pulp.
Dark skin, check. Long hair, check. Kind of mouthy, check. But, but, I am from South Delhi, born and raised.
Ok, so I am Tamil by ethnicity. Then again my mother was raised in Mumbai and my father in Mysore. This clearly explains why I'm such a poor excuse of a TamBram. I prefer my rajma to kootu, Pandit Jasraj to MS Subbalakshmi (don't kill me), and my Tamil is, in one word, atrocious. So bad that a friend – Gujju raised in Chennai – begged me to never again desecrate the language. But my three-year old daughter's Tamil is effortlessly fluent. She who is half Haryanvi Jat, born in San Francisco and now being raised in Bangalore.
Oh, and I barely scraped through Science and Math in school, as did my brothers. My Jat husband, on the other hand, has a PhD in computer engineering and heads the mobile chip division of a major Silicon Valley company.
When reality gets this confusing, no wonder we turn to the most asinine stereotypes.
It's easy enough to debunk Nair Joshi's Open Letter to a Delhi Boy which is rife with distasteful and ugly generalisations about North Indians, or more specifically Punjabis. As one Tamil blogger put it, "If you’re playing for the South Indian team, I think you just scored a self goal."
But here's the more interesting question: Why |
from the concept of "toilers" those ex-workers who, having gained the leadership of a working-class movement, endeavour to make themselves masters of it and lead it where they are determined that it shall go. To Bakunin that was not emancipation, it was merely a change of masters. But he wanted the triumph of Humanity--a concept he had borrowed from the great philosopher of Positivism, Auguste Comte-a full human development of all men in conditions of liberty and equality. To him this could not be achieved by the methods envisaged by Marx and, in the pages that follow, he has given a picture of what he thought the Marxian State would be like. The startling similarity of this picture to that of present-day Soviet Russia is due to the fact that Lenin, the founder of the regime, himself a product of the despotic Tsarist regime, laid great stress on the authoritarian aspects of Marxism as opposed to the more democratic elements of Anarchism. Bakunin had assumed that, in practice, the authoritarian elements in Marxism when it attained power would predominate, and this turned out to be correct. It is obvious of course that Marxism and Bakuninism despite these differences have much in common and Bakunin himself has not failed to point this out in the pages that follow. Both systems were founded on the idea of Historical Materialism, both accepted the class struggle, both were Socialist in the sense of being opposed to private property in the means of production. They differed in that Bakuninism refused to accept the State under any circumstances whatever, that it rejected Party politics or Parliamentary action, and that it was founded on the principle of liberty as against that of authority: and indeed, it is this spirit of liberty (not Individualism) that distinguishes Bakunin, and in the light of which his criticisms of Marx and Marxism must be read. He had the true instinct that no man can be really emancipated except by himself. Up to the present, however, the emancipation of the workers has nowhere been achieved, either by Bakunin's methods nor by Marx's (and certainly not in Soviet Russia); but to-day the more militant elements in the Left-wing and anti-Stalinist Socialist movements are beginning to give Bakunin's teachings more serious consideration than Marxians had ever done before; and some of them are commencing to feel that after all there may be something in what he said. If, therefore, the Socialist movement, in its more militant and revolutionary aspects, continues to exist throughout the world, it is possible that the political theories of Marx may give way to those of Bakunin, and that in the end he will prevail as the inspiring genius of militant and democratic Socialism. [Here is some more information about Bakunin and other Prominent Anarchists and Left-Libertarians.] Chapter I Introductory I am a passionate seeker after Truth and a not less passionate enemy of the malignant fictions used by the "Party of Order", the official representatives of all turpitudes, religious, metaphysical, political, judicial, economic, and social, present and past, to brutalise and enslave the world; I am a fanatical lover of Liberty; considering it as the only medium in which can develop intelligence, dignity, and the happiness of man; not official "Liberty", licensed, measured and regulated by the State, a falsehood representing the privileges of a few resting on the slavery of everybody else; not the individual liberty, selfish, mean, and fictitious advanced by the school of Rousseau and all other schools of bourgeois Liberalism, which considers the rights of the individual as limited by the rights of the State, and therefore necessarily results in the reduction of the rights of the individual to zero. No, I mean the only liberty which is truly worthy of the name, the liberty which consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers which are to be found as faculties latent in everybody, the liberty which recognises no other restrictions than those which are traced for us by the laws of our own nature; so that properly speaking there are no restrictions, since these laws are not imposed on us by some outside legislator, beside us or above us; they are immanent in us, inherent, constituting the very basis of our being, material as well as intellectual and moral; instead, therefore, of finding them a limit, we must consider them as the real conditions and effective reason for our liberty. I mean that liberty of each individual which, far from halting as at a boundary before the liberty of others, finds there its confirmation and its extension to infinity; the illimitable liberty of each through the liberty of all, liberty by solidarity, liberty in equality; liberty triumphing over brute force and the principle of authority which was never anything but the idealised expression of that force, liberty which, after having overthrown all heavenly and earthly idols, will found and organise a new world, that of human solidarity, on the ruins of all Churches and all States. I am a convinced upholder of economic and social equality, because I know that, without that equality, liberty, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of individuals as well as the prosperity of nations will never be anything else than so many lies. But as upholder in all circumstances of liberty, that first condition of humanity, I think that liberty must establish itself in the world by the spontaneous organisation of labour and of collective ownership by productive associations freely organised and federalised in districts, and by the equally spontaneous federation of districts, but not by the supreme and tutelary action of the State. There is the point which principally divides the Revolutionary Socialists or Collectivists from the Authoritarian Communists, who are upholders of the absolute initiative of the State. Their goal is the same; each party desires equally the creation of a new social order founded only on the organisation of collective labour, inevitably imposed on each and everyone by the very force of things, equal economic conditions for all, and the collective appropriation of the instruments of labour. Only the Communists imagine that they will be able to get there by the development and organisation of the political power of the working-classes, and principally of the proletariat of the towns, by the help of the bourgeois Radicalism, whilst the Revolutionary Socialists, enemies of all equivocal combinations and alliances, think on the contrary that they cannot reach this goal except by the development and organisation, not of the political but of the social and consequently anti-political power of the working masses of town and country alike, including all favourably disposed persons of the upper classes, who, breaking completely with their past, would be willing to join them and fully accept their programme. Hence, two different methods. The Communists believe they must organise the workers' forces to take possession of the political power of the State. The Revolutionary Socialists organise with a view to the destruction, or if you prefer a politer word, the liquidation of the State. The Communists are the upholders of the principle and practice of, authority, the Revolutionary Socialists have confidence only in liberty. Both equally supporters of that science which must kill superstition and replace faith, the former would wish to impose it; the latter will exert themselves to propagate it so that groups of human beings, convinced, will organise themselves and will federate spontaneously, freely, from below upwards, by their own movement and conformably to their real interests, but never after a plan traced in advance and imposed on the "ignorant masses" by some superior intellects. The Revolutionary Socialists think that there is much more practical sense and spirit in the instinctive aspirations and in the real needs of the masses of the people than in the profound intellect of all these learned men and tutors of humanity who, after so many efforts have failed to make it happy, still presume to add their efforts. The Revolutionary Socialists think, on the contrary, that the human race has let itself long enough, too long, be governed, and that the source of its misfortunes does not lie in such or such form of government but in the very principle and fact of government, of whatever type it may be. It is, in fine, the contradiction already become historic, which exists between the Communism scientifically developed by the German school[1] and accepted in part by the American and English Socialists on the one hand, and the Proudhonism largely developed and pushed to its last consequences, on the other hand, which is accepted by the proletariat of the Latin countries. It has equally been accepted and will continue to be still more accepted by the essentially anti-political sentiment of the Slav peoples. Chapter II Marxist Ideology The doctrinaire school of Socialists, or rather of German Authoritarian Communists, was founded a little before 1848, and has rendered, it must be recognised, eminent services to the cause of the proletariat not only in Germany, but in Europe. It is to them that belongs principally the great idea of an "International Workingmen's Association" and also the initiative for its first realisation. To-day,[2] they are to be found at the head of the Social Democratic Labour Party in Germany, having as its organ the "Volksstaat" ["People's State"]. It is therefore a perfectly respectable school which does not prevent it from displaying a very bad disposition sometimes, and above all from taking for the bases of its theories, a principal[3] which is profoundly true when one considers it in its true light, that is to say, from the relative point of view, but which when envisaged and set down in an absolute manner as the only foundation and first source of all other principles, as is done by this school, becomes completely false. This principle, which constitutes besides the essential basis of scientific Socialism, was for the first time scientifically formulated and developed by Karl Marx, the principal leader of the German Communist school. It forms the dominating thought of the celebrated "Communist Manifesto" which an international Committee of French, English, Belgian and German Communists assembled in London issued in 1848 under the slogan: "Proletarians of all lands, unite" This manifesto, drafted as everyone knows, by Messrs. Marx and Engels, became the basis of all the further scientific works of the school and of the popular agitation later started by Ferdinand Lassalle[4] in Germany. This principle is the absolute opposite to that recognised by the Idealists of all schools. Whilst these latter derive all historical facts, including the development of material interests and of the different phases of the economic organisation of society, from the development of Ideas, the German Communists, on the contrary, want to see in all human history, in the most idealistic manifestations of the collective as well as the individual life of humanity, in all the intellectual, moral, religious, metaphysical, scientific, artistic, political, juridical, and social developments which have been produced in the past and continue to be produced in the present, nothing but the reflections or the necessary after-effects of the development of economic facts. Whilst the Idealists maintain that ideas dominate and produce facts, the Communists, in agreement besides with scientific Materialism say, on the contrary, that facts give birth to ideas and that these latter are never anything else but the ideal expression of accomplished facts and that among all the facts, economic and material facts, the pre-eminent facts, constitute the essential basis, the principal foundation of which all the other facts, intellectual and moral, political and social, are nothing more than the inevitable derivatives. We, who are Materialists and Determinists, just as much as Marx himself, we also recognise the inevitable linking of economic and political facts in history. We recognise, indeed, the necessity, the inevitable character of all events that happen, but we do not bow before them indifferently and above all we are very careful about praising them when, by their nature, they show themselves in flagrant opposition to the supreme end of history[5] to the thoroughly human ideal that is to be found under more or less obvious forms, in the instincts, the aspirations of the people and under all the religious symbols of all epochs, because it is inherent in the human race, the most social of all the races of animals on earth. Thus this ideal, to-day better understood than ever, can be summed up in the words: It is the triumph of humanity, it is the conquest and accomplishment of the full freedom and full development, material, intellectual and moral, of every individual, by the absolutely free and spontaneous organisation of economic and social solidarity as completely as possible between all human beings living on the earth. Everything in history that shows itself conformable to that end, from the human point of view--and we can have no other--is good; all that is contrary to it is bad. We know very well, in any case, that what we call good and bad are always, one and the other, the natural results of natural causes, and that consequently one is as inevitable as the other. But as in what is properly called Nature we recognise many necessities that we are little disposed to bless, for example the necessity of dying of hydrophobia when bitten by a mad dog,[6] in the same way, in that immediate continuation of the life of Nature, called History, we encounter many necessities which we find much more worthy of opprobrium than of benediction and which we believe we should stigmatise with all the energy of which we are capable, in the interest of our social and individual morality, although we recognise that from the moment they have been accomplished, even the most detestable historic facts have that character of inevitability which is found in all the Phenomena of Nature as well as those of history. To make my idea clearer, I shall illustrate it by some examples. When I study the respective social and political conditions in which the Romans and the Greeks came into contact towards the decline of Antiquity, I arrive at the conclusion that the conquest and destruction by the military and civic barbarism of the Romans, of the comparatively high standard of human liberty of Greece was a logical, natural, absolutely inevitable fact. But that does not prevent me at all from taking retrospectively and very firmly, the side of Greece against Rome in that struggle, and I find that the human race gained absolutely nothing by the triumph of the Romans. In the same way, I consider as perfectly natural, logical, and consequently inevitable fact, that Christians should have destroyed with a holy fury all the libraries of the Pagans, all the treasures of Art, and of ancient philosophy and science.[7] But it is absolutely impossible for me to grasp what advantages have resulted from it for our political and social development. I am even very much disposed to think that apart from that inevitable process of economic facts in which, if one were to believe Marx, there must be sought to the exclusion of all other considerations, the only cause of all the intellectual and moral facts which are produced in history--I say I am strongly disposed to think that this act of holy barbarity, or rather that long series of barbarous acts and crimes which the first Christians, divinely inspired, committed against the human spirit, was one of the principal causes of the intellectual and moral degradation and consequently also of the political and social enslavement which filled that long series of baneful centuries called the Middle Ages. Be sure of this, that if the first Christians had not destroyed the libraries, Museums, and Temples of antiquity, we should not have been condemned to-day to fight the mass of horrible and shameful absurdities, which still obstruct men's brains to such a degree as to make us doubt sometimes the possibility of a more human future. Following on with the same order of protests against facts which have happened in history and of which consequently I myself recognise the inevitable character, I pause before the splendour of the Italian Republics and before the magnificent awakening of human genius in the epoch of the Renaissance. Then I see approaching the two evil geniuses, as ancient as history itself, the two boa-constrictors which up till now have devoured everything human and beautiful that history has produced. They are called the Church and the State, the Papacy and the Empire. Eternal evils and inseparable allies, I see them become reconciled, embrace each other and together devour and stifle and crush that unfortunate and too beautiful Italy, condemn her to three centuries of death. Well, again I find all that very natural, logical, inevitable, but nevertheless abominable, and I curse both Pope and Emperor at the same time. Let us pass on to France. After a struggle which lasted a century Catholicism, supported by the State, finally triumphed there over Protestantism. Well, do I not still find in France to-day some politicians or historians of the fatalist school and who, calling themselves Revolutionaries, consider this victory of Catholicism--a bloody and inhuman victory if ever there was one--as a veritable triumph for the Revolution? Catholicism, they maintain, was then the State, democracy, whilst Protestantism represented the revolt of the aristocracy against the State and consequently against democracy. It is with sophisms like that--completely identical besides with the Marxian sophisms, which, also, consider the triumphs of the State as those of Social Democracy--it is with these absurdities, as disgusting as revolting, that the mind and moral sense of the masses is perverted, habituating them to consider their blood-thirsty exploiters, their age-long enemies, their tyrants, the masters and the servants of the State, as the organs, representatives, heroes, devoted servants of their emancipation. It is a thousand times right to say that Protestantism then, not as Calvinist theology, but as an energetic and armed protest, represented revolt, liberty, humanity, the destruction of the State; whilst Catholicism was public order, authority, divine law, the salvation of the State by the Church and the Church by the State, the condemnation of human society to a boundless and endless slavery. Whilst recognising the inevitability of the accomplished fact, I do not hesitate to say that the triumph of Catholicism in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a great misfortune for the whole human race, and that the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, as well as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, were facts as disastrous for France herself as were lately the defeat and massacre of the people of Paris in the Commune. I have actually heard very intelligent and very estimable Frenchmen explain this defeat of Protestantism in France by the essentially revolutionary nature of the French people. "Protestantism," they said, "was only a semi-revolution; we needed a complete revolution; it is for that reason that the French nation did not wish, and was not able to stop at the Reformation. It preferred to remain Catholic till the moment when it could proclaim Atheism; and it is because of that that it bore with such a perfect and Christian resignation both the horrors of Saint Bartholomew and those not less abominable of the executors of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes." These estimable patriots do not seem to want to consider one thing. It is that a people, who under whatsoever pretext it may be, suffers tyranny, necessarily loses at length the salutory habit of revolt and even the very instinct of revolt. It loses the feeling for liberty, and once a people has lost all that, it necessarily becomes not only by its outer conditions, but in itself, in the very essence of its being, a people of slaves. It was because Protestantism was defeated in France that the French people lost, or rather, never acquired, the custom of liberty. It is because this tradition and this custom are lacking in it that it has not to-day what we call political consciousness, and it is because it is lacking in this consciousness that all the revolutions it has made up to now have not been able to give it or secure it political liberty. With the exception of its great revolutionary days, which are its festival days, the French people remain to-day as yesterday, a people of slaves. Chapter III The State and Marxism All work to be performed in the employ and pay of the State--such is the fundamental principle of Authoritarian Communism, of State Socialism. The State having become sole proprietor--at the end of a certain period of transition which will be necessary to let society pass without too great political and economic shocks from the present organisation of bourgeois privilege to the future organisation of the official equality of all--the State will be also the only Capitalist, banker, money-lender, organiser, director of all national labour and distributor of its products. Such is the ideal, the fundamental principle of modern Communism. Enunciated for the first time by Babeuf,[8] towards the close of the Great French Revolution, with all the array of antique civism and revolutionary violence, which constituted the character of the epoch, it was recast and reproduced in miniature, about forty-five years later by Louis Blanc[9] in his tiny pamphlet on The Organisation of Labour, in which that estimable citizen, much less revolutionary, and much more indulgent towards bourgeois weaknesses than was Babeuf, tried to gild and sweeten the pill so that the bourgeois could swallow it without suspecting that they were taking a poison which would kill them. But the bourgeois were not deceived, and returning brutality for politeness, they expelled Louis Blanc from France. In spite of that, with a constancy which one must admire, he remained alone in faithfulness to his economic system and continued to believe that the whole future was contained in his little pamphlet on the organisation of Labour. The Communist idea later passed into more serious hands. Karl Marx, the undisputed chief of the Socialist Party in Germany--a great intellect armed with a profound knowledge, whose entire life, one can say it without flattering, has been devoted exclusively to the greatest cause which exists to-day, the emancipation of labour and of the toilers--Karl Marx who is indisputably also, if not the only, at least one of the principal founders of the International Workingmen's Association, made the development of the Communist idea the object of a serious work. His great work, Capital, is not in the least a fantasy, an "a priori" conception, hatched out in a single day in the head of a young man more or less ignorant of economic conditions and of the actual system of production. It is founded on a very extensive, very detailed knowledge and a very profound analysis of this system and of its conditions. Karl Marx is a man of immense statistical and economic knowledge. His work on Capital, though unfortunately bristling with formulas and metaphysical subtleties which render it unapproachable for the great mass of readers, is in the highest degree a scientific or realist work: in the sense that it absolutely excludes any other logic than that of the facts. Living for very nearly thirty years, almost exclusively among German workers, refugees like himself and surrounded by more or less intelligent friends and disciples belonging by birth and relationship to the bourgeois world, Marx naturally has managed to form a Communist school, or a sort of little Communist Church, composed of fervent adepts and spread all over Germany. This Church, restricted though it may be on the score of numbers, is skilfully organised, and thanks to its numerous connections with working-class organisations in all the principal places in Germany, it has already become a power.[10] Karl Marx naturally enjoys an almost supreme authority in this Church, and to do him justice, it must be admitted that he knows how to govern this little army of fanatical adherents in such a way as always to enhance his prestige and power over the imagination of the workers of Germany. Marx is not only a learned Socialist, he is also a very clever Politician and an ardent patriot. Like Bismarck, though by somewhat different means, and like many other of his compatriots, Socialists or not, he wants the establishment of a great Germanic State for the glory of the German people and for the happiness and the voluntary, or enforced civilization of the world. The policy of Bismarck is that of the present; the policy of Marx, who considers himself at least as his successor, and his continuator, is that of the future. And when I say that Marx considers himself the continuator of Bismarck, I am far from calumniating Marx. If he did not consider himself as such, he would not have permitted Engels, the confidant of all his thoughts, to write that Bismarck serves the cause of Social Revolution. He serves it now in his own way; Marx will serve it later, in another manner. That is the sense in which he will be later, the continuator, as to-day he is the admirer of the policy of Bismarck. Now let us examine the particular character of Marx's policy, let us ascertain the essential points on which it is to be separated from the Bismarckian policy. The principal point, and, one might say, the only one, is this: Marx is a democrat, an Authoritarian Socialist, and a Republican; Bismarck is an out and out Pomeranian, aristocratic, monarchical Junker. The difference is therefore very great, very serious, and both sides are sincere in this difference. On this point, there is no possible understanding or reconciliation possible between Bismarck and Marx. Even apart from the numerous irrevocable pledges that Marx throughout his life, has given to the cause of Socialist democracy, his very position and his ambitions give a positive guarantee on this issue. In a monarchy, however Liberal it might be, or even cannot be any place, any role for Marx, and so much the more so in the Prussian Germanic Empire founded by Bismarck, with a bugbear of an Emperor, militarist and bigoted, as chief and with all the barons and bureaucrats of Germany for guardians. Before he can arrive at power, Marx will have to sweep all that away. Therefore he is forced to be Revolutionary. That is what separates Marx from Bismarck---the form and the conditions of Government. One is an out and out aristocrat and monarchist; and in a Conservative Republic like that of France under Thiers[11], there the other is an out and out democrat and republican, and, into the bargain, a Socialist democrat and a Socialist republican. Let us see now what unites them. It is the out and out cult of the State. I have no need to prove it in the case of Bismarck, the proofs are there. From head to foot he is a State's man and nothing but a State's man. But neither do I believe that I shall have need of too great efforts to prove that it is the same with Marx. He loves government to such a degree that he even wanted to institute one in the International Workingmen's Association; and he worships power so much that he wanted to impose and still means to-day to impose his dictatorship on us. It seems to me that that is sufficient to characterise his personal attitude. But his Socialist and political programme is a very faithful expression of it. The supreme objective of all his efforts, as is proclaimed to us by the fundamental statutes of his party in Germany, is the establishment of the great People's State (Volksstaat). But whoever says State, necessarily says a particular limited State, doubtless comprising, if it is very large, many different peoples and countries, but excluding still more. For unless he is dreaming of the Universal State as did Napoleon and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, or as the Papacy dreamed of the Universal Church, Marx, in spite of all the international ambition which devours him to-day, will have, when the hour of the realisation of his dreams has sounded for him--if it ever does sound--he will have to content himself with governing a single State and not several States at once. Consequently, who ever says State says, a State, and whoever says a State affirms by that the existence of several States, and whoever says several States, immediately says: competition, jealousy, truceless and endless war. The simplest logic as well as all history bear witness to it. Any State, under pain of perishing and seeing itself devoured by neighbouring States, must tend towards complete power, and, having become powerful, it must embark on a career of conquest, so that it shall not be itself conquered; for two powers similar and at the same time foreign to each other could not co-exist without trying to destroy each other. Whoever says conquest, says conquered peoples, enslaved and in bondage, under whatever form or name it may be. It is in the nature of the State to break the solidarity of the human race and, as it were, to deny humanity. The State cannot preserve itself as such in its integrity and in all its strength except it sets itself up as supreme and absolute be-all and end-all, at least for its own citizens, or to speak more frankly, for its own subjects, not being able to impose itself as such on the citizens of other States unconquered by it. From that there inevitably results a break with human, considered as univesrsal, morality and with universal reason, by the birth of State morality and reasons of State. The principle of political or State morality is very simple. The State, being the supreme objective, everything that is favourable to the development of its power is good; all that is contrary to it, even if it were the most humane thing in the world, is bad. This morality is called Patriotism. The International is the negation of patriotism and consequently the negation of the State. If therefore Marx and his friends of the German Socialist Democratic Party should succeed in introducing the State principle into our programme, they would kill the International. The State, for its own preservation, must necessarily be powerful as regards foreign affairs; but if it is so as regards foreign affairs, it will infallibly be so as regards home affairs. Every State, having to let itself be inspired and directed by some particular morality, conformable to the particular conditions of its existence, by a morality which is a restriction and consequently a negation of human and universal morality, must keep watch that all its subjects, in their thoughts and above all in their acts, are inspired also only by the principles of this patriotic or particular morality, and that they remain deaf to the teachings of pure or universally human morality. From that there results the necessity for a State censorship; too great liberty of thought and opinions being, as Marx considers, very reasonably too from his eminently political point of view, incompatible with that unanimity of adherence demanded by the security of the State. That that in reality is Marx's opinion is sufficiently proved by the attempts which he made to introduce censorship into the International, under plausible pretexts, and covering it with a mask. But however vigilant this censorship may be, even if the State were to take into its own hands exclusively education and all the instruction of the people, as Mazzini wished to do, and as Marx wishes to do to-day the State can never be sure that prohibited and dangerous thoughts may not slip in and be smuggled somehow into the consciousness of the population that it governs. Forbidden fruit has such an attraction for men, and the demon of revolt, that eternal enemy of the State, awakens so easily in their hearts when they are not sufficiently stupified, that neither this education nor this instruction, nor even the censorship, sufficiently guarantee the tranquillity of the State. It must still have a police, devoted agents who watch over and direct, secretly and unobtrusively, the current of the peoples' opinions and passions. We have seen that Marx himself is so convinced of this necessity, that he believed he should fill with his secret agents all the regions of the International and above all, Italy, France, and Spain. Finally, however perfect may be, from the point of view of the preservation of the State, the organsation of education and instruction for the people, of censorship and the police, the State cannot be secure in its existence while it does not have, to defend it against its enemies at home, an armed force. The State is government from above downwards of an immense number of men, very different from the point of view of the degree of their culture, the nature of the countries or localities that they inhabit, the occupation they follow, the interests and the aspirations directing them--the State is the government of all these by some or other minority; this minority, even if it were a thousand times elected by universal suffrage and controlled in its acts by popular institutions, unless it were endowed with the omniscience, omnipresence and the omnipotence which the theologians attribute to God, it is impossible that it could know and foresee the needs, or satisfy with an even justice the most legitimate and pressing interests in the world. There will always be discontented people because there will always be some who are sacrificed. Besides, the State, like the Church, by its very nature is a great sacrificer of living beings. It is an arbitrary being, in whose heart all the positive, living, individual, and local interests of the population meet, clash, destroy each other, become absorbed in that abstraction called the common interest, the public good, the public safety, and where all real wills cancel each other in that other abstraction which hears the name of the will of the people. It results from this, that this so-called will of the people is never anything else than the sacrifice and the negation of all the real wills of the population; just as this so-called public good is nothing else than the sacrifice of their interests. But so that this omnivorous abstraction could impose itself on millions of men, it must be represented and supported by some real being, by living force or other. Well, this being, this force, has always existed. In the Church it is called the clergy, and in the State--the ruling or governing class. And, in fact, what do we find throughout history? The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class or other; a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class, and finally a bureaucratic class, when, all the other classes having become exhausted, the State falls or rises, as you will, to the condition of a machine; but it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the State that there should be some privileged class or other which is interested in its existence. And it is precisely the united interest of this privileged class which is called Patriotism. By excluding the immense majority of the human race from its bosom, by casting it beyond the pale of the engagements and reciprocal duties of morality, justice and right, the State denies humanity, and with that big word, "Patriotism", imposes injustice and cruelty on all its subjects, as a supreme duty. It restrains, it mutilates, it kills humanity in them, so that, ceasing to be men, they are no longer anything but citizens--or rather, more correctly considered in relation to the historic succession of facts--so that they shall never raise themselves beyond the level of the citizen to the level of a man. If we accept the fiction of a free State derived from a social contract, then discerning, just, prudent people ought not to have any longer any need of government or of State. Such a people can need only to live, leaving a free course to all their instincts: justice and public order will naturally and of their accord proceed from the life of the people, and the State, ceasing to be the providence, guide, educator, and regulator of society, renouncing all its repressive power, and failing to the subaltern role which Proudhon assigns it, will no longer anything else but a simple business office, a sort of central clearing house at the service of society. Doubtless, such a political organisation, or rather, such a reduction of political action in favour of liberty in social life, would be a great benefit for society, but it would not at all please the devoted adherents of the State. They absolutely must have a State-Providence, a State directing social life, dispensing justice, and administering public order. That is to say, whether they admit it or not, and even when they call themselves Republicans, democrats, or even Socialists, they always must have a people who are more or less ignorant, minor, incapable, or to call things by their right names, riff-raff, to govern; in order, of course, that doing violence to their own disinterestedness and modesty, they can keep the best places for themselves, in order always to have the opportunity to devote themselves to the common good, and that, strong in their virtuous devotion and their exclusive intelligence, privileged guardians of the human flock, whilst urging it on for its own good and leading it to security, they may also fleece it a little. Every logical and sincere theory of the State is essentially founded on the principle of authority--that is to say on the eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed on them from above. But imposed in the name of what and by whom? Authority recognised and respected as such by the masses can have only three possible sources--force, religion, or the action of a superior intelligence; and this supreme intelligence is always represented by minorities. Slavery can Change its form and its name--its basis remains the same. This basis is expressed by the words: being a slave is being forced to work for other people--as being a master is to live on the labour of other people. In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of "serfs", to-day they are called "wage-earners". The position of these latter is much more honourable and less hard than that of slaves, but they are none the less forced by hunger as well as by the political and social institutions, to maintain by very hard work the absolute or relative idleness of others. Consequently, they are slaves. And, in general, no State, either anacient or modern, has ever been able, or ever will be able to do without the forced labour of the masses, whether wage-earners or slaves, as a principal and absolutely necessary basis of the liberty and culture of the political class: the citizens. Even the United States is no exception to this rule. Its marvellous prosperity and enviable progress are due in great part and above all to one important advantage--the great territorial wealth of North America. The immense quantity of uncultivated and fertile lands, together with a political liberty that exists nowhere else attracts every year hundreds of thousands of energetic, industrious and intelligent colonists. This wealth, at the same time keeps off pauperism and delays the moment when the social question will have to be put. A worker who does not find work or who is dissatisfied with the wages offered by the capitalist can always, if need be, emigrate to the far West to clear there some wild and unoccupied land.[12] This possibility always remaining open as a last resort to all American workers, naturally keeps wages at a level, and gives to every individual an independence, unknown in Europe. Such is the advantage, but here is the disadvantage. As cheapness of the products of industry is achieved in great part by cheapness of labour, the American manufacturers for most of the time are |
Senate for consideration.
Of course, the private sector gets the lion's share of the credit for investing in Iowa's energy future. A few months ago, for example, MidAmerican Energy placed the biggest onshore wind turbine order in history, investing $1.9 billion and adding 1,050 megawatts of wind power in Iowa.
Compared to that, boosting the state's solar tax credit from $1.5 million to $4.5 million, as the bill we mentioned would do, might not seem too important. But the fact that one of Warren Buffett's companies said federal tax credits helped make sure its giant wind turbine deal got done tells you that public policy — tax breaks, incentives, streamlined regulations and the like — make a real difference in shaping our energy future.
Iowa's solar tax credit has been popular from the start, and solar power continues to gain momentum. This year, by the end of February, $685,000 worth of the $1.5 million in available credits had already been spoken for.
We are seeing a surge in solar energy installations, which is creating work for sales people, installers and maintenance technicians. New businesses are springing up to help businesses and individuals generate their own power at work or at home. And if the growth continues, it is reasonable to hope for new manufacturing jobs in Iowa, as well — just as we've seen happen with wind power.
Iowans know a good investment when they see one. And generating clean power locally saves water, cuts pollution, and keeps dollars circulating in our own communities.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Register Opinion newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong A sneak preview of the newest editorials, columns and opinions from The Des Moines Register. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-877-424-0225. Delivery: Mon-Sun Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Register Opinion Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
Iowans recognize the growing potential to save money while generating power where they live and work. Lawmakers are realizing they can help. Together, we can build a brighter energy future for Iowa — and a stronger economy, as well.
THE AUTHORS: JOE BOLKCOM, D-Iowa City, is Iowa Senate majority whip and the chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Contact: joe.bolkcom@legis.state.ia.us. MIKE BREITBACH, R-Strawberry Point, is a member of the Iowa Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee. Contact: michael.breitbach@legis.iowa.gov.
Read or Share this story: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2014/04/04/wind-solar-clean-power-good-iowa/7290333/News Craig Wright Inadvertently Admits He’s Not Satoshi Nakamoto
Charlie Lee tweets how Craig Wright, self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, inadvertently reveals he is NOT Satoshi Nakamoto.
Charlie Lee, the creator of the Litecoin cryptocurrency, tweeted earlier how Craig Wright inadvertently outed himself as not actually being Satoshi Nakamoto, a role he had claimed in the past. The admission was made when Wright was confronted about not being included in a list of blockchain’s influential people, despite Satoshi Nakamoto’s name actually being on it.
Craig Wright inadvertently admitted that he's not Satoshi Nakamoto. Lol #rekt. 😂 pic.twitter.com/6u6da6ICwV — Charlie Lee [NO2X] (@SatoshiLite) October 20, 2017
The evidence presented is hardly conclusive on either side of the “who is the real Satoshi Nakamoto” argument, but it is amusing to see Litecoin’s creator, Charlie Lee, taking a humorous swipe at Craig Wright none-the-less. There have been more nuanced debunks of Wright’s claims in the past that counter the evidence he presented in the past, most notably of his Sarte file evidence.
Would The Real Satoshi Please Stand Up
Another contender for the role of Satoshi was outed by Newsweek magazine on March 6, 2014, when it made the claim that Dorian Nakamoto, a Californian resident who happened to have the birth name Satoshi Nakamoto, was Bitcoin’s creator. A mystified Dorian Nakamoto was confronted and hounded with the accusation, of which there is no evidence. He continues to deny Newsweek’s claims.
Interestingly, Charlie Lee himself was potentially outed as the fabled Nakamoto in the past, a claim he also refutes.
Charlie Lee, Crypto, and Controversy
Charlie Lee has had a contentious time on Twitter and was recently criticized for revealing that he had heard from a “good source” that Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges were going to be shutting down. His brother, Bobby Lee, famously runs the BTC China cryptocurrency exchange. Lee’s tweet came just minutes before the huge Bitcoin sell-off, where Bitcoin’s value sank as low as $3,000 from a $5,000 high back in October of this year.
Litecoin is currently valued at $61, the 5th largest cryptocurrency as judged by CoinMarketCap, where it sits at $3 billion. Ahead of it are Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.
Who do you think is the real Satoshi Nakamoto? Let us know in the comments below.
Images Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, IBTimes, Bitcoinst archivesSt. Albans is set to get a new gaming store: Rocket Punch Games! Set to open on April 3rd, 2015, the gaming store is one of the latest additions to Vermont’s gaming community.
From their website:
Welcome to our gaming community! Rocket Punch Games is a local place to get together with old and new friends and play some games! We host role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, as well as board games, and Magic tournaments. We are open Friday evenings and Saturdays, please click book now to see our calendar for times we are open and you can even sign up to participate right online! We work on a one-time or monthly membership basis. Monthly membership grants access to all gaming (excluding the cost to enter Magic Tournaments).
This looks like an interesting model: one based on membership, which strikes us as a more community-driven model.
You can book them over on their website. You can also like them on Facebook. They’re holding an opening bash on April 3rd. RSVP here.The Guinness Book of World Records has officially accepted our application for the record for longest motorcycle in a single country.
The Guinness website’s official description of our record:
The longest journey by motorcycle in a single country is 33,357.15 km (20,727.13 miles) and was achieved by Buck Perley (USA) and Amy Mathieson (UK) who rode throughout China from 19 July to 11 December 2013. The duo’s journey took 146 days and took them through all of China’s provinces. The motorcycle used was a Chinese CFMOTO CF650-TR.
(A quick note on the discrepancy between our total as posted on the homepage and the record as recognized by Guinness. Because Guinness has to have proof of each kilometer of the trip they needed to take the total amount as recorded by our GPS rather than the odometer. Unfortunately due to tunnels, equipment malfunctions, and forgetting occasionally to turn on the GPS, our GPS reading was a bit short of our odometer)
We are both very excited and honored to have our record attempt accepted by Guinness. It was an amazing journey, one that took us from the 3rd lowest inland place on earth up to the Himalayas at Everest Base Camp. We experienced every type of climate, from the windy grass plains of Inner Mongolia to the dry heat of the Xinjiang desert, from freezing temperatures in the Tibetan plateau to the lush sub-tropics of southern China. We also met some amazing people and made some life-long friends along the way.
We would also like to thank all the people that helped to make this possible. All of our partners that gave support for The Great Ride and our friends and family back home. In particular, thank you to Du Fangci, Ying Mathieson (from ACA Publishing), Li Qiang, Tim Mathieson, Oliver Blockland (from KOA Group), Chelsea Eakin, John Hanrahan (from Snap Adventures), Tibet Travel and all the people at CFMoto and Free Lunch for Children.
What’s Next?
The riding may be over but the adventure of The Great Ride isn’t quite yet done. Guinness is sending us the official record certificate, so we’ll post some pictures once we get that (make sure to follow us on Facebook for up to the minute updates on that). We’ve also been very pleased with the progress of our fundraising efforts, even though we haven’t quite made it to our goal of $19.5k/¥120k to support two schools for a full year. If you haven’t yet, head on over to our Donate Page to learn more about the charity and what you can do to help.
Finally, while on the road for those 146 days we built up quite a bit of material, written, photographed, and filmed. We’d really like to use and expand on all this material to try and share this trip with a wider audience; what we learned about China, the adventures we had, the people we met, and all the amazing things we saw. So stay tuned for further news on The Great Ride of China book and documentary!By Debbie Gregory.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin may be an unlikely choice to overhaul veterans services. Although he is the son of an Army psychiatrist, for the first time, the head of the agency is not a veteran. His family has a history of military service and providing military medical care. Both his grandfathers served in World War I. And maybe most importantly, Dr. Shulkin, has spent a lifetime studying how to make health care organizations deliver better care at lower costs.
The entire U.S. Senate, all 100 Senators, voted to confirm Dr. Shulkin as President Trump’s VA Secretary. Prior to his confirmation as Secretary, Dr. Shulkin served as VA’s Under Secretary for Health for 18 months, leading the Nation’s largest integrated health care system, with over 1,700 sites of care serving nearly nine million Veterans.
While at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, Shulkin studied how to improve efficiency in health care management. Utilizing best practices resulted in saving money and patients.
Dr. Shulkin rose through top jobs there, at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and eventually at Morristown Medical Center, in the affluent suburbs of northern New Jersey.
He is all for increasing reliance on private health care for routine procedures, like hearing aids, so it can focus on its core mission of caring for the wounded.
Shulkin, a board certified internist, has been extremely concerned about veteran suicide after a news report showed high rates among young combat veterans. In a September 2016 op-ed, Shulkin wrote, “Losing even one veteran to suicide is unacceptable, which is why suicide prevention is a top priority at VA.”
Dr. Shulkin has been named as one of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives in the Country” by Modern Healthcare. He has also previously been named among the “One Hundred Most Influential People in American Healthcare.” He has been married to his wife, Dr. Merle Bari, for 29 years. They are the parents of two grown children.
Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve, and their families.A small vessel loaded with more than 300 refugees is approached by a cruise ship on Thursday off the coast of Cyprus. Cypriot Defense Ministry, HO/AP
More than 300 refugees left adrift in the Mediterranean Sea were rescued by a passing ocean liner but then refused to leave the deck of the ship that rescued them, leading to an hours-long standoff with Cyprus authorities.
A reported 345 immigrants – mostly from Syria – were spotted by a Salamis Cruise Lines ship Thursday off the coast of Cyprus, according to Al Jazeera. The refugees, bound for Italy, were crammed into a small fishing boat battered by rough conditions on the Mediterranean, according to the BBC.
“The ship probably comes from Syria with civilian refugees,” Cyprus’ defense ministry said in a statement, citing “bad weather conditions in the area” that necessitated a rescue effort, according to Agence France Presse.
The ship’s crew saved the imperiled refugees in what Salamis Cruise Lines Managing Director Kikis Vassiliou described as “quite a difficult operation,” according to the BBC. The rescuing vessel sailed to a nearby port in Limassol, Cyprus, cutting short a vacation cruise to Haifa, Israel for a reported 300 Russian passengers.
Once the ship docked, all 700 paying customers aboard the vessel disembarked, according to the BBC. More than 60 refugees left willingly, but the rest remained on the ship and demanded to be taken to Italy.
“We did our [utmost] to save their lives, to give them food, support and now they want to destroy this company,” Vassiliou said, noting that the detour and hotel expenses for its paying customers will cost Salamis Cruise Lines hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to AFP.
Italy has become a popular destination for the spiraling number of immigrants fleeing violence in countries like Syria. The refugees taken to Cyprus continued their standoff with local authorities through Thursday night and into Friday morning before they were finally convinced to leave the ship willingly, according to Al Jazeera. At least some of the refugees were bused to Cyprus' Kokkinotrimithia refugee camp.
Rescued refugees disembark from cruise liner in Cyprus, dropping demand to go to Italy http://t.co/Rpftl22wVz pic.twitter.com/iKjX3XpQYS — BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) September 26, 2014
A passenger on the ship who spoke with one of the refugees said the group had fled Syria and had been at sea for three days, according to Al Jazeera. More than 50 children, 20 babies and several pregnant women were among the fishing boat’s passengers when the vessel’s captain abandoned ship, leaving the refugees stranded at sea.
“The captain of their boat made a phone call, and a speed boat came and took the captain,” passenger Chrystalla Eflatsoumis said, according to Al Jazeera.
At least eight of the refugees were suffering from dehydration when they were picked up Thursday, according to AFP. Others had “minor” problems, but the fishing boat’s passengers were reportedly rescued “smoothly and without any injury,” according to the Cyprus defense ministry.
This year has already been one of the Mediterranean Sea’s deadliest, as immigrants flee violence and unrest in the Middle East and Africa for Italy and other parts of Europe. More than 2,500 displaced people have died or gone missing so far in 2014, according to the U.N.’s refugee agency. And more than 100,000 refugees have been rescued at sea so far this year, according to The Associated Press.
Two separate incidents earlier this month led to the sinking of Mediterranean boats carrying refugees from Africa, Syria, Iraq and Gaza, killing more than 700 people. The shipwrecks occurred within days of one another in what was described as “without any doubt the deadliest weekend ever in the Mediterranean” by Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the U.N.’s refugee agency, according to Reuters.Doctors are calling for the federal government to stop a high-profile American anti-vaccination campaigner from entering Australia for a planned speaking tour in March.
Sherri Tenpenny, a trained emergency physician and osteopath, is due to begin a series of lectures about vaccines in Melbourne on March 1. The author of Saying No to Vaccines is expected to be joined by Australian homeopath Isaac Golden, who controversially promotes the use of natural products to prevent disease.
But three months after former Immigration Minister Scott Morrison cancelled the visa of self-described "pick-up artist" Julien Blanc for allegedly spreading his derogatory views about women, Australian doctors are calling for Dr Tenpenny to receive similar treatment.
John Cunningham, a Melbourne surgeon and spokesman for pro-vaccination group Stop the AVN, said the government should not allow someone of such poor character into Australia to spread fear, paranoia and misinformation.It’s that time again, time for another round of Android rumors and gossip. The latest juicy rumor floating around the blogosphere is one that doesn’t sound too far fetched. According to AndroidGeeks, Sony has been feeling a bit left out with all these newly announced Google Edition coming soon to the Google Play Store — and they want in. Said to be announced sometime in July, Sony and Google will announce a completely stock version of the Sony Xperia Z, for sale directly from Google Play.
This actually wouldn’t be the first time Sony’s gotten their feet wet with AOSP. You may remember around this same time last year their Sony Xperia S was inducted into Google’s hall of AOSP before being ejected a short time later. Despite this, Sony Mobile has continued their work with Android ROM devs and Android modders to bring a stock Android experience to their devices. Their latest feat was AOSP Jelly Bean 4.2.2 running on the Xperia Z and Xperia Tablet Z, (albeit still very alpha).
A Sony Xperia Z running a purely stock (and stable) Android OS while receiving updates directly from the Google sounds like a fanboys wet dream. And where it’s a dream we hope we’ll see come to fruition in the very near future, it’s also one you should take with a very tiny grain of salt. For now. I can’t help but wonder if previous rumors of multiple “Nexus” devices from multiple OEM’s being sold through Google Play were accurate, or if this was simply a snowball effect that started with Samsung and was followed by extremely competitive Android rivals.Get your copy on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xwfDZ8
I ordered a copy of Damien Lewis' book on the exploits of British SOE in WWII expecting to find an overview of, well, what SOE had done during the war. That's not quite what this book is. Instead, Lewis has given us essentially a first-person view of SOE's work through the eyes of Danish commando Anders Lassen (VC, MC with two bars). Don't be fooled by the cover image; the North African LRDG is never mentioned. However, what Lassen was involved in was equally impressive and probably less well known.
Lassen was part of the crew for the first real SOE operation, the theft of a pair of German and Italian supply ships from the neutral Spanish port at Fernando Po. In an exploit that could be straight out of Hollywood, a band of commandoes sailed a pair of tugboats into the harbor at night while the ships' officers were ashore at a raucous party. They blew the anchor chains with explosive charges, locked the crews below deck, and sailed the ships out to sea where they could be legally captured by a British destroyer. And they did it without a single death on either side.
The exploits only became bigger and bolder after that, with Lassen and his comrades making regular raids across the English Channel and running a freewheeling campaign of both hit-and-run raids and occupation of Greek islands in the Aegean. These were the quintessential independent Special Forces fighters, operating outside regular military command structures and supply chains, fighting as they saw fit. Lassen eventually because the commanding officer of a large group, and by the end of the war had been awarded the Military Cross three times. His last operation in Italy - where his men were hit with a shattering defeat when pushed into the role of spearheading a conventional offensive - would result in him posthumously receiving the Victoria Cross for his heroism.
I ended up reading the book almost entirely in a single sitting, and found it riveting and fascinating - far more so than the typical academic history. It offers a humbling and motivating example of what men can do when they are skilled and motivated. At the same time, it also left me a bit melancholy, as by the end we can see Lassen consumed by his combat experiences and slowly becoming removed from society. Nobody can say how Lassen would have coped had he survived the war, but one suspects he would have led a troubled life. Perhaps that is the price one must pay to become, as Churchill described, "a hand of steel which plucks the German sentries from their posts with growing efficiency."
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merchandise! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forgotten-weaponsHealth Beat: 3D printing saves children's hearts 3D printing is used to make car parts, phone cases and even fashion accessories. The process is also being used successfully in medicine. Now, 3D printing is making heart surgery safer for a growing number of pediatric patients. Health Beat: 3D printing saves children's hearts Video
MIAMI - Three weeks after open heart surgery, Mia Gonzalez was living it up on the playground and the dance stage. At home, she holds a plastic replica of her heart before surgery, a souvenir for Mia to keep.
"Whose heart is that, Mama?" Katherine Gonzalez, Mia's mother, asks her daughter.
"Mine," Mia responded.
"And what did they do to your heart?" Katherine asked.
Mia responded that the doctors fixed it.
The 3D model was instrumental for her surgeon, Dr. Redmund Burke, a cardiac surgeon at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami.
"So with a three-dimensional image of her heart, we can show the family what we intended to do, plan the operation and make it as minimally invasive as possible," Burke explained.
The repair was made through an incision on her shoulder blade. Mia had breathing issues since she was born. It turned out to be a vascular ring.
"It's just basically an extra artery that they have to cut off in order to alleviate the pressure," Katherine said. "And to be able to see it and see what they actually did to her was amazing."
The images used to make the 3D models come from a combination of MRI and CT scans.
"So we take this information, we put it into our specialized software that makes the model where you can see the inside and the outside of the heart and manipulate it anyway you want," Burke said.
3D printing is a picture that is truly worth a thousand words.
Depending on size and materials used, it takes 12 to 18 hours to print a 3D heart.
DOWNLOAD and VIEW research summary and an in-depth interview with the doctor“Composed by veteran Bungie composer Marty O’Donnell, his partner Michael Salvatori, and former Beatle Paul McCartney, Music of the Spheres was envisioned as a musical companion to Bungie’s ambitious Destiny. But Bungie and O’Donnell spent nearly a year battling over, among other things, publisher Activision’s failure to use O’Donnell’s music in a trailer at E3 2013. In April 2014, Bungie fired O’Donnell, and despite O’Donnell’s hopes, the company indefinitely shelved Music of the Spheres. He has made several public comments on the work since, and last month, he implicitly encouraged people to share it. “Years ago, when I was Audio Director at Bungie, I gave away nearly 100 copies of Music of the Spheres,” O’Donnell tweeted on November 30, 2017. “I don’t have the authority to give you permission to share MotS. However, no one in the world can prevent me from giving you my blessing.””
ViaIn the beginning of 1990’s, most games would fit on a couple floppies and CD-ROM was as widespread as a combination Mouse and VoIP Phone is today. However, one gaming company decided to do something utterly ridiculous: create a game with live actors, pre-rendered 3D environment, and orchestrated score, a game so big it would have to be sold on CD-ROM. The game they created, The 7th Guest, eventually sold more than 2 million copies and is considered by many the killer app that created a demand for CD-ROM drives. The 7th Guest is a gothic thriller adventure set inside an eerie abandoned mansion of one Henry Stauf, an insane toymaker who decided to make the house full of twisted quests, bizarre puzzles, and deadly challenges. Bill Gates hailed it then "the new standard in interactive entertainment".The thrilling sequel, The 11th Hour, follows the same path of terror, desolation, and grotesque logic but with even more advanced graphics, better cinematic sequences, and more in-game content.Together, The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, form an unsettling tale of horror and mystery that will send chills down your spine. Both games are coming soon to GOG.com for $9.99 each.Will you accept the invitation to Henry Stauf’s cursed mansion?Japanese scientists have discovered new information about how the myelin sheath is repaired following damage. Myelin is a fatty substance that wraps around nerve cells and helps them to conduct impulses. The research could have major implications for how multiple sclerosis is understood and even treated. The study, titled “Inactivation of Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase Receptor Type Z by Pleiotrophin Promotes Remyelination through Activation of Differentiation of Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells,” appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience on Sept. 2, 2015.
The symptoms of multiple sclerosis are due to an immune attack on the body’s own myelin. When myelin is lost around nerve cells, this can cause unpredictable loss of movement, sensation, vision problems and feelings of pain. Myelin is made by special nervous system cells called oligodendrocytes. Although it is well-known that myelin can be repaired by oligodendrocytes if it is damaged, scientists do not understand the exact repair mechanisms used by these cells. In MS, myelin unfortunately does not appear to be easily repaired, also for unknown reasons.
The researchers, led by Professor Masaharu Noda and colleagues of the National Institute for Basic Biology, wanted to study how myelin is repaired in mice with an experimental form of MS, induced by the myelin-damaging drug cuprizone. They studied both normal mice and genetically altered mice that lacked the protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type Z (PTPRZ), which is a protein that may cause oligodendrocytes to turn into mature cells, rather than stay in a more immature stage.
.
RELATED: New Multiple Sclerosis Drug May Repair Nerve Demyelination
Following loss of myelin with cuprizone, the mice that lacked PTPRZ had more myelin repair than the normal mice. The researchers also found that a protein called pleiotrophin (PTN), seemed to be associated with remyelination in the mouse brains, suggesting that it may inactivate PTPRZ. When studied in vitro (in a dish), oligodendrocytes treated with PTN turned into a form that creates new myelin.
Overall, the study suggests that pleiotrophin is secreted by nerve cells when they are damaged and lose myelin, and pleiotrophin then inhibits PTPRZ. This allows oligodendrocytes to create new myelin.
The new understanding of how myelin is formed could provide the basis for new MS treatments, for example, drugs that inhibit PTPRZ or that increase pleiotrophin might be used in the future. Of course, much more research is needed and the investigators will need to find new compounds that act on PTPRZ.
According to Noda “This achievement was made possible by establishing oligodendrocyte precursor cell lines. Pleiotrophin is an endogenous PTPRZ inhibitor, but if synthetic PTPRZ inhibitors were obtained, then effective treatments for multiple sclerosis should become possible. We are currently directing our research in that direction.”Posted on July 31, 2009 in Uncategorized
Every year when I pay my taxes, I always hope that government money will be used by predatory banks to enrich their executives at my expense! And it looks like my hopes finally came true:
Citigroup Inc., one of the biggest recipients of government bailout money, gave employees $5.33 billion in bonuses for 2008, New York’s attorney general said Thursday in a report detailing the payouts by nine big banks. The report from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office focused on 2008 bonuses paid to the initial nine banks that received loans under the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program last fall. Cuomo has joined other government officials in criticizing the banks for paying out big bonuses while accepting taxpayer money. Citigroup, which is now one-third owned by the government as a result of the bailout, gave 738 of its employees bonuses of at least $1 million, even after it lost $18.7 billion during the year, Cuomo’s office said. [via AP]
Think that’s bad? Check out the full statistics below of banks that received TARP bailout funds and the bonuses they handed out:
[Graph via Rolfe Winkler]
All totaled, over $34 billion in bonuses were given out by banks during the financial crisis, or even though the banks lost over $80 billion and took over $175 billion in federal bailout funds via the TARP program. Bonuses thus constitute 20% of the bailout money received and almost half of the banks loses during this period.
Yes, you read that correctly: Banks lost over 80 billion dollars, took over 175 billion dollars in taxpayer bailouts, and yet still handed out 34 billion dollars in corporate bonuses. And to add salt in the wounds, Visa profits jumped 73% the last quarter! Who needs credit card reform or bank regulations anyway?
See Also: Big Banks Give $5.33 Billion In Bonuses, On Q2 Bank Earnings, It’s Still Good To Be A Banker, Bankers’ Bonuses, Bailouts are Bad, $33 Billion in Taxpayer Money Subsidized Wall Street Bonuses, and Bonuses exceeded profits at bailed-out firms.
[tags]bank bonuses, goldman sachs, wells fargo, citigroup, wachovia, bank of america, Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP program, corporate bonuses, executive bonuses, taxpayer, tax payer, BOA, investment banks, public money, public bailout, federal bailout, taxpayer money, federal funds, 2008, 2009, wall street[/tags]Less than two hours after tickets for musical’s London run went on early sale, Viagogo lists several at £999-£2,500 each
Tickets for the London run of hip-hop musical Hamilton, the most anticipated theatre event of the year, have already appeared on secondary ticket websites for almost £3,000 despite measures to prevent them being touted.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer prize-winning show, based on the life of one of America’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, will transfer from the US to the newly renovated Victoria Palace theatre in the West End in November.
Less than two hours after tickets for the London run went on early sale, Viagogo listed several tickets at between £999 and £2,500 each, rising to nearly £3,000 once VAT and the company’s booking fee were included.
Theatregoers face paying £200 to see Broadway hit Hamilton in London Read more
Tickets for Hamilton on Broadway were like gold dust after rave reviews prompted unprecedented advance box office sales, and Michelle Obama proclaimed it “the best art I have ever seen in my life”. It went on to be nominated for a record 16 Tony awards, picking up 11, and also won a Grammy.
The show’s producers introduced strict new measures to combat touts, after 20,000 tickets for Hamilton in New York were snapped up by software designed to bulk-buy tickets online, and resold on secondary ticketing websites. US tickets were originally priced between $139 and $549, but were being touted for upwards of $2,000.
Despite a paperless ticket system – where ticket holders have to go to the theatre with a confirmation email, the bank card used for the booking and photo ID – being introduced for the West End show, tickets quickly found their way on to secondary ticketing sites.
Cameron Mackintosh, producing the UK run of the show, said he hoped paperless ticketing would help “combat the gouging of the public with hugely inflated ticket prices by third-party profiteers”.
But security consultant and ticketing expert Reg Walker, of Iridium Consultancy, said touts could still prosper, despite efforts to shut them out. “It’s great to see the people behind Hamilton trying to stop touting but it’s unlikely to be 100% effective,” he said.
“It’s viable for a tout to buy four tickets, sell three of them, then go with you to the box office to pick them up using his credit card. He can then walk the ticket purchasers in and walk out again, or even watch the show himself.”
“At those prices it’s still worth it for them because they make enough on three of the tickets that they don’t mind losing the money they spent on the fourth.”
Similar measures to stop touts were attempted by Adele for her recent tour, with only those with their names printed on the tickets supposedly allowed entry, but they still made their way on to resale sites for upwards of £8,000.
Viagogo and other secondary sites such as StubHub, GetMeIn and Seatwave have come under increasing scrutiny in the past year, prompting the Competition and Markets Authority to announce an investigation into secondary ticketing last month.
While the prices listed on Viagogo for Hamilton tickets are high, relatively few appeared on the website, suggesting the producers’ attempts to stop touts have had some effect.
But a gig by U2 at the Twickenham rugby stadium in July has sparked a feeding frenzy among touts, particularly those based abroad. Tickets for the event, featuring Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds as the support act, are being advertised on StubHub by ticket traders from the US and Isle of Man at prices far above face value.
K Voorhees Inc, based in the Florida city Safety Harbor, is offering four tickets at £1,299 each, compared with their face value of £200, equating to a potential profit of £5,000 on a single concert.
Row2Tickets, based in Michigan, lists two tickets for £349, six at £265 and one for £249, suggesting a potential combined profit of more than £1,600. And at least 38 tickets are advertised by I Want Tickets, a firm based on the Isle of Man.
Broadway blockbusters: why theater attendance is at an all-time high Read more
Nicole Nadig, who lives in New York, will be among those from the USwho will fly to London in 2018 specifically to see Hamilton, having managed to get her hands on early tickets.
“I’m really excited,” she told the Guardian. “I tried to get tickets in New York earlier in the run last year and was unsuccessful and couldn’t afford to buy them at resale prices, ie $1,000, and by the time more face-value tickets went on sale most of the cast was leaving.
“When I saw the show was going up in London with most of the original cast I figured I’d wait and see it there. I thought it would be a nice holiday that would probably only be slightly more expensive than two $1,000 Hamilton tickets.”
All tickets found being offered on resale sites will be voided.
Miranda became an advocate of new legislation against secondary ticket-touting in America after he saw touts snap up tens of thousands of tickets for his show. He wrote in the New York Times: “I want you to be there when the curtain goes up. You shouldn’t have to fight robots just to see something you love.”
Those hoping to get their hands on early tickets for the West End run had to sign up to priority booking last year and were given a code to get their hands on the first batch of tickets, which went on sale on Monday at midday.
The tickets were priced between £37.50 and £127.50. Despite massive demand, none of the ticket websites crashed and social media was full of praise for the “stress-free” and “surprisingly painless” online booking system. Tickets go on general sale on 30 January.by Carrie Hill Wilner
ATTENTION ALL LADIES. YOU ARE BEING LIED TO. JANE EYRE IS NOT THE BEST BOOK. REPEAT: JANE EYRE IS NOT THE BEST BOOK.
The best book is Villette.
I promise I’m not some kind of modernist monster trying to make you read something with no pelisses or heaths in it. First, this new best book is still by Charlotte Brontë.
Second, to establish my cred here, you cannot imagine a Jane Eyre reader more fervent than I. Ever since I was 12 and my mom suggested that, hey, how about I take a break from cutting all my jeans into short-shorts and read something, it’s been a favorite. At different turns in my life, it’s been a balm, stimulant, puzzle, solution. I can pass entire evenings with my girlfriends talking like (spoiler alert I guess, but really, come on):
“Remember how nice that teacher with the cake was when that kind of annoying girl died?”
“That lady was nice! Definitely the nicest lady aside from those nice cousins.”
“The nice cousins, right! OK, but I mean, do you ever kind of wish she went to India after all?”
“WHAT?! Do I need to lock your crazy ass in an attic? LIGHTNING TREE.”
“Ohhh, lightning tree. Sooo good.”
“Soooo gooooood.”
I love these ecstatic female conversations about fictional people. They’re one of my top five life pleasures. Which is why I’m really trying so hard to make the ACTUAL best book, Villette, happen. I want to live in a world where I can say, “hey, Hairpin how cute is Dr. John?” and you be like, “SO CUTE.” And then you say, “Pink dress?” and I say, “but only pale pink, and with a black lace collar… buuuut do you think whattsit is dead?” and we both get really sad for a while, and then you say, “I hope she got to keep that nice china, also remember the time she did acid and went to that party and the Sphinx was there?” (IT HAPPENED.) And the whole time, we’re actually secretly talking about our most dearly held hopes and trying to figure ourselves out and also just being like, hail, fellow lady, well met.
Here is a chart to explain why if you liked Jane Eyre, and you did, you should read Villette so we can talk about it:
IF YOU LIKED: How Jane was like, fuck your fun party, I’m |
's Vasilisa Marzaliuk in Women's +69 kg category 10-1 in a one-sided contest to score the equaliser for Mumbai.
Odikadze Elizbar of Mumbai gave his team the lead, beating India international Mausam Khatri of Punjab 8-3 in men's 97 kg.
In the first round, Elizbar gained six points to lead 6-0 and then earned two more points in the next round. Even though Khatri managed to win three point, but was it was not enough.
Once Geeta lost, Mumbai took an unassailable lead and no way could have the Punjab team made a comeback in the contest.
The last bout was won by Mumbai in men's 125kg category to register a comprehensive victory.
Mumbai skipper Gray said that they were happy with the win and are confident of winning the league in its inception year.
PTI
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Ford has filed a trademark application for the name "EcoBeast", leading to speculation that a hard-core (yet frugal) version of the F-150 is in the works.
The application simply lists the name as being for "automobiles or automobile engines". It's obviously a play on Ford's established EcoBoost designator for its turbocharged powertrains, but the "Beast" suffix has our interest piqued.
Whatever car it's destined for, the EcoBeast badge sounds like it'll be applied to something a little more muscular and aggressive than cars like the EcoBoost-engined Mondeo, Fiesta or Falcon.
The new Mustang (above), of course, could also be contender for the title, and with EcoBoost power already confirmed in the form of a 2.3 litre turbo four it's no great stretch to imagine Ford's pony car with a more powerful turbocharged variant.
But with the new alloy-bodied F-150 range still fresh out of the box and a replacement for the SVT Raptor incoming, the EcoBeast moniker is most likely headed for Ford's iconic 'truck'
Besides, "Beast" just sounds more appropriate for a full-grown ute than it does for a sports car.
It could signify that the SVT Raptor may be ditching its V8 and going down the turbocharged V6 route, though a more believable scenario is that Ford is preparing a "gap-filler" turbo V6 model to plug the divide between the regular F-150 range and the incoming 2016 SVT Raptor.
Or, Ford is just protecting the EcoBoost brand by trademarking similar-sounding names. How dull.
MORE: Ford News and Reviews
Interested in buying FORD? Visit our FORD showroom for more information.Police said a 28-year-old man was robbed of $1,100 in bitcoin by gunpoint in Crown Heights last week. View Full Caption Shutterstock
CROWN HEIGHTS — It was a real-life mugging for some virtual cash.
A 28-year-old Crown Heights man was forced at gunpoint to transfer more than $1,100 of the digital currency bitcoin into his attackers' bank account last week after a Craigslist meet-up to sell the virtual money went south, local police said.
The victim set up a meeting through an online listing to meet a man he thought would buy his bitcoins at Troy Avenue and Crown Street on May 27, officials said. When he got to the corner, the stranger led him to a silver Honda where he said they’d finalize the deal.
But once inside the car, a second man pulled a gun on the victim from the backseat, forcing him to transfer the bitcoin funds to the two robbers. The virtual thieves then stole the victim’s cell phone and fled, police said.
The victim says he lost a total of $1,100 in bitcoin. The suspects had not been identified as of Thursday, police said.
For the latest look at recent crime trends in the 71st Precinct in Crown Heights, take a look at the below map from DNAinfo New York:The Ghostly Gaze Illusion provides clues about how the brain processes visual and social information. Image: Rob Jenkins/ University of Glasgow
Look at the image above. Are the women gazing at you, or at each other? Both answers are correct, depending on how far away you are from the image. From a distance, the twin sisters appear to be gazing at each from the corners of their eyes, but move closer to it, and they appear to be looking straight ahead.
The somewhat creepy Ghostly Gaze Illusion, created by psychologist Rob Jenkins of the University of Glasgow, was awarded second prize in the 2008 Illusion of the Year Contest. It is an example of a hybrid image, in which two slightly different photographs are superimposed onto each other. How does the illusion work, and what does it tell us about how the brain processes visual and social information?
"The process begins with two identical photographs that differ only in their gaze direction," Jenkins explains. "We take the fine, detailed information from one, and the coarse 'blobby' information from the other. When we overlay these two components, we arrive at the final image, in which different percepts dominate at different distances."
How the brain interprets complex visual stimuli such as faces is a long-standing mystery for researchers. The process occurs extremely rapidly – the "meaning" of a scene is interpreted within 1/20th of a second, and, even though the information processed by the brain may be incomplete, the interpretation is usually correct.
Occasionally, however, visual stimuli are open to interpretation. This is the case with ambiguous figures, which can be interpreted in more than one way. When an ambiguous image is viewed, a single image impinges upon the retina, but higher order processing in the visual cortex leads to a number of different interpretations of that image, only one of which enters conscious awareness at any one time. Repeated viewing of the image leads to perceptual reversal, whereby first one, and then the other, interpretation is perceived. Ambiguous figures therefore provide a means by which the functioning of the human visual system can be investigated.
Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, by Salvador Dali. Photograph: Getty Images
Salvador Dali's 1940 painting Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (above) is an example of an ambiguous figure. In this painting, the two nuns just left of centre can also be perceived as the bust of the French writer and philosopher Voltaire. When looking at the painting, our perception switches from one interpretation to the other.
In a study published in 2002, Lizann Bonnar, then at the University of Glasgow, and her colleagues, investigated the stimuli which drive perception of the visual scene depicted in Dali's painting. Participants were presented with a cropped greyscale version of the painting, consisting solely of the area containing the nuns. A "bubble" filter was used to enhance or obscure certain features of that part of the painting. They found that the participants reported seeing the bust of Voltaire when the finer details of the painting were obscured, and reported seeing the nuns when large scale features were obscured.
This experiment showed the importance of scale information in perception. The researchers specifically manipulated the spatial resolution of the painting (that is, the periodicity with which image intensity changes). Large scale features change little over a given distance, and therefore have a low spatial resolution, while fine-grained features change much more over the same distance, and so have a high spatial resolution.
In a second experiment, the participants were shown random noise patterns before the cropped greyscale painting. One group was shown a pattern with a high spatial resolution, the other a pattern with a low spatial resolution. Afterwards, the former reported seeing the bust of Voltaire, while the latter reported seeing the nuns. This showed that previous experience is an important factor in perception. The participants had selectively perceived the frequency channels presented to them before they viewed the image.
Hybrid images are a slightly different kind of ambiguous figure, and provide further clues about how the brain processes visual information. They were first created in the mid-1990s by Phillipe Schyns of the University of Glasgow and his then PhD student Aude Oliva, now head of the Computational Visual Cognition Laboratory at MIT. Schyns and Oliva used specialized filtering software to remove sharp facial features, such as wrinkles and other blemishes, from one image and coarse features, such as the shape of the mouth or nose, from the other. The two images are then superimposed.
Features with a high spatial frequency are visible only from up close, whereas those with low spatial frequencies are only visible from further away. Overlaying the two photos therefore results in a single image that can produce two stable percepts. Only one of the images is visible at a given distance, and it is this image that dominates processing in the visual system; the other is perceived as something lacking internal organization.
Schyns and Oliva have created several dozen hybrid images, the best known being the one of Marylin Einstein. They have used the images to investigate the role of different frequency channels for image recognition, and the time course over which this process occurs. When participants are shown hybrid images for durations of 30 milliseconds, they recognize only the low spatial resolution component of the image, but when the images are displayed for 150 milliseconds, they only recognize the high spatial resolution component. In both cases, they are completely oblivious to the other interpretation of the image.
The researchers have also shown participants hybrid images consisting of sad and angry faces (with high and low spatial resolution, respectively) of men and women. When these images are displayed for 50 milliseconds, and the participants are asked to determine the emotion of the face they saw, they always report seeing the angry face. But when asked to determine the sex of the person in the image, they report seeing a male as often as they reported seeing a female, even though the two faces have different spatial resolutions.
Thus, selection of frequency bands during fast image recognition appears to be flexible: in some cases, the brain picks out characteristics with a low spatial resolution, while in others, it discriminates those with a high resolution. It seems that the brain is adept at selecting the frequency band containing the most information relevant to a particular task. Again, the participants were unaware that the images they viewed contained information in the other frequency range.
Oliva's work shows that the brain extracts large-scale features slightly earlier than fine-grained features. Large scale features are processed within 50 milliseconds, giving an overall impression of the visual scene. The processing of fine-grained details begins slightly later, at around 100 milliseconds.
The fine- and coarse-grained features are extracted separately, and processed in parallel through different channels, in successively higher order areas of the visual cortex. In a process called perceptual grouping, the information from the channels is then seamlessly recombined at visual cortical areas of the highest order to produce a coherent, and usually unambiguous, image.
Th Ghostly Gaze Illusion also tells us a bit about how the brain processes social information. Being highly social animals, we are particularly sensitive to eye gaze direction, as it provides important information about other peoples' intentions and is therefore crucial for our interactions with them. The Ghostly Gaze Illusion overturns assumptions about how the brain uses light intensity cues from the eyes to determine gaze direction.
"It is often assumed that we tell where other people are looking by following the darkest regions of their eyes," says Jenkins. "The Ghostly Gaze illusion shows that this is not mandatory, and that we will follow the lighter side of the eyes instead if they contain convincing cues such as the curved outline of the pupil."
References: Jenkins, R. (2007). The lighter side of gaze perception. Perception, DOI: 10.1068/p5745
Bonnar, L. et al. (2002). Understanding Dali's Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire: A case study in the scale information driving perception. Perception, DOI: 10.1068/p3276
• This article was amended on 20 September to give the correct attributions of the researchers. The concluding quote was also amended – the original stated that it is often assumed that we tell where people are looking by "following the pupil and iris region".Marvel announced today that it was teaming up with defense systems manufacturer Northrop Grumman for a new all-ages comic book, finally combining the American child’s two favorite things: Flashy comic book superheroes, and extremely expensive missile defense systems and “battle management” technology. The company did so by revealing a new team of heroes powered by the company’s military technology, the awkwardly backronymed Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus (or N.G.E.N.). Teaming up with the Avengers, they basically look like the currently discontinued Fantastic Four, except with a lot of real-world defense tech for various superheroes to ooh-and-ahh over. Shockingly, though, a number of the company’s fans didn’t take news of this particular sponsorship very well:
Advertisement
Northrop Grumman bills itself as the world’s fifth largest defense contractor, selling bombers, cybersecurity systems, and other military hardware, mostly to the U.S. government. The partnership with Marvel will apparently extend beyond this single book, too; the company has said it’s planning some sort of big N.G.E.N. reveal at its booth at New York Comic-Con tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Marvel recently pulled its planned panel for the upcoming Punisher TV show from the same convention, over fears that it would be seen as an endorsement of gun violence. (To be fair, Northrop doesn’t seem to manufacture guns, just other, more advanced defense systems; also, we have to admit that “Start Your N.G.E.N.s,” the name of the storyline in the just-announced book, is some top-notch bad comic book title punning.) The company is also running a “code-breaking” contest within the promo book’s pages, in order to allow kids to earn a chance to be drawn into the book, the better to get America’s youths really excited for every child’s favorite kids-friendly weapons manufacturer, those wacky, fun-loving clowns at Northrop Grumman.
Advertisement
[via Bleeding Cool]Randy Moss pretends to moon the Lambeau crowd after scoring a touchdown during the fourth quarter against the Packers in 2005. Credit: File
Green Bay - M.D. Jennings was only 16 years old, but the Green Bay Packe safety can still picture Randy Moss that January night in 2005.
"I can remember him wiping his butt on the goal post. I can remember that," Jennings said. "I was excited to see that happen. When you see someone do things like that, it's crazy."
And, no, Jennings would not be thrilled if Moss pulled that stunt Sunday.
"That's like a slap in the face if someone comes in your house and does something like that," Jennings said. "So we have to keep him out of our end zone and not give him a chance at any celebrations."
So that's the variable this Sunday in the Week 1 showdown at Lambeau Field against the San Francisco 49ers.
If any team knows the damage a full-throttle, all-in Moss can inflict, it's the Packers.
In 14 career games against Green Bay, Moss has 1,273 receiving yards and 13 touchdowns. He has tortured the Packers unlike any other. Then again, 13 of those 14 games came at least eight years ago.
He's 35 years old. He was out of the league last season.
Should any residual fear from those spankings a decade ago remain? The 2012 Moss is a mystery.
"That's what makes the game that much fun," cornerback Tramon Williams said. "People want to come in and see the old Randy Moss. They want to see the guy who goes up the field and makes great catches over guys and that's the mystery of it.
"You don't know what you're going to get. You don't know if you're going to get that or if you're going to get a different Randy."
Maybe this mystery would be a little clearer if we heard from Moss. Since training camp began, Moss has held only two news conferences and declined multiple interview requests, states the San Mercury News.
He one of the greatest enigmas in NFL history - a supremely talented, supremely beat-to-my-own-drum superstar. The man said he plays "when I want to play," and backed it up.
San Francisco had to juggle all of this when signing Moss off the street to a one-year, $2.5 million contract.
Whether the rest of the league should be scared is unknown. Moss was a complete nonfactor the last time he played in 2010. He caught 28 passes with three teams.
The 49ers are banking that was due more to disinterest than eroding talent. This preseason, Moss had three receptions for 24 yards.
For what it's worth, the Packers are trying to rekindle Moss memories of 1998, of 2004, of 2007, as much as possible this week.
"I can remember Moss just running through coverage, just throwing his hand up," Jennings said. "Two or three guys on him. (Daunte) Culpepper would just throw it up to him; he'd run under it and make plays."
Williams says he is expecting the "old Randy."
"I think that's what everybody in the secondary is going to be expecting - the Randy who's done it at such a high level so many years," Williams said.
"You can't look past that. Once a guy puts that on film year in and year out in the league, you can't look past that."
There's reason to buy into Moss. If he was washed up, he would have been cut.
Terrell Owens lasted 20 days in Seattle. Chad Ochocinco... Johnson... whatever lasted one exhibition game. Plaxico Burress remains out of work. Patience runs low for diva receivers of any type.
The fact that Moss is here, apparently ready to make a difference, speaks volumes. He's doing something all of the above are not - suiting up for Week 1. And on the depth chart released Tuesday, Moss is starting.
"I can't say how much game he has left," Jennings said. "He was able to make the 53-man roster, so he really proved something to the coaches on that staff."
The numbers weren't there. But after watching the tape, Jennings, like Williams, is bracing for the Moss of yesteryear.
Culpepper and Randall Cunningham aren't quite heaving prayers to Moss in double coverage anymore. And don't expect the Alex Smith-led 49ers to lose their identity.
Still, Moss has provided a few nightmares on this field before. On Sunday, the real Randy Moss will stand up.
"We're not sure where he's going to be," Williams said. "But whatever they come with, we'll be prepared for."
Send email to tdunne@journalsentinel.comThe only way to see sunrise in Beijing this morning was to watch it on a screen The city's been hit with its worst smog in a year
How bad was Beijing's smog this morning? This picture being circulated on Twitter by New York Times correspondent Edward Wong and CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciuto basically says it all:
[embedtweet id="423774122335031296"]
(The screen, which normally displays advertisements, wasn't explicitly set up to act as a surrogate sunrise. It does, however, recall the fake skyline set up in Hong Kong to replace the haze-shrouded real one.)
Advertisement:
This is the worst Beijing's had it since 2013's "airpocalypse," with levels of dangerous small particles in the air surpassing 500 micrograms per cubic meter for the first time this season. Not only is that enough to limit visibility to several hundred yards -- leading the city to close four major highways -- it's also over two dozen times the amount considered safe (25 micrograms). At its peak, around 4 a.m., the pollution measured as high as 671 micrograms per cubic meter. It's forecasted to last until late Friday morning.
As the yellow fog descended, the state news agency announced that it shut down 8,347 heavily polluting companies last year in northern Hebei province, the country's biggest steel producer. Pollution from plants in Hebei often spreads to Beijing. A report released by a group of NGOs and research institutes, however, found that the emissions levels reported by most coal-fired power plants and factories exceed government regulations "most of the time."BOCA RATON, Fla. -- NHL general managers on Tuesday discussed the merits of changing the offside rule to potentially allow for fewer overturned goals. But when they dug into the specifics and analyzed the numbers, the consensus was to keep everything status quo.
Before reaching that conclusion, the GMs discussed changing the offside rule (Rule 83.1) to allow for a player to be considered onside as long as one of his skates has broken the vertical plane of the blue line regardless if it is in contact with the ice.
The basis of the offside rule, which dates to 1929-30, dictates that a player is judged to be onside when either of his skates is in contact with or on his own side of the blue line at the instant the puck completely crosses the leading edge of the blue line.
Video: GM Meetings Recap with Mears, Rosen and Johnston
The skate-off-the-ice offside play typically shows up in video review conducted through the coach's challenge. The GMs learned Tuesday that it rarely happens and even fewer times does it result in a goal being overturned.
Through 972 games this season, 29 goals have been challenged because the coach felt a player had his skate off the ice and was offside, according to NHL Hockey Operations. Of those 29 goals, nine were overturned.
There have been approximately 5,700 offside calls this season.
"I really don't think it's a big deal," Colorado Avalanche GM Joe Sakic said. "We have the rule. We've had it forever. In my mind you don't have to change anything.
"You grow up as a kid and you know the rule and it is what it is."
Video: Joe Sakic talks about growth, direction of hockey
Other than the numbers, the GMs listed two reasons for not changing the rule.
First, officials still would have to determine if a player's skate in the air was over the blue line, which can be as subjective as determining if a skate is on the ice.
"It's just changing the dynamic," Chiarelli said. "Now you have to determine the dynamic if the leg is breaking the plane or not if it's in the air. So you've got a number of calls that were reversed because the leg was in the air. But if you allow it, you still have to decide if it's breaking the plane. So there's uncertainty on both sides."
Second, it could encourage players to lift their skates, which could impact player safety.
"Skate cuts can be nasty, so we're trying to keep the players' skates on the ice at all times," Minnesota Wild GM Chuck Fletcher said.
Video: Wild GM Chuck Fletcher on where the game stands
NHL senior executive vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell said there's concern in his department that a skate-off-the-ice offside play will result in a video review that could change the outcome of a Stanley Cup Playoff game or series.
"We always go into the playoffs nervous," Campbell said.
Campbell also said the League didn't think offside calls would be an issue when the coach's challenge system was instituted at the start of last season.
"We thought when we introduced high-definition cameras on the blue lines that we would solve a lot of issues," Campbell said. "It's almost worse because it's so minute, it's almost like a hair, is [the skate] up or is it not up? It hasn't made it any easier [to make the call]."
Video: Oilers GM and President of hockey ops Peter Chiarelli
The GMs rejected the idea that video reviews for offside and goaltender interference take too long.
Reviews on offside challenges are taking on average 2:18 from the time the coach issues the challenge to the time the official delivers a ruling. It was 2:35 last season. Reviews on goaltender interference are taking 2:05, down from 2:27 last season.
Those times do not take into account how long it takes for the coach to decide if he's going to challenge, but the GMs said they feel coaches should be given a significant enough window of opportunity to decide because of the importance of the play.
"You're talking about a goal," Fletcher said. "The players and the coach, they want to get it right, so you've got to give them enough time to make the decision that they're going to use their challenge. And if you're wrong on your challenge, you lose your timeout. I think we have to be a little bit careful. I don't think there should be a clock. The referees want to be fair to the players and fair to the coach."
The GMs said the officials can speed the process at the end of the review by not going to each bench to explain to the coaches how and why they came to their conclusion.
"Once the call is made, let's just drop the puck and get going," Fletcher said. "We don't need the ref to explain it to the coach. He knows what he's going to hear."Since its establishment B’Tselem has published testimonies, comprehensive reports and regular updates on human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. The impact and power of the written word are greatly amplified when coupled with visual documentation. Images provide a direct experience that cannot be ignored, compelling the viewer to face reality and see the violent routine of life under occupation.
In 2005, B’Tselem created a video department with a view to incorporating visual imagery into its work of documenting human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories. The department’s early work was producing and publishing short documentary videos. About two years later, we launched the B’Tselem Camera Project. B’Tselem provides video cameras and training to Palestinians living in the West Bank, helping them become citizen journalists. They document life under the occupation and human rights abuses and publicize this material, either through B’Tselem or independently. By participating in the project, B’Tselem volunteers acquire skills that contribute to their fight for their own human rights as well as those of their communities and allow them to document daily life under the occupation.
Since the Camera Project was launched, video documentation has become a staple of B’Tselem’s work. Thanks to footage shot by the project’s volunteers, serious human rights violations committed by Israel in the Occupied Territories have been widely covered by both local and international media. This, in turn, has helped bring to public attention – even if briefly – incidents that would not have gotten any coverage whatsoever if it were not for the presence of cameras.
In several cases, footage even played a role in the fight against the whitewashing policy practiced by civilian and military Israeli law enforcement agencies which, as a general rule, avoid taking any measures against security forces personnel or settlers who harm Palestinians. Thanks to the documentation, Israeli civilian and military law enforcement agencies simply could not deny what had happened and were forced to face the facts.
In 2009, B’Tselem’s Camera Project won the One World Media award for its ground-breaking work in citizen journalism. In 2012, the project was awarded first prize in the Freeform Documentary category of the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum documentary film competition.
In 2009, B’Tselem began producing documentary and cinematic projects as well. In 2010, we produced Gaza – An Inside Look, a project in which Palestinians describe life in the Gaza Strip a year after Operation Cast Lead. In 2011, in partnership with The Guardian, B’Tselem produced Living in East Jerusalem. The interactive project showcased personal video diaries by two Israelis and four Palestinians about the daily struggles of living in East Jerusalem. In 2015, we produced Smile and the World Will Smile Back. The award-winning short film has been screened in many film festivals and was even nominated for the European Film Awards. In 2017, B’Tselem produced video diaries by two of B’Tselem’s women volunteers who live in the Jordan Valley (A Weekend Visit Home and A Dream that Will Never Come True). Our short film The Boy from H2 was also released in 2017. It premiered at the Berlinale, where it took part in the short film competition, and has since been screened in many other important international film festivals. In 2012, we launched the video blog My Own Private Gaza. Filmed by Khaled al-‘Azayzeh, B’Tselem’s field researcher in the southern Gaza Strip, it offers a glimpse of what it is like to live in Gaza.
Our video department maintains a rich and unique archive containing thousands of hours of raw footage, testimonies and photographic materials from throughout the Occupied Territories. The archival material is available to the public. It is used by filmmakers, journalists, academics, students and other individuals interested in learning about life under occupation. To visit the archive, please contact helen@btselem.org. We recommend reading our visitor instructions before visiting.Thanks to celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, we've witnessed what Time magazine called the 'transgender tipping point'; where trans people feel they've crossed over a threshold towards visibility, equality and acceptance.
Thanks to celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, we've witnessed what Time magazine called the 'transgender tipping point'; where trans people feel they've crossed over a threshold towards visibility, equality and acceptance.
Closer to home, with the passing of the Gender Recognition Bill this summer, Ireland's transgender community is also growing in confidence. For many, the idea of a man or woman identifying as a gender they weren't born as is a relatively new concept, but most Irish people are slowly becoming familiar with transgenderism.
Yet even within the community, there is a growing faction of people for whom the usual narrative - a man born in a woman's body, or vice versa - doesn't apply. A number of people identify as 'gender fluid' or 'gender non-binary'. The former means that the person may identify as a man or a woman interchangeably (often feeling like one or the other on the same day). The latter means that the person's gender isn't just simply male or female. They feel like neither a man nor a woman, or both man and woman. Once denounced as a mental health issue, this is now being acknowledged as a legitimate form of gender identity.
RTE news anchor Jonathan Rachel Clynch is one of these people, for last week Clynch came out as 'gender fluid', identifying as sometimes male and sometimes female. Planning to identify as both male and female at his workplace, Clynch was supported not just by RTE, but by a large swathe of the public. Some newspaper headlines describing Clynch as a'man who will dress as a woman' are slightly misleading, not to mention offensive to the trans community. In fact, it is more politically correct to do away with pronouns like 'he/she' or 'his/her' and use the neutral 'they' instead, to acknowledge both gender identities.
Kay Cairns, a 23-year-old multimedia journalist, identifies as gender non-binary: "I would see 'gender fluid' and 'non-binary' as two different things," Kay explain.
"I'm slightly more rigid (about my identity) and describe myself as a 'demi-guy', which means I'm on the more masculine end of the spectrum. While a lot of transgender guys like to get testosterone and surgery to their chest, I'd prefer to go on a lower dose of hormones and not have chest surgery."
Growing up partly in Ireland, Scotland, the UK and South Africa, Kay admits to always feeling a little 'different'.
"I guess it was something that was always there," Kay recalls. "I didn't necessarily know what to call it or if it was legit, or if I was just a tomboy. My mum recounted how I would say, 'I want to be a boy'.
"I never liked wearing dresses and wanted to play with action figures. I think when my little sister came along and she was so much girlier and different to me, we all realised that I was a little different."
Predictably, puberty was a confusing time: "It was really frustrating that my body was changing and I didn't want it to."
In the quest for answers, Kay read up extensively on gender issues as a teenager.
"I realised what 'trans' was, and then I had a partner who was a trans guy and learned from his experiences," Kay explains. "I found out what non-binary was, and recently discovered 'demi-guy'."
While gender identity and sexual orientation are two very different things, Kay found that on the journey of self-exploration, it was necessary to try on a few different 'labels', in a bid to see what fit.
"I guess for me it was all pretty simple in my head, but for everyone else it was a headf***," Kay smiles. "I was also coming to terms with my sexuality at the same time. I discovered I was bi-sexual, then pan-sexual (not limited in sexual choice). Pan made more sense to be. How could I identify as a lesbian when I wasn't a girl?"
In an Ireland that's becoming increasingly aware and supportive of different sexual identities and gender identities, Kay is largely met with support when 'coming out'. Still, the process isn't without its complications.
"I started work in a new place and sent an email to everyone saying that I identify as 'non-binary' and I'd like people to use gender neutral pronouns while addressing me," Kay explains. "I gave everyone an example of how to use it."
Still, most Irish people have grown up with a strong attachment to the traditional gender constructs, so using 'they' takes getting used to.
"The odd slip-up happens, but most people catch themselves doing it," asserts Kay. "Some people email 'oh, I'm sorry, I've been getting it so wrong', but they're not used to this dialogue. It's really not a problem. In fact, it's best not to make a big deal of it, to just brush it off."
Still, the process of 'coming out' as gender non-binary can be wearying for Kay.
"It's something I have to tackle in every workplace," Kay reveals. "It can be easier to get jobs if you present yourself in a more stereotypical way. I'm fortunate that I work in a human rights organisation, and I came right off the bat in my job interview."
While the Gender Recognition Bill allows transgender people to now self-declare their own identity - a real boon when it comes to banking, or even applying for a passport - gender fluid and non-binary people won't feel the same benefits.
"It's frustrating that you won't be able to get a passport in the right gender, only'male' or 'female'," explains Kay. "It will be a few decades before we are given the same kind of rights as everyone else.
"Also, as a non-binary person it's near impossible to get access to hormone treatment because the medical profession, much like everywhere else, works in a very binary, rigid way."
Yet things are moving in the right direction. The gender neutral prefix 'Mx', used in lieu of 'Mr' or 'Mrs', has been added to the Oxford English dictionary.
Elsewhere, a growing number of celebrities are pushing the concept of gender-fluid and non-binary towards the public eye.
Clynch aside, Orange Is The New Black star Ruby Rose likes to be described as as gender fluid, explaining: "Gender fluidity is not really feeling like you're at one end of the spectrum or the other. For the most part, I definitely don't identify as any gender. I'm not a guy; I don't really feel like a woman, but obviously I was born one.
"So, I'm somewhere in the middle, which - in my perfect imagination - is like having the best of both sexes."
Ezra Furman, soon to play live in Dublin, also identifies as gender fluid, while the charismatic Justin Vivian Bond, who stormed the Dublin Fringe Festival a few nights ago in a rousing show, identifies as non-binary.
"I don't have a woman's soul trapped in a man's body but I don't believe the soul is gendered. That's where I'm at," Bond told GCN Magazine.
These positive media messages are having a knock-on effect in the real world. TENI (the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland) have had thousands of enquiries since the beginning of the year; a sharp increase on last year.
It is difficult to pinpoint how many transgender people live in Ireland at present, but the Gender Identity Research & Education Society estimates prevalence of gender variation at 1pc of a general population.
At a Trans Youth Forum in July, TENI noted that a significant proportion of the attendees aged 14-25 were non-binary; in a recent survey of 161 respondents of the same age group, 35pc of them described themselves as 'non-binary'.
It stands to reason that, in an age where several youngsters describe their sexual preferences as fluid (a YouGov poll revealed that 23pc of British people, and 49pc of 18-24 year-olds, would not describe themselves as heterosexual), that the age-old construct of gender would also need to be readdressed.
Still, it's not just a 'youth' thing: "I've talked to older people in their 40s and 50s, who note that they feel neither 100pc male or female," explains Broden Giambrone, Chief Executive of TENI.
"As those words get out there, you hear people say, 'I lived my whole life as a masculine woman, though 'I don't feel like a woman', or 'I don't feel like a man'".
As to anyone who might feel that the age-old labels of'male' or 'female' don't apply to them, Kay advises: "Find out as much as you can and give yourself a chance to breathe and explore. Don't feel as though you need to comply by someone else's rulebook."
For more information, contact the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland at teni.ie
TENI's glossary of terms
Cisgender: A non-trans person (ie a person whose gender identity and gender expression is aligned with the sex assigned at birth)
Genderqueer: A person whose gender varies from the traditional 'norm'; or who feels their gender identity is neither female nor male, both female and male, or a different gender identity altogether
Intersex: Refers to a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the typical definitions of female or male
Transgender: Refers |
’s second attempt at a spreadsheet program; it followed the relatively successful Multiplan, a spreadsheet program that was ported to a variety of systems such as MS-DOS, Apple II, Commodore 64 and more.
Image by Mike Koss.
Internet Explorer 1.0
Internet Explorer 1.0 was released for Windows 95 on August 16, 1995. As most browsers of that time it was based on Mosaic, the web browser often credited with popularizing the WWW. IE was part of the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus! (a pack of “OS-enhancing” applications) and was also included in the OEM release of Windows 95.
Found at a Microsoft.com history page. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a prettier screenshot.
Firefox 1.0
Firefox is far younger than the other applications in this article, but we included it since it’s so popular today (and to balance out IE a bit). Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 on November 9, 2004, as the intended replacement for the increasingly bloated Mozilla Suite.
It was far from obvious that the browser was going to be called Firefox. During its development the project was first called Phoenix, but had to be renamed due to trademark issues. The new name after that, Firebird, clashed with the Firebird database server project, so finally the name was changed to Firefox, and that one stuck.
Screenshot by Andrew Turnbull. For a view of the development of the FF browser, check out his excellent collection of FF screenshots.
We all owe Xerox a lot…
Before we finish this article we’d like to give some credit to Xerox simply because a lot of the concepts for Mac OS, Windows, Word and other GUI-based applications were lifted from or inspired by work done at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the 1970s.
The Xerox Alto computer, never sold commercially but in popular use within PARC itself, was the first computer with both a mouse and a graphical user interface. It was operational in 1973, long before Mac OS and Windows made GUIs popular. It was revolutionary, but sadly the management at Xerox failed to realize the potential of the work done at PARC.
Xerox finally made an attempt at commercializing this research with the Xerox Star computer in 1981 but due to a number of factors it never became a success, ultimately losing out to the Mac and PC.
Here’s what the GUI for the Xerox Star 8010 looked like back in 1981:
The image above is from the Digibarn Computer Museum. They have many more pictures of the Xerox Star that you can check out and compare with your desktop GUI of today. You’d expect more of a difference considering it’s been almost 30 years since then. It’s pretty safe to say that the researchers at Xerox have had a lasting effect on what our GUIs and GUI-based applications look like.
Considering the thousands upon thousands of applications circulating out there, we hope you’ll forgive us for keeping the focus pretty narrow in this article by including only a tiny fraction of them. We hope you enjoyed this little piece of nostalgia.
Most of us here at Pingdom were around back when these applications were released, though we admittedly were kids the 1980s. Now the question is, how old are you? Were you around when these applications and operating systems were on version 1.0? 😉
As usual, Wikipedia deserves a bit of extra credit for being a highly useful source of information.I love my son and I would do anything for him but it took years for me to come around to the idea of having children. Being a mother just wasn’t a role I ever envisioned for myself. I thought I’d be terrible at it. And seeing how it was for other “career” women, I was afraid of living the life the author describes in this article.
Having it All Kinda Sucks
Even with carefully orchestrated co-parenting things still felt insane for those first years. As a new mom I worried about being passed up for the gigs and commissions we relied on (and I was at least one time that I know of, which I will write about someday). I worried about how little time I had for composing (i.e. never). We felt like we were slowing clawing our way back into a life with 8 hours of sleep in it when my husband got sick.
I am fortunate that while I try to figure out my new life as a solo parent I can coast on the earlier successes of my career (i.e. licensing royalties) and the generosity of my truly incredibly fans (i.e. you). The wolf is not at the door, for now. But if I didn’t have that, what would happen to us? What would I have done when Jeff got sick? What do other people do when they have minimal resources coupled with small children and no partner, a sick spouse, a parent with dementia? Why do we leave them to fend for themselves?
This isn’t just a moral issue, it seems economically daft. Policy makers agree that the economic consequences of a shrinking, greying population are negative, yet we penalize the people who raise children and care for the elderly.
Given that 66% of caregivers are women it’s a feminist issue too. As Judith Shulevitz said in an op-ed for the NY Times “…it’s society that’s getting a free ride on women’s unrewarded contributions to the perpetuation of the human race.”
There are long-lasting financial ramifications for those who leave the workforce in order to care for a child or a spouse or a parent. Kristen Maschka, the president of Mothers and More, estimated that by staying home for seven years with her child, she was forfeiting $2,000 a month in future Social Security benefits.
Not a parent? If you have parents the chances are you will need to look after them some day and so you’d better start saving up. The individual impact cost of leaving the workforce to look after aging parents is $280,000 for men and $320,000 for women in lost Social Security, pension benefits and wages. Across all people who look after their parents, this amounts to nearly $3 trillion. (source: MetLife study)
At Davos last month I heard lots of discussion around Universal Basic Income, the idea that all citizens receive a minimal salary regardless of work. It is talked about as a way to protect workers from automation and globalization and a potential fix for income inequality. It’s also a way to compensate caregivers for their unpaid labor.
As it is now, inequality is baked into the cake. Companies pay their workers minimum wage, knowing full well that those workers will rely on taxpayer funded services like food stamps to survive. Governments cut services, employers cut benefits (and forget the self-employed) and the financial burden of austerity is shifted to caregivers. I think Universal Basic Income has legs. What do you think?A bored and somewhat world weary 11-year-old Savion Green thought he knew it all when he enrolled in a summer camp about architecture and design three years ago.
This summer, Green returned to UC Berkeley’s Wurster Hall as an eager mentor to other youth in the Family 1st Architecture Camp, a continuing program for middle-schoolers.
Jeremiah Tolbert and Cameron Toler, alumni of the College of Environmental Design and AIA East Bay members, founded the camp to expose underserved youth to architecture, engineering and construction.
It was launched In partnership with the AIA East Bay and 1st Family Foundation – a locally-focused nonprofit founded by Oakland natives and National Football League players Joshua Johnson, a quarterback with the New York Jets, and Marshawn Lynch, a running back for the Oakland Raiders who earned recognition for his performance with the Cal Bears before turning pro.
Savion has lived in East Oakland, along with some other some tough neighborhoods that he has called home – Crenshaw and Hawthorne in Los Angeles, and the Fillmore in San Francisco. He lost his father to homicide when he was only a year old. It happened near Third and Townsend streets in San Francisco, a block from where Savion lives now.
Dreaming big
Today Savion occupies a very different space, one in which he is mapping out a path to become an engineer, focusing on robotics and nanotechnology in hopes of making the world a better place. His transformation came courtesy of a summer camp.
Shalonda Tillman, now a teacher at Madison Park Academy in Oakland, was Savion’s seventh grade teacher at East Oakland Leadership Academy in Oakland three years ago. When she was asked to corral some students to attend the camp, she chose Savion and a dozen or so others.
“Me and Savion had bumped heads throughout the year, because I was always pushing him to do more, when he thought he had done enough,” she recalls.
So inspired
He concedes: “I was kind of arrogant. School came very easy for me and I was just bored with the stuff I was learning because I already knew it.”
Savion says neither of his choices at the time were appealing: summer classes or camp. He chose camp, even though he was clueless what architecture or engineering even meant. Once there, he learned to use computers to draw and design buildings and even cities. “I was so inspired,” he says.
“I saw the talents in Savion, despite of the wall he had built up,” recalls Tillman. “I realized early on that he loved to draw and he was a critical thinker. I immediately knew his future was bright, but he would be the only one to stop himself.”
No one’s stopping him now.
“She was the only person who encouraged me, and she brought me to this camp – which taught me responsibility, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), and made me decide to become a mechanical engineer,” says Savion.
“I didn’t do anything special, but expose him to a new opportunity,” says Tillman. “He did everything else, and I am a proud teacher.”
Abandoning the hustle
Frank Worrell, a professor of educational psychology at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, heads up the school’s Academic Talent Development Program of summer camps for students in grades 6-12. He says Green’s story underscores the value of summer camps and of linking youths’ interests and talents to camp subjects.
Brimming with a passion for design, architecture and robotics, Savion has big plans beyond “the hustle. He’s in the eleventh grade, taking high school classes from home and commuting from San Francisco to Contra Costa College in San Pablo courses.
When he graduates from high school, Savion says he should already have an associate of arts degree “and I can go straight to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).” Second choice: Stanford University. Third: UC Berkeley.
While Savion aspires to earn a Ph.D. in nanotechnology and to find a cure for cancer, he’s busy taking care of business today. He works two jobs – one is counseling other youths about growing healthy foods and cooking nutritious meals and the other is doing janitorial work for his uncle. This enables him to save money to build robots.
Changing the world
“I plan on starting my own company, selling my own robots, and just make life easier for people with this technology,” he says. “I really want to change the world.”
At the moment, he’s also working on an invention that he only will reveal is a “new form of drone,” and writing a book. Eventually he intends to start his own business and develop a host of new inventions. Also on his to-do list is designing a new form of one-stop rehabilitation centers for homeless people that helps get them off the streets, restore their health, teach them job skills, find them employment and “make their lives better.”
His desire to cure cancer stems from numerous personal losses. “Me and cancer have had a beef for quite a while,” he said. “I really want to get back at cancer for it.”
Getting while giving back
An architect and camp volunteer for four years, Omar Haque calls the program an amazing opportunity for students to learn from professionals in the field, but for professionals to learn about the community as well.
“I’ve really been able to hone my skills in explaining and communicating architecture to a young audience of students who have never been introduced to the concepts before. They may not realize it now, but this is a form of network building and exposure for these students unlike anything else.”
The camp also helps create innovative designs for local projects. Learning the basics of architectural design, including an introduction to AutoCAD, students spent a week in June redesigning the recreation center at Oakland’s Mosswood Park.The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also known as Frontex[3] (from French: Frontières extérieures for "external borders"), is an agency of the European Union headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, tasked with border control of the European Schengen Area, in coordination with the border and coast guards of Schengen Area member states.
Frontex was established in 2005 as the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, and primarily responsible for coordinating border control efforts. In response to the European migrant crisis of 2015–2016, the European Commission proposed on 15 December 2015, to extend Frontex's mandate and to transform it into a fully-fledged European Border and Coast Guard Agency.[1] On 18 December 2015, the European Council roundly supported the proposal,[4] and after a vote by the European Parliament, the European Border and Coast Guard was officially launched on 6 October 2016 at the Bulgarian external border with Turkey.[5]
To enable the agency to carry out its tasks, its budget would be gradually increased from the €143 million originally planned for 2015 up to €238 million in 2016, €281 million in 2017, and will reach €322 million (about US$350 million) in 2020. The staff of the agency would gradually increase from 402 members in 2016 to 1,000 by 2020.[1]
History [ edit ]
European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (2005–2016) [ edit ]
Schengen Area Countries with open borders Legally obliged to join
Frontex, then officially the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, was established by Council of Regulation (EC) 2007/2004.[6] It began work on 3 October 2005 and was the first EU agency to be based in one of the new EU member states from 2004. Frontex' mission is to help European Union member states implement EU rules on external border controls and to coordinate cooperation between member states in external border management. While it remains the task of each member state to control its own borders, Frontex is vested to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency. The agency's main tasks according to the Council Regulation are:[6]
coordinate cooperation between member states in external border management.
assisting member states in training of national border guards.
carrying out risk analyses.
following research relevant for the control and surveillance of external borders.
helping member states requiring technical and operational assistance at external borders.
providing member states with the necessary support in organising joint return operations.
The institution was centrally and hierarchically organised with a management board, consisting of one person of each member state as well as two members of the Commission. The member states representatives are operational heads of national security services concerned with border guard management. Frontex also has representatives from and works closely with Europol and Interpol. The Management Board is the leading component of the agency, controlling the personal, financial, and organisational structure, as well as initiating operative tasks in annual work programmes. Additionally, the Board appoints the Executive Director. The first Director was Ilkka Laitinen.
The agency struggled to recruit staff[7] due to its location in Warsaw, which offered lower pay than some other cities, and the unclear agency mandate. According to its third amended Budget 2015, the agency had in that year 336 employees. Additionally it could make use of 78 employees which had been seconded from the member states.[8] The dependency of the organisation on staff secondments has been identified by external auditors as a risk, since valuable experience may be lost when such staff leave the organisation and return to their permanent jobs.[9]
Special European Border Forces of rapidly deployable border guards, called Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT) who are armed and patrol cross-country land borders, were created by EU interior ministers in April 2007 to assist in border control, particularly on Europe's southern coastlines.[10] Frontex's European Patron Network began work in the Canary Islands in May 2007[11] and armed border force officers were deployed to the Greece–Turkey border in October 2010.[12]
European Border and Coast Guard Agency (2016–present) [ edit ]
Migrants crossing the Mediterranean sea on a boat, heading from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 29 January 2016
The Commission was prompted to take swift action due to the immigration crisis of 2015, which brought to the forefront the need to improve the security of the external borders of the union. This crisis has also demonstrated that Frontex, which had a limited mandate in supporting the Member States to secure their external borders, had insufficient staff and equipment, and lacked the authority to conduct border management operations and search-and-rescue efforts.
The new Agency was proposed by the European Commission on 15 December 2015[13] to strengthen Frontex, widely seen as being ineffective in the wake of the European migrant crisis. Support for the proposal has come from France and Germany, with Poland and Hungary expressing opposition to the plan, concerned by the perceived loss of sovereignty.[14]
The limitations of the former EU border agency, Frontex, hindered its ability to effectively address and remedy the situation created by the refugee crisis: it relied on the voluntary contributions by Member States as regards resources, it did not have its own operational staff, it was unable to carry out its own return or border management operations without the prior request of a Member State and it did not have an explicit mandate to conduct search and rescue operations. The enhanced Agency will be strengthened and reinforced to address all these issues. The legal grounds for the proposal are article 77, paragraph 2(b) and (d), and article 79, paragraph 2 (c), of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Article 77 grants competence to the EU to adopt legislation on a "gradual introduction of an integrated management system for external borders," and article 79 authorizes the EU to enact legislation concerning the repatriation of third-country nationals residing illegally within the EU.
On 18 December 2015, the European Council roundly supported the proposal, which was then be subjected to the ordinary legislative procedure.[4] The Border and Coast Guard was officially launched on 6 October 2016 at the Bulgarian external border with Turkey.[5]
Organisation [ edit ]
According to the European Commission the European Border and Coast Guard "will bring together a European Border and Coast Guard Agency built from Frontex and the Member States’ authorities responsible for border management"[15] with day-to-day management of external border regions remaining the responsibility of member states. It is intended that the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency will act in a supporting role for members in need of assistance, as well as to coordinate overall border management of Europe's external borders. Securing and patrolling of the external borders of the European Union (EU, in practice the Schengen Area including the Schengen Associated Countries as well as those EU Member States which have not yet joined the Schengen Area but are bound to do so) is a shared responsibility of the Agency and the national authorities.
Agency [ edit ]
The European Border and Coast Guard Agency is not a new body. It does not replace Frontex and it retains the same legal personality. What the Commission draft Regulation aims to do is to strengthen the mandate of the EU border agency, to increase its competences and to better equip it to carry out its operational activities. The new tasks and responsibilities of the Agency need to be reflected by its new name.
It coordinates its work alongside the European Fisheries Control Agency and European Maritime Safety Agency with regard to coastguard functions.
The permanent staff of the Agency will be more than doubled between 2015 and 2020. The new proposal provides for a reserve of European border guards and technical equipment. The Agency will be able to purchase its own equipment (this is not a novelty). However - and this is new - the Member States where this equipment is registered (this refers mainly to big equipment items such as patrol vessels, air crafts, etc. which need a flag of state) will be obliged to put it at the Agency's disposal whenever needed. this will make it possible for the Agency to rapidly deploy the necessary technical equipment in border operations. A rapid reserve pool of border guards and a technical equipment pool will be put at the disposal of the agency, intending to remove the shortages of staff and equipment for the Agency's operations.
Monitoring and risk analysis [ edit ]
A monitoring and risk analysis centre will be established, with the authorisation to carry out risk analysis and to monitor the flows towards and within the EU. The risk analysis includes cross-border crime and terrorism, process personal data of persons suspected to be involved in acts of terrorism and cooperate with other Union agencies and international organisations on the prevention of terrorism. A mandatory vulnerability assessments of the capacities of the Member States to face current or upcoming challenges at their external borders will be established.
The Agency is able to launch joint operations, including the use of drones when necessary. The European Space Agency's earth observation system Copernicus provides the new Agency with almost real time satellite surveillance capabilities alongside the current Eurosur border surveillance system.
Teams [ edit ]
For joint operations and rapid border interventions, European Border and Coast Guard Teams can be established and deployed.
The right to intervene [ edit ]
When deficiencies in the functioning of the border management system of a Member State are identified as an outcome of the mandatory vulnerability assessment, the Agency will be empowered to require that Member States to take timely corrective action. In urgent situations that put the functioning of the Schengen area at risk or when deficiencies have not been remedied, the Agency will be able to step in to ensure that action is taken on the ground even where there is no request for assistance from the Member State concerned or where that Member State considers that there is no need for additional intervention.
The right to intervene. Member States will be able to request joint operations, rapid border interventions, and deployment of the EBCG Teams to support national authorities when a Member State experiences an influx of migrants that endangers the Schengen area. In such a case, especially when a Member State’s action is not sufficient to handle the crisis, the Commission will have the authority to adopt an implementing decision that will determine whether a situation at a particular section of the external borders requires urgent action at the EU level. Based on this decision, the EBCGA will be able to intervene and deploy EBCG Teams to ensure that action is taken on the ground, even when a Member State is unable or unwilling to take the necessary measures.
The right to intervene is a point of contention between a number of EU Members and the Commission, especially those Members whose borders form the external borders of the EU, such as Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Poland. They want to ensure that intervention is possible only with the consent of the Member States, whose external borders necessitate the presence of the EBCGA. Greece’s Alternate Minister for European Affairs, Nikos Xydakis, stated in an interview that while Greece is supportive of a common European action and of changing Frontex’s mandate, it wants the EBCGA to take complete charge of migration and refugee flows.
Working with and in third countries [ edit ]
The Agency has a new mandate to send liaison officers and launch joint operations with neighbouring third countries, including operating on their territory.
Repatriation of illegal immigrants [ edit ]
As part of the Border and Coast Guard a Return Office was established with the capacity to repatriate immigrants residing illegally in the union by deploying Return Intervention Teams composed of escorts, monitors, and specialists dealing with related technical aspects. For this repatriation, a uniform European travel document would ensure wider acceptance by third countries. In emergency situations such Intervention Teams will be sent to problem areas to bolster security, either at the request of a member state or at the agency's own initiative. It is this latter proposed capability, to be able to deploy specialists to member states borders without the approval of the national government in question that is proving the most controversial aspect of this European Commission plan.[1]
Risk analysis reports [ edit ]
Frontex regularly releases reports analyzing events related to border control, irregular border crossing and different forms of cross-border crime. The general task of assessing these risks has been laid out in Frontex founding regulation, according to which the agency shall "carry out risk analyses [...] in order to provide the Community and the Member States with adequate information to allow for appropriate measures to be taken or to tackle identified threats and risks with a view to improving the integrated management of external borders".[6] Frontex's key institution with respect to intelligence and risk assessment is its Risk Analysis Unit (RAU) and the Frontex Risk Analysis Network (FRAN), via which the Frontex staff is cooperating with security experts from the Member States.
The latest FRAN report as of 2013 stated that 24 805 illegal border-crossing were detected. In the Eastern Mediterranean area specifically at the land border between Greece and Turkey, illegal border-crossings were down by nearly 70% compared to the second quarter of 2012, but up in the Central Mediterranean route.[16]
Operations [ edit ]
Hermes [ edit ]
"Joint Operation Hermes" began on 20 February 2011, after Italy asked for Frontex surveillance of the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and North Africa, the southern border of the EU being in the Sea.[17] The Libyan no-fly zone came into effect subsequently, and combat operations started on 20 March 2011.
The Netherlands has a Coast Guard Dornier 228 aircraft with air force crew and Portugal, an air force C-295MPA, stationed at Malta and Pantelleria. The number of observed shiploads of people intending to illegally enter into the EU through this sector increased from 1,124 in the first quarter of 2013 to 5,311 in the second quarter of 2013.[18]
African and other would-be illegal immigrants continue to set sail for Italian shores aboard unseaworthy boats and ships. Several of these attempts have ended with capsized boats and hundreds of people drowning in the sea, though the Italian navy has saved thousands of lives in its Operation Mare Nostrum.[19][relevant? – discuss]
Triton [ edit ]
Operation Triton is a border security operation conducted by Frontex, the European Union's border security agency. The operation, under Italian control, began on 1 November 2014 and involves voluntary contributions from 15 other European nations (both EU member states and non-members). Current voluntary contributors to Operation Triton are Croatia, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Malta and the United Kingdom.[20] The operation was undertaken after Italy ended Operation Mare Nostrum, which had become too costly for a single country to fund; it was costing the Italian government €9 million per month for an operation that lasted 12 months. The Italian government had requested additional funds from the other EU member states but they did not offer the requested support.[21]
"Joint Operation Triton" is under Italian control and focuses on border security within 30 nautical miles of the Italian shore. It began on 1 November 2014 and involves 15 other European nations volunteering services, both EU member states and non-members. As of 2015 voluntary contributors are Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Malta and the United Kingdom.[20] The operation's assets consist of two surveillance aircraft, three ships and seven teams of staff who gather intelligence and conduct screening and process identification. In 2014, its budget was estimated at €2.9 million per month.[22]
After the April 2015 Libya migrant shipwrecks, in which about 800 refugees died, EU ministers proposed on 20 April 2015, to double the size of Operation Triton and to widen its mandate to conduct search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean Sea.[23] Fabrice Leggeri, the head of Frontex, dismissed turning Triton into a search and rescue operation, saying it would "support and fuel the business of traffickers". Instead he recommended to expand air surveillance of the Maltese waters "anticipate more disasters.[24]
Moria Hotspot [ edit ]
On 12 December 2015 it was reported that a newly founded asylum seeker reception center in Moria, Lesbos, Greece was coordinated, controlled and monitored by Frontex. In this center, in prison-like conditions, the asylum seekers were reported to undergo swift detention about their status for the purposes of registration. Independent journalists were reported to have had limited access to the facilities. While the reception center is not in the position to grant refugee status, it was reported that some asylum seekers could be held in the reception camp indefinitely.[25]
Poseidon [ edit ]
"Joint Operation Poseidon" began on 2006, after Greece asked for surveillance by Frontex of the country's sea and land borders between the EU-member Greece and Turkey. The Joint Operation is divided into two branches, the Poseidon Sea Operation which oversees the sea borders of the EU with Turkey in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas,[26] and the Poseidon Land Operation which oversees the southeastern land border of the EU with Turkey on the Evros river.[27] The operation turned permanent and has been expanded subsequently on the year 2011. In 2015 this operation was replaced by Poseidon Rapid Intervention.[28]
Controversies [ edit ]
Alleged Turkish airspace violations [ edit ]
In September 2009, a Turkish military radar issued a warning to a Latvian helicopter patrolling in the eastern Aegean—part of the EU's Frontex programme to combat illegal immigration—to leave the area. The Turkish General Staff reported that the Latvian Frontex aircraft had violated Turkish airspace west of Didim.[29] According to a Hellenic Air Force announcement, the incident occurred as the Frontex helicopter—identified as an Italian-made Agusta A109—was patrolling in Greek airspace near the small isle of Farmakonisi, which lies on a favourite route used by migrant smugglers ferrying migrants into Greece and the EU from the opposite Turkish coastline.[30] Frontex officials stated that they simply ignored the Turkish warnings as they were not in Turkish airspace and continued their duties. Frontex later took photographs of the Turkish Coast Guard escorting illegal immigrants towards Greek waters and the photos accompanied by written evidence were submitted to EU authorities.[31]
Another incident took place on October 2009 in the airspace above the eastern Aegean sea, off the island of Lesbos.[32][better source needed] On 20 November 2009, the Turkish General Staff issued a press note alleging that an Estonian Border Guard aircraft Let L-410 UVP taking off from Kos on a Frontex mission had violated Turkish airspace west of Söke.[29]
Criticism [ edit ]
Protests against Frontex in Warsaw in 2008
In an NGO Statement on International Protection[33] presented at the UNHCR Standing Committee in 2008 a broad coalition of non-governmental organisations have expressed their concern, that much of the rescue work by Frontex is in fact incidental to a deterrence campaign so broad and, at times, so undiscriminating, that directly and through third countries – intentionally or not – asylum-seekers are being blocked from claiming protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
According to European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and British Refugee Council in written evidence submitted to the UK House of Lords inquiry, Frontex fails to demonstrate adequate consideration of international and European asylum and human rights law including the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and EU law in respect of access to asylum and the prohibition of refoulement.[34]
In addition ECRE and British Refugee Council have expressed a worry with the lack of clarity regarding Frontex accountability for ensuring compliance with international and EC legal obligations by Member States involved in Frontex coordinated operations. This is compounded by the lack of transparency, and the absence of independent monitoring and democratic accountability of the Agency.
European Border and Coast Guard [ edit ]
Poseidon, a ship of the, a ship of the Swedish Coast Guard. National border and coast guards would be part of the European Border and Coast Guard alongside a designated union agency.
The European Border and Coast Guard is formed by the Frontex agency itself and by the border guards and coast guards of the Schengen Area member states. The national authorities will continue to exercise the day-to-day management of their sections of the external borders of the Schengen Area. They are:
Authorities of countries outside the Authorities of countries outside the European Union
See also [ edit ]
Existing agencies [ edit ]Newman says Canberra is stalling Qld economy
Posted
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has blamed the Federal Government for adding to the state's worsening unemployment situation.
Deloitte Access Economics has released its annual snapshot of the Queensland economy.
It predicts unemployment will rise because investment in new mining projects has waned.
In June, Queensland recorded a jobless rate of 6.4 per cent - its highest rate in almost a decade and noticeably higher than the national average of 5.7 per cent.
Mr Newman says the Rudd Government is stalling on approvals for new coal mines in the Galilee Basin and it is costing the economy dearly.
"Immediately we'd see over 10,000 jobs being created during construction and we'd see billions of dollars of investment coming to our state at a critical time," he said.
Deloitte says despite predicting a rocky ride for the next few years, Queensland's long-term economic outlook is good.
Topics: federal---state-issues, unemployment, coal, mining-rural, mining-industry, brisbane-4000, gladstone-4680, mackay-4740, rockhampton-4700Cornelius Castoriadis
On the Content of Socialism
From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Idea of the Proletariat's Autonomy
1957
Published: Originally as "Sur le contenu du socialisme, II," S. ou B., 22 (July 1957). Reprinted in CS, pp. 103-221. The text was preceded by the following note: "The first part of this text was published in Socialisme ou Barbarie, No. 17, pp. 1-22. The following pages represent a new draft of the entire text and a reading of the previously published part is not presupposed. This text opens a discussion on programmatic questions. The positions expressed here do not necessarily express the point of view of the entire Socialisme ou Barbarie group." [T/E: This text was originally translated by Maurice Brinton under the title Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society (London: Solidarity, 1972), with "Our Preface." It was reprinted by Philadelphia Solidarity in 1974 (with forewords by Philadelphia Solidarity and the League for Economic Democracy) and 1984 as a Wooden Shoe Pamphlet (with a statement about the group, Philadelphia Solidarity, entitled "About Ourselves," and a new introduction by Peter Dorman, "Workers Councils... 25 Years Later"). Brinton's sub-headings are retained.
Translation: David Ames Curtis
Transcription: Class Against Class
HTML-markup: Jonas Holmgren
Table of Contents:
The development of modern society and what has happened to the working-class movement over the last 100 years (and in particular since 1917) have compelled us to make a radical revision of the ideas on which that movement has been based.
Forty years have elapsed since the proletarian revolution seized power in Russia. From that revolution it is not socialism that ultimately emerged but a new and monstrous form of exploiting society and totalitarian oppression that differed from the worst forms of capitalism only in that the bureaucracy replaced the private owners of capital and "the plan" took the place of the "free market." Ten years ago, only a few people like us defended these ideas. Since then, the Hungarian workers have brought them to the world's attention.
Among the raw materials for such a revision are the vast experience of the Russian Revolution and of its degeneration, the Hungarian workers' councils, their actions, and their program. But these are far from being the only elements useful for making such a revision. A look at modern capitalism and at the type of conflict it breeds shows that throughout the world working people are faced with the same fundamental problems, often posed in surprisingly similar terms. These problems call everywhere for the same response. This answer is socialism, a social system that is the very opposite of the bureaucratic capitalism now installed in Russia, China, and elsewhere.
The experience of bureaucratic capitalism allows us clearly to perceive what socialism is not and cannot be. A close look both at past proletarian uprisings and at the everyday life and struggles of the proletariat enables us to say what socialism could and should be. Basing ourselves on a century of experience we can and must now define the positive content of socialism in a much fuller and more accurate way than was possible for previous revolutionaries. In today's vast ideological morass, people who call themselves socialists may be heard to say that they "are no longer quite sure what the word means." We hope to show that the very opposite is the case. Today, for the first time, one can begin to spell out in concrete and specific terms what socialism really could be like.
The task we are about to undertake not only leads us to challenge many widely held ideas about socialism, many of which go back to Lenin and some to Marx. It also leads us to question widely held ideas about capitalism, about the way it works and about the real nature of its crises, many of which have reached us (with or without distortion) from Marx himself. The two analyses are complementary and in fact the one necessitates the other.
The revision we propose did not of course start today. Various strands of the revolutionary movement - and a number of individual revolutionaries - have contributed to it over time. From the very first issue of Socialisme ou Barbarie we endeavored to resume this effort in a systematic fashion. There we claimed that the fundamental division in contemporary societies was the division into directors and executants. We attempted to show how the working class's own development would lead it to a socialist consciousness. We stated that socialism could only be the product of the autonomous action of the working class. We stressed that a socialist society implied the abolition of any separate stratum of directors and that it therefore implied the power of mass organs and workers' management of production.
But in a sense, we ourselves have failed to develop the content of our own ideas to the full. It would hardly be worth mentioning this fact were it not that it expressed |
industry’s capital. Many firms have taken offices in Mayfair, the exclusive, cosmopolitan quarter where wealth and politics mix.
The Ablyazov case mirrors the “tournament of shadows” fought in the 19th century by spies, soldiers and fortune-seekers from imperial Russia and Britain in an attempt to control Central Asia. Today, though, the political battles of the former Soviet Union are fought not in the parched valleys east of the Caspian but in western courts, parliaments and media.
Dictators’ representatives tirelessly curry favour at Westminster and on Capitol Hill. Oligarchs are fixtures in London’s High Court listings. Rare is the business journalist who has not spent lunch listening to the PRs of one recently minted billionaire smear another recently minted billionaire.
In the trade, a covert attempt to blacken a target’s name is known as ‘Black PR’
As they sized each other up in 2009, Ablyazov says he asked Wahid to prove his worth by providing some valuable intelligence against Nazarbayev, but Wahid only offered documents that Ablyazov had already acquired. (Wahid disputes this.) Ablyazov grew suspicious that Wahid was, in fact, playing a double game and working for Nazarbayev’s regime. As he listened to descriptions of Arcanum’s services, he started to think that the meetings were a trap designed to lure him into illegal activity in the UK, where he had claimed asylum, and decided against hiring the firm.
“We never gave them a proposal for fighting Nazarbayev but, yes, we were working for Kazakhstan at this time,” Wahid told me. The two sides had “a general discussion of our capabilities”, he said. But Wahid insisted that Arcanum never does anything illegal. Ablyazov’s suggestion to the contrary — part of a narrative in which Arcanum is key to Nazarbayev’s campaign of persecution — was a “fantasy”, Wahid said.
Those London meetings represented the early exchanges in perhaps the most remarkable battle the secrets industry has yet fought. A Financial Times investigation based on dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of court documents, leaked emails and confidential contracts exposes a saga in which Arcanum is just one piece on a chessboard that spans four continents. It reveals how the mercenaries of the information age are shaping the fate of nations.
Astana, the Kazakh capital
Born in 1963 to a family of modest means in a Kazakh village near the Russian border, Ablyazov ditched a promising career in nuclear physics to embrace the Wild West capitalism that took hold as communism collapsed. Across the former Soviet Union, immense riches were available to those with connections and guile.
“There were no laws,” he recalls. “I got into business by chance.” By importing photocopiers, fax machines and computers, he rapidly made enough to buy a house for his young family. He cultivated a ruthless streak and by 1998 he was one of the richest men in the land, worth some $300m. He was also a leading member of a consortium that won a privatisation auction with a $72m bid for what would become BTA Bank.
The man at the top of the tree, however, was the same man who had been in charge in the Soviet days: Nazarbayev. As the authoritarian with a rictus smile cemented his power, those close to him made fortunes. Petrodollars that poured in from Kazakhstan’s Caspian oilfields went astray. A US corruption investigation in 2003 turned up what prosecutors said were Swiss bank accounts controlled by Nazarbayev containing $85m of bribes.
“There’s not one member of this [Kazakh] elite that did not gain from the transition from the state-owned planned economy to the market economy,” says Yevgeny Zhovtis, one of Kazakhstan’s few prominent human rights activists. “Either illegally or semi-legally, they became millionaires and billionaires.”
By the turn of the century, Ablyazov had started to mix politics with business. He became minister of energy in 1998 but resigned the following year. Nazarbayev summoned Ablyazov to his residence. “When I came in, he immediately started ranting at me,” Ablyazov recalls. He says that, when he criticised the president for laying the foundations of a “clan-ocracy” and declined to rejoin the government, Nazarbayev responded: “Well, in that case, you’re going to have to give me a chunk.”
In Ablyazov’s telling, the president wanted half of BTA Bank’s shares transferred to his nominees, to ensure the businessman’s loyalty. No such deal was reached and relations deteriorated further when Ablyazov and some 20 others announced the formation of Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan in 2001. Although its stated aim was incremental reform, Nazarbayev saw the party as an intolerable threat.
Following what Zhovtis calls a “selective prosecution” for abuse of his government office, Ablyazov was jailed in 2002. He emerged from a prison camp in 2003 after promising Nazarbayev that he would refrain from politics, but he soon began covertly funding opposition groups. He had retained his interest in BTA Bank, held on his behalf by a trusted associate, and in 2005 he became chairman, overseeing rapid expansion across the region.
When the financial crisis struck, the Kazakh authorities declared that BTA was close to collapse — exaggerating its difficulties, Ablyazov says, in order to fulfil Nazarbayev’s long-held aim to seize the bank. In January 2009, as it became clear that the government was preparing to nationalise BTA, Ablyazov fled to London.
The Kazakh authorities say that, once they started to go through BTA’s books, they found it was missing enormous amounts. Legal proceedings to date have put the figure at $4.2bn. Much of the money was owed to western banks, including RBS, which had been bailed out by the UK taxpayer. Huge sums appeared to have flowed out to offshore companies whose owners were hidden.
The private investigator whom BTA Bank recruited to track down its missing billions was an ebullient former member of the British military’s elite Special Boat Service. Trefor Williams works for Diligence, a corporate intelligence firm whose smart London offices he has decorated with James Bond posters. Williams is muscular, with a lilting North Wales accent. He has spent so long hunting Ablyazov and his wealth that he refers to him almost fondly as Mukhtar.
Williams and his team watched as Ablyazov came and went from Carlton House, a mansion on Bishops Avenue, the Highgate street known as Billionaires’ Row (two doors along from one reportedly owned by Nazarbayev). They were looking on as Ablyazov and his associates — Britons among them — convened frequently at an office in the heart of the City. “All these people could have worked from home and our job would have been much harder,” he told me. “But they need a semi-legitimate gathering point. A lot of the time, it’s their downfall.”
In October 2010, Williams’s bloodhounds followed one of Ablyazov’s brothers-in-law to a self-storage facility in Finchley, north London. BTA’s lawyers secured a court order to open the container. Inside, among 25 boxes of documents and a hard drive, was a spreadsheet listing some of the thousands of offshore companies through which BTA’s billions had flowed, a virtual treasure map of secretive tax havens. It was the key to what Williams describes as the biggest money-laundering operation he had encountered.
… Chris Hardman Lawyer at London firm Hogan Lovells Trefor Williams Investigator at Diligence Patrick Robertson Head of World PR …
Williams’ sleuthing provided ammunition for Chris Hardman, an aggressive lawyer with the London firm Hogan Lovells. Hardman used evidence from the storage unit and other finds to show flows of money from his client, BTA Bank, to the offshore vehicles of its former chairman. In the Gothic splendour of London’s Royal Courts of Justice, Hardman racked up judgments against Ablyazov that would exceed $4bn. One judge said of the Kazakh oligarch’s attempts to conceal his ownership of assets: “It is difficult to imagine a party to commercial litigation who has acted with more cynicism, opportunism and deviousness towards court orders than Mr Ablyazov.”
Ablyazov maintains that he is the victim of a strategy, common in former Soviet states, of deploying commercial litigation to crush political opponents — using the world’s most respected courts to confer legitimacy. He says his extensive use of financial subterfuge is not a means to abet the amassing of illicit wealth but to prevent it.
In a 2010 witness statement, he said: “In Kazakhstan the assets of wealthy individuals such as myself are subject to the threat of unlawful seizure by the authorities… This leads to an almost universal practice among high net worth Kazakhstanis of holding our assets through nominees, both corporate and individual.”
In February 2012, a British judge ruled that Ablyazov’s concealment of assets that should have been declared under a freezing order left him in contempt of court. He sentenced the oligarch to 22 months in prison. But Ablyazov would never enter a British jail. He had vanished.
Surveillance pictures gathered by investigators at private intelligence firm Diligence in an attempt to trace Ablyazov
For a country of 18 million people with an economy about half the size of Ireland’s, Kazakhstan has made a disproportionately large contribution to the private intelligence industry. Through the noughties, as its oligarchs poured their fortunes into western assets and listed their companies on western stock exchanges, their appetites and rivalries made lucrative work for these secretive firms. “At one point, literally everyone I know in London was working on Kazakhstan,” says a private investigator who worked on several Kazakh dossiers. Another says all the money pouring in from the former Soviet Union helped to make the private intelligence game in London “very dirty”.
The British capital, for centuries an entrepôt for spies, moneymen and emissaries, has become the industry’s heart but the archetypal corporate intelligence firm was founded in New York. In 1972, Jules Kroll took skills he had honed exposing those who demanded kickbacks from the family printing business to found what became Kroll Inc. After 32 years of hostile takeovers, hostage negotiations and everything in between, Kroll sold the business for $1.9bn.
By then, rivals had sprung up. Some had links to private military contractors that profited from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others were founded by CIA or MI6 alumni. The big accountancy firms, including EY, Deloitte and PwC, set up corporate investigations arms. Scores of small outfits emerged, specialising in particular regions or techniques. Some companies fused sleuthing with propaganda, another boom industry. In 2006, FTI Consulting, a US investigations group, paid $260m to acquire the City PR firm Financial Dynamics.
The corporate intelligence industry’s bread and butter is “due diligence”, background research commissioned by one company into another that it wants to buy or do business with. Sometimes the work is shoddy; one mergers and acquisitions lawyer recalls being presented with “a page of googling”. But some investigators have such intimate knowledge of their specialist areas and impeccable sources that they complain of giving their clients more information than they want to hear.
A by-product of all this is mountains of dirty laundry of the most powerful — and nefarious — business figures and their political allies. The firms have become the keepers of globalisation’s secrets. And they have wound up in the middle of some of the most colourful intrigues of recent years. Neil Heywood, a British businessman poisoned by the wife of a powerful Chinese politician in 2011, had advised Hakluyt & Co, private investigators based in Mayfair. In January this year, a former MI6 officer called Christopher Steele went into hiding after being exposed as the author of a dossier of allegations about Donald Trump’s Russian connections, commissioned by Fusion GPS, a US investigations agency.
Some in corporate intelligence see a higher purpose for their endeavours, helping to uncover the machinations of the rich and powerful. But others are queasy. Aaron Sayne, a former US corruption lawyer who now conducts corporate investigations, says many in his field “hoover up sensitive information and use it for one purpose on day one and some completely contradictory purpose on day two”.
He adds: “There are a lot of people who are walking a very fine line between investigations and public relations. They are doing investigations and it’s very quickly being spun or turned into muckraking. You see people starting to play faster and looser with the truth.”
The Ablyazov case has been a feeding trough for corporate intelligence. Some firms have made millions, among them Arcanum. True to its name, Arcanum is less than forthcoming about its work. What public announcements it makes largely relate either to polo, Ron Wahid’s abiding passion, or to the latest appointment of a retired military or intelligence heavyweight to its board.
Ron Wahid Founder of intelligence company Arcanum Meir Dagan Former head of Mossad Bernard Squarcini Former French intelligence chief …
Half a dozen private investigators and lawyers with knowledge of Wahid’s work describe a man who cultivates an air of mystery but whose own intelligence credentials are unclear. One US intelligence operative who has encountered Wahid says he was “stone cold CIA” but a former spy who has heard him discuss intelligence matters is sceptical: “He likes to say he’s an ops guy, but the way he talks, you can tell it would never have been like that.”
Another person with deep connections in the CIA and other US agencies says Wahid is “known to people in the intelligence community” but suggests that his access is partly the result of his largesse. Wahid’s recent political donations include $376,580 to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign and $100,000 towards Donald Trump’s inauguration. In a 2015 corporate filing, Wahid describes himself as an “entrepreneur”.
When we meet at his Knightsbridge office in August, Wahid is dressed in a grey suit. By the door stands a silver chessboard on a mounting shaped like a fist. Leaning back in his chair, Wahid tells me there are governments he would not work for, naming Russia and China. I ask how he came to deem Kazakhstan an acceptable client. He gives a practised analysis. “Despite allegations of a lack of democratic process, President Nazarbayev has done an incredible job in maintaining security and stability in a country that previously had nuclear weapons. He has been extremely useful to the US in our operations in Afghanistan and in nuclear peace. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it’s the only country that has stability.”
Wahid says his world view is inspired by Ronald Reagan’s crusade against communism. Arcanum says it has worked with the FBI, Interpol, New Scotland Yard and the US justice department. Wahid declined to specify any of these cases. I asked each of the agencies if they would confirm that they had worked with the firm but none of them did.
Ablyazov says Arcanum is “certainly in the upper echelons of the spy agencies that have done work against me”. Emails seen by the FT, which Wahid does not dispute, show Arcanum charged Kazakhstan $3.7m for work up to the end of 2012 alone. Wahid confirms what the emails suggest: that Arcanum reports to some of Nazarbayev’s most senior officials while being formally commissioned, at various times, by Kazakhstan’s foreign lawyers, including City firm Reed Smith as well as US and Swiss firms. I ask what Arcanum has done for Kazakhstan in its pursuit of Ablyazov since those meetings in 2009. “Asset tracing,” Wahid says, as well as “developing the legal strategy and dealing with inter-agency co-operation.”
When Ablyazov went to ground to avoid prison in the UK, those pursuing him and his money started to pay closer attention to his associates. Chief among them was another exiled Kazakh businessman, Ilyas Khrapunov, who is married to Ablyazov’s daughter. Kazakhstan accuses him of being a key lieutenant in a worldwide operation to stash clandestine wealth, including his father-in-law’s, in assets ranging from a luxury Swiss hotel to US real estate linked to Donald Trump.
Lawyer Peter Sahlas with Ablyazov’s daughter Madina at a press conference in Paris in 2015 © Getty
Switzerland has declined to extradite Khrapunov and his relatives — so, Khrapunov says, Kazakhstan has come to Switzerland looking for them. In correspondence with the Swiss authorities, the Khrapunovs’ lawyers say that the family and its representatives have been subjected to a surveillance campaign that amounted to illegal espionage, including bugging and a barrage of booby-trapped emails. They name Arcanum among the agencies they believe have played a role in this campaign against them. In 2014, the Swiss authorities launched a criminal investigation into the matter.
I asked Arcanum about the Swiss investigation and was told it had never broken Swiss law and enjoyed “a very good working relationship with Swiss authorities”. The company said: “Swiss prosecutors did not lodge any complaints against Arcanum as their examination found the accusations baseless.” The Swiss attorney-general’s office told me that, after the Khrapunovs won a court ruling in 2016 overturning a decision to suspend the probe, the investigation resumed and is “ongoing”. It declined to give further details.
Wahid accepts that his investigators have interrogated former employees of the Khrapunovs — though he denies claims made in a sworn statement by Ilyas’ former secretary that an Arcanum investigator gave her the impression he could get her immunity from criminal prosecution. And while Wahid declines to discuss the matter, five people familiar with it say that Arcanum played a role in persuading at least one of the fixers in Ablyazov’s alleged money-laundering network to switch sides.
Ablyazov’s supporters say that Arcanum is a cog in a “repression machine” that the Nazarbayev regime has assembled in order to extend its power beyond Kazakhstan’s borders. “Absurd,” counters Wahid. “To assert that our work supports ‘repression’ would mean you claim that the UK, French, Swiss and US governments and laws are complicit with Kazakhstan’s ‘repression machine.’” He adds: “Our work is purely strategic and not operational. We don’t go digging in people’s trash. Other firms might do that.”
At one time Ablyazov was believed to be using a residence in a leafy suburb outside Rome
In private, many of the investigators in the Ablyazov affair took Wahid’s line that their work has been beyond reproach but that others may have gone too far. Likewise, western consultants and Kazakh officials blame each other for adopting outlandish tactics. As the hunt for Ablyazov spread across Europe, it left a trail of questionable methods, triggering scandals or criminal investigations in at least six western countries. The alleged offences range from improper interference in the judicial process to illegal espionage and kidnapping.
In December 2012, a few months after Ablyazov disappeared, Aleksandr Pavlov, his bodyguard, was arrested as he arrived in Spain. The Kazakh authorities sought his extradition to face allegations of assisting Ablyazov’s grand theft and plotting a terrorist attack that was never carried out. A Spanish court refused Pavlov’s asylum application but the dissenting judges wrote that “we find ourselves faced with a political persecution, under the guise of a claim for common crimes”; they warned that Pavlov might be tortured in Kazakhstan. Pavlov appealed and his case dragged on; there were allegations that Kazakh officials interfered with the Spanish judicial process.
Pavlov’s detention came after Kazakhstan had put out an Interpol alert for him following Ablyazov’s disappearance from Britain. These Red Notices are designed to assist international co-operation in the apprehension of fugitives. But their deployment, by the Russian government and others, against political enemies is starting to undermine the Interpol system. In March this year, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe issued a resolution condemning the abuse of the Interpol system for political ends.
Among a list of examples, it declared that “dozens of family members and supporters” of Ablyazov were “being persecuted, including through Red Notices”. Interpol would not comment on the Ablyazov case but said that although the “overwhelming majority of Interpol Red Notice requests by member countries raise no issues at all”, it had “comprehensively overhauled and enhanced all its supervisory mechanisms” in the past two years.
Pavlov eventually won asylum in Spain. But the search for his boss went on.
In March 2013, Amit Forlit, an Israeli private investigator, commissioned an Italian detective agency called Sira Investigazioni. The fee would be €5,000, according to a letter seen by the FT, and the task to locate a residence believed to be used by Ablyazov in the leafy Roman suburb of Casal Palocco. The detectives appear to have delivered the goods. Six weeks later, a Kazakh police bureau transmitted a message to its counterpart in Rome requesting that Italian officers raid an address there. On May 29, they did so.
Ablyazov was not there but his wife, Alma Shalabayeva, was, bearing a diplomatic passport issued by the Central African Republic. She was taken into custody. Two days later, agents arrived at the house where the couple’s six-year-old daughter had been staying since her mother’s detention. A pair of Kazakh diplomats escorted mother and child on to a private plane. Within hours, they were in Kazakhstan.
Tell that c*** you work for that we’re bringing him and all this criminal shit down around his ears
In Italy, outrage ensued. The deportation was declared unlawful; the office of the UN’s high commissioner for human rights called it an “extraordinary rendition”. In mid-July, Enrico Letta, then prime minister, said it had brought “shame and embarrassment” on the nation. Kazakh authorities released the pair, who returned to Italy and were granted asylum. A criminal case for kidnapping against Italian officials, police officers and, in absentia, the Kazakh diplomats involved began in September this year. (Forlit did not respond to requests for comment; Sira declined to comment. Neither has been charged.)
While this unfolded in Rome, Trefor Williams — who, like Wahid, says he had nothing to do with the kidnapping — was still trying to locate Ablyazov for BTA Bank. After 18 months of false leads, a Ukrainian lawyer who attended a London court hearing caught the attention of Williams’ team and led them to France. Deploying a sleuth in a bikini and another who spent hours shuffling over a zebra crossing to allow a close inspection of passing vehicles, the Diligence bloodhounds homed in on a mansion near Cannes. It proved to be Ablyazov’s opulent hideout. They alerted the police, who in July 2013 sent in an armed unit, apprehending Ablyazov and taking him to a nearby jail.
Kazakhstan has no extradition treaty with France but Russia and Ukraine do. Each had charged Ablyazov with financial crimes related to BTA Bank; they asked France to hand him over. The western front of the war between Nazarbayev and Ablyazov was approaching its climactic battle. Now, more than ever, the side that could control how Ablyazov was perceived would have the decisive advantage.
The British capital is seen by many as the heart of the private intelligence industry. According to one investigator: 'At one point, literally everyone I know in London was working on Kazakhstan'
At five minutes past midnight on August 27 2015, Peter Sahlas’ phone chimed. Sahlas, a Canadian human rights lawyer, is boyish in looks but tenacious in his work. He has worked on Ablyazov’s case since the oligarch first fled to London. One lawyer on the other side accuses him of ignoring the evidence of malfeasance with “Nelsonian blindness”. But Sahlas is adamant that he would not have spent long years fighting — sometimes unpaid — if he did not truly believe in his client. “Some things are more important than money,” he says, “like when a client’s case is a matter of life or death.”
The message was from a number Sahlas did not recognise. “Dear Peter Sahlas,” it began, “please tell that bald-headed c*** that you work for that we are bringing him and all this criminal shit down around his ears.” It went on for a few more lines, then concluded: “And just to be clear, you Quebec piece of shit, you are going to lose your shirt along the way. Have a fun time.” It was signed “PR”.
Baffled, Sahlas responded. “Hello, sure, I will pass on your message,” he wrote. “But who is it from?” The reply came: “Patrick Robertson. Have that name etched on your collective memory.”
During a 25-year career as what he calls a “strategic communications adviser”, Patrick Robertson has sought to burnish the image of figures such as the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the disgraced British politician Jonathan Aitken. He is well-connected among the Conservative establishment: Margaret Thatcher was honorary president of the Bruges Group, the Eurosceptic organisation he co-founded in 1989.
The website of World PR, Robertson’s Panama-registered firm, carries a quotation from an otherwise disparaging article in the London Evening Standard: “Patrick Robertson’s energy and entrepreneurial skill is phenomenal. He is a very modern figure. He understands networking and the power of the media. He has charm and a remarkable ability to make people trust him.” The website also calls Robertson “a key player in Kazakhstan and Central Asia”.
Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev has hired a long line of propagandists to tend its image. Corruption scandals have hampered the leader’s efforts to be seen as a statesman, as have election victories in which he scored more than 90 per cent, laws that effectively facilitate money-laundering and evidence of widespread torture by security services.
The Kazakh elite appears to have a taste for the master communicators of British politics. When police responded to an oil workers’ strike in 2011 — one supported by Ablyazov — by shooting dead at least 12 protesters, the president took advice from Tony Blair on a speech to manage the fallout. (Blair’s Institute for Global Change told me: “Our consistent advice was that the government should establish a full and thorough independent investigation on the events.”) When Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, a Kazakh mining house that listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2007, became engulfed in allegations of corruption, a senior Kazakh official took soundings from former Labour minister Peter Mandelson.
Ablyazov believes he’s the most clever person and that he will get away with it
In the battle of perception with Ablyazov, Kazakhstan has turned to top-of-the-range London PR outfits. Portland Communications, founded by Tim Allan, a former deputy press secretary to Blair, picked up the BTA Bank account. Shortly after Ablyazov was granted asylum in the UK in 2011, someone using a Portland IP address altered his Wikipedia page, until a moderator noticed and cried foul.
Portland told me “the changes were carried out in order to correct inaccuracies… designed to distort the truth about Ablyazov’s fraudulent activities”. It said “no attempt was made by Portland to deceive or to disguise the origin of these changes” but that, after its work was discovered, it trained its staff in “the most up-to-date standards”, including a visit from Wikipedia’s founder.
By the time of Ablyazov’s capture in France, the kidnapping in Italy and other scandals had tainted the perception of Kazakhstan’s motives. In early 2014, as Ablyazov prepared to appeal against a French court ruling that he could be extradited, confidential memos for senior Kazakh officials outlined a strategy proposed by FTI Consulting. “MA’s objective will be to win public opinion,” FTI said, recommending a counter-attack.
As well as cultivating French MPs, FTI discussed using “search engine optimisation” so Google results for Ablyazov would be more likely to say “fraudster” than “dissident”. And it proposed paying a Swiss non-governmental organisation for an ostensibly independent report condemning Ablyazov. The NGO, the Organised Crime Observatory, told me it turned down the offer. FTI declined to comment.
In the trade, a covert attempt to blacken a target’s name is known as “black PR”. One practitioner defines the tactic as “putting [out] the negatives of your opponents, without any fingerprints”. In extreme form, it has shaken whole nations, such as South Africa, where the discovery of a campaign that stirred racial tension recently brought down the celebrated British PR firm Bell Pottinger.
On the face of it, Patrick Robertson’s work for the Kazakh PR campaign against Ablyazov was straightforward. Correspondence seen by the FT shows that in mid-2014 BTA Bank agreed a £3.25m contract for World PR to make and distribute a documentary painting Ablyazov as his enemies in Kazakhstan wanted.
However, Peter Sahlas came to suspect that there was more to Robertson’s role. After Robertson contacted him, Sahlas trawled a trove of official emails that had been published online — the so-called Kazaword leak that the country’s authorities blame on Ablyazov’s associates. He found correspondence from early 2014 in which Robertson arranged to meet a top Kazakh official in Washington. There was nothing unusual about that, except for a strange email dating from the same time. It contained an unsigned memo proposing to use research for a documentary as a cover for espionage against the “Little Man”.
This would involve “covert operations” subjecting Ablyazov and his entourage to “cyber assaults” and “sabotage”. There would be “media manipulation globally”. The proposal went on: “We will be contacting everyone whether they be friend, associate, family member in Little Man’s life and he will find that we are in every aspect of his existence, further undermining his confidence.”
Sahlas noticed that the text of the email was written in the same distinctive font that World PR uses (although that could easily have been copied). The sender’s Gmail account appears as “Peter Ridge”, a name no one involved in the affair seems to know. The email had been initially sent to a private account apparently belonging to a top Kazakh diplomat. The diplomat sent it on to the leading Kazakh official that Robertson had arranged to meet in Washington days later with the message that it was “in relation to your meeting in DC”.
Either Robertson was behind this proposed strategy or someone has tried to make it appear that he was. Sahlas says that he and others close to Ablyazov have been subjected to some of the tactics described in the “covert operations” email — including by the makers of an unflattering documentary on Ablyazov.
I asked Robertson whether he wrote the email under a pseudonym. He told me: “We never comment on any aspect of our work for our clients, so I will not do so on this occasion. However, since the fact of our client relationship with BTA is online (as a result of an unfortunate leak), let me be clear: the contents of the document you have asked me to comment on bears no resemblance to the contract that we signed with BTA Bank.”
Robertson’s SMS exchanges with Sahlas went on for three months. They ranged from foul-mouthed threats to invitations “to start negotiations on bringing you covertly on to our side”. In his final message, in October 2015, Robertson left open the offer “to arrange your exit from that cesspit you’ve attached yourself to”. Sahlas did not take up the invitation. A few months later, he and his client would score a spectacular victory.
The Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan
Astana, the capital that Kazakhstan’s rulers raised out of the steppe, has the feeling of a settlement that grew by command rather than the gradual accumulation of humanity. The streets are clean and orderly; the grass verges enjoy constant tending. Architect Norman Foster’s vast, sloping yurt gleams at one end of the main boulevard. All around are five-star hotels and western fast-food chains.
Marat Beketayev, the justice minister, belongs to the young, cosmopolitan generation of Kazakh leaders whose stated goal is to turn a land that has endured centuries of subjugation into a modern, confident state. Before our interview, he shows me a corridor bearing portraits of his predecessors, pointing out two from the 1930s whose tenures ended when Stalin jailed them.
Beketayev only turned 40 in August. He has risen fast. In a mellifluous voice, he explains that he grew up in a village where most jobs were in the three Soviet prisons nearby, one of which was run by his father. Perhaps, he accepts, that explains his interest in the law.
Beketayev has been at the heart of the Nazarbayev’s government’s efforts to use western legal systems to bring down Ablyazov. “Really what Kazakhstan wants is to make sure that criminals and corrupt people who want to steal money in Kazakhstan and go abroad don’t get an opportunity to launder the money with the help of lawyers,” he says.
Kazakhstan’s lawyers and lobbyists urged agencies such as the UK’s Serious Fraud Office to open criminal investigations into Ablyazov, to no avail. “We understand the limits of public expenditure, we understand all the constraints, but we want them to do more, because only working together can we achieve proper relations.” Calmly but firmly, he adds: “We really want London to do more in order to make sure that all the money coming to London is clean.”
With the authorities in London and elsewhere in the west seemingly unwilling to go after the illicit money flows from which their economies were benefiting, Beketayev says that Kazakhstan had no choice but to do the job itself. I ask about Ron Wahid. “What we think is valuable in our relationship with Arcanum is their knowledge and expertise because they hire people from former law enforcement and from intelligence. These are the people who have worked with such criminals for their whole lives.”
And why the need for all the propagandists? “Because, I think, we were losing this PR war.” I ask about the proposed “media manipulation” strategy and Patrick Robertson’s role. “He may think that we were interested in such things,” the minister says. “I only met him several times. I don’t remember him proposing such an approach.” He went on: “It is funny for me to hear that we could be regarded as people who are able to use such mechanisms and such methods.” I ask why that’s funny. “It’s not the way we’re used to working.”
Marat Beketayev, Kazakh justice minister
Beketayev was the official who met Robertson in Washington and to whom the mysterious “covert operations” email was sent. After our interview, I asked Beketayev’s office some questions about it. The reply said: “We do not comment on information that was obtained by illegal and unlawful means. Anyone reading that information should bear in mind that it may have been manipulated.”
Other correspondence seen by the FT, as well as interviews with investigators involved, indicate that, in parallel with BTA Bank’s pursuit of its missing billions, Beketayev has directed an intercontinental strategy against Ablyazov. He has liaised with Reed Smith, Kazakhstan’s long-standing London lawyers, PR and intelligence agencies, including Arcanum, and western politicians.
Asked about the more outrageous tactics mooted by some of the consultants on Kazakhstan’s dollar, Beketayev suggests that western agencies saw working for a post-Soviet republic as an opportunity to indulge in the dark arts. “Frankly, there were many people approaching us with such proposals.” The techniques on offer were “disturbing, arranging some kind of scandals, hacking emails, things like that. This is simply stupid. This works maybe for a short period of time but, in the long run, if you engage in such things, you will never be taken seriously by other countries.”
Kazakh dissidents and international human rights activists who support Ablyazov’s cause argue that, even if he did improperly divert money, he is guilty only of playing by the kleptocratic rules that govern the Kazakh elite. I put it to Beketayev that while Ablyazov has been relentlessly pursued, pro-regime oligarchs with dubious pasts have prospered. “It is true that there was a period of time when it was possible to get away with crimes,” he says. “And step by step, this time is going away. We’re a young country. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there were no legal mechanisms whatsoever. But still it was possible for us to keep general order and because of general order, because of the strong power of the president, we had a stable time to develop.”
I relay Ablyazov’s argument that he was forced to use offshore secrecy to protect his fortune. “It’s a nice story from him because he wants to keep his stolen money and any other story wouldn’t stand. He has nothing else to say and he’s not the first person to use the political opposition card in order to protect himself from criminal prosecution. But when you see examples of opposition leaders, how many of them live in luxury villas in the south of France? How many of them give money to their children in order to invest in a development project in New York, a development project in Geneva?”
Dusk is falling over the glitz of Astana. I ask what Beketayev makes of Ablyazov himself. “I personally believe that this guy is mad,” he says. “He’s not afraid of being caught because he believes that he’s the most clever person and he will get away with it.”
Ablyazov (second left) and lawyers, including Sahlas (right), celebrate his release from prison in Paris last year
Ablyazov’s family and lawyers were on tenterhooks as December 9 2016 dawned. Ablyazov had spent three years in French prisons. Later that day, the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest court for such matters, would announce its decision on whether he should be extradited to Russia.
The odds were not good. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, had approved the Russian extradition request, which had |
Nuity Profile Blog Joined July 2009 United States 5007 Posts #16 nice image ^.^ iu, seungah, yura, taeyeon, hyosung, lizzy, suji, sojin, jia, ji eun, eunji, soya, younha, jiyeon, fiestar, sinb, jung myung hoon godtier. BW FOREVERR
oogieogie Profile Joined June 2011 United States 3466 Posts #17 On April 01 2012 07:38 sM.Zik wrote:
Well I dont mind a bunch of ZvTs, but TvT and ZvZ is a nono T_T.
same here..i hate ZvZ n TvT, and would love some TvP or PvZ.
cmon protoss get it together. same here..i hate ZvZ n TvT, and would love some TvP or PvZ.cmon protoss get it together.
Apex Profile Blog Joined January 2009 United States 4874 Posts #18
/B]
Show nested quote +
On April 01 2012 07:38 sM.Zik wrote:
Well I dont mind a bunch of ZvTs, but TvT and ZvZ is a nono T_T.
same here..i hate ZvZ n TvT, and would love some TvP or PvZ.
cmon protoss get it together. [B]On April 01 2012 08:37 oogieogie wrote:[/B]same here..i hate ZvZ n TvT, and would love some TvP or PvZ.cmon protoss get it together.
Return of Katrina gogo. Return of Katrina gogo.
sixfour Profile Blog Joined December 2009 England 10987 Posts #19 rooting for:
soulkey
tossgirl/shy
light
zero
either zerg
horangeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee/free p: stats, horang2, free, jangbi z: soulkey, zero, shine, hydra t: leta, hiya, sea
Abort Retry Fail Profile Joined December 2011 2636 Posts #20 On April 01 2012 05:38 9heart wrote:
Despite the relatively bleak outlook this season, the community has really stepped up for BW in terms of LR awesomeness. I mean there is THE LR BONJWA as resident LR awesome OP, then there were others that were just soooo soooooo good.
Even the underconstruction banners are beyond epic.
Also, OP to this LR, you might want to change your race icon since I sense your affection for zerg in your under construction banner. Also, I think scvs hover, so they should have legs. Despite the relatively bleak outlook this season, the community has really stepped up for BW in terms of LR awesomeness. I mean there is THE LR BONJWA as resident LR awesome OP, then there were others that were just soooo soooooo good.Even the underconstruction banners are beyond epic.Also, OP to this LR, you might want to change your race icon since I sense your affection for zerg in your under construction banner. Also, I think scvs hover, so they should have legs. BSOD
1 2 3 4 5 61 62 63 NextPresident Trump's actions during his first week in office have appeared to be aimed at the voters who already supported him, not at reaching out to the rest, and that's taken a rapid toll on his support, which was already historically low.
Gallup, which has measured job approval for presidents for decades, shows Trump's approval so far at 45%, with 48% disapproving. That's an average of several days' polling.
The daily trend lines are not kind to the new administration. As of Saturday, 51% of Americans disapproved of Trump's performance.
That's a record for the speed of getting to majority disapproval.
By comparison, President George W. Bush hit majority disapproval six months into his second term, in June 2005, and remained in negative territory for the rest of his tenure.
President Obama did not hit 51% disapproval until August of 2011, during the crisis over the federal debt ceiling that summer. His approval rebounded later that year, but he had a second period of majority disapproval during late 2013 and much of 2014. He ended his term with widespread approval and 37% of Americans disapproving.As the city looks to review its dog park facilities some residents are calling for people-only parks where pets aren't allowed. (KOMO)
SEATTLE – As the city looks to review its dog park facilities some residents are calling for people-only parks where pets aren't allowed.
The new proposal is giving pause to Seattle's pet friendly reputation. It’s being pushed by Ellen Taft of the group “Citizens for the Protection of Volunteer Park.” Taft also wants the city to reduce the number of licensed dogs from three to one per household, as well as banning any unlicensed pets from using existing off-leash areas.
Seattle currently has 39,527 licensed dogs in the city limits, but animal control workers estimate the real number at closer to 154,000 dogs.
Taft said there’s plenty of existing facilities for dogs if the city excludes those whose owners don’t bother to pay the licensing fee. Some of that money goes to maintain facilities such as off leash parks.
However, another group called Citizens for Off Leash Areas (COLA) believes Seattle falls well short of providing enough space for dogs to run.
“We want to see more dog parks,” said Cole Eckerman with COLA. “We see that communities of color and lower income communities are not being served by the dog park system in the same way. They don't have the same access, or the same equitable access to legal off leash land."
The city maintains 14 off-leash areas. Many pet owners make do with parks closer to their neighborhoods, but in the process end up breaking the law.
Annika Wicklund’s dog, Riley, stayed tied up while she played with her daughters at Madison Park. She said a lot of pet owners don't follow the rules.
“A lot of people end up using the beach park to let their dogs off leash but it's not really an off leash park,” Wicklund said.
City parks officials are taking public feedback on their draft plan for off leash areas. A hearing is set for 6:30 Thursday at Miller Playfield & Community Center, which is located at 330 19th Ave E Seattle.Officials said a fire that broke out Monday evening at the Port of Los Angeles near Wilmington, although contained, would likely smolder through the night.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fire of this magnitude,” said Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Jaime Moore, who added that firefighters would be working through the night.
More than 150 firefighters on water-spraying boats and divers in the water with hoses attacked the huge fire that burn under a warehouse in the Port of Los Angeles, containing it about 8:30 p.m.
The fire was on Berths 177 and 179 in a 40-acre area from where big cargo ships load and unload.
The fire threatened a concrete warehouse belonging to Pasha that sits on top of the wharf at Berths 177-178.
The fire was not directly burning in the warehouse, which houses steel sheets, coils, rebar and other steel materials, but rather was licking the pier underneath the warehouse, Los Angeles city fire spokeswoman Katherine Main said.
It appears that parts of the wharf gave way as fire raged below, said Arley Baker, the port’s communications director.
About one-third of the 150-foot wharf was involved in the fire.
“This is an extremely challenging fire for the Port of L.A.,” Moore said.
The Main Channel was shut down as a precaution but was expected to reopen Wednesday morning.
The APL and NYK terminals were evacuated due to smoke, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
“We’ve closed down some of the other container terminals as a precaution,” said port spokesman Phillip Sanfield.
He added that Pasha said it would plan on opening for “partial operation tomorrow.”
Although it was too early to tell how overall port operations will be affected, he said, in past incidents, the port has made up the time.
“This fire has never been a danger to human life,” fire Capt. Moore said, adding that the danger is to the berth and the product. He did say no containers were damaged.
The World War II era wharf had wood pylons coated in creosote, which caused heavy black smoke to billow across the port. All firefighters were wearing breathing apparatus to guard against fumes from materials used to coat the pylons.
The fire was first reported as burning in a wharf under the large building at Berth 179 near Fries Avenue at a steel dock about 6:30 p.m.
Four employees in the building were evacuated and workers on tugboats were moving large ships away from the blaze. Two large cargo ships and some smaller boats were moved to safety.
“It’s proven the only effective means to fight this fire is with fireboats,” Main said on a television broadcast showing the blaze live. “Divers are actively in the water right now. They are assessing the scene and fighting the fire from our fireboats.”
Five fireboats from the city of Los Angeles were assisted by additional fireboats from neighboring Long Beach.
The largest fireboat involved can shoot 38,000 gallons of water a minute, Main said.
Although thick black smoke was spewing into the air, no residential evacuations were necessary because the blaze was in an isolated area away from Wilmington residential neighborhoods.
No injuries were reported.
A hazardous materials team was on the scene, “but [there is] no significant impact at this moment” Moore said late Monday.
“Arson investigators have located the area of origin,” but there was no reason to suspect it was intentionally set, Moore said. The cause was still unknown as of late Monday night.
—The Associated Press and Larry Altman contributed to this report.Arsenal have never finished lower than fourth in the Premier League under Arsene Wenger
Arsenal will most likely miss out on a place in next season's Champions League - with their fate set to be decided when they visit Stoke on 13 May, according to a sports analysis group.
The Gunners - seven points off fourth place with eight games left - have not finished outside the top four during Arsene Wenger's 21-year reign.
But data company Gracenote Sports suggests that run will end on the penultimate weekend of the season - if the top four clubs continue to take points at the rate they have so far.
The calculations have been made more difficult by the fact that a number of Premier League fixtures still have to be rearranged - including two for Arsenal, and one each for fellow Champions League contenders Manchester City and Manchester United.
But Simon Gleave, head of analysis at Gracenote Sports, told BBC Sport: "If all those in the top four had played 36 matches by 13 May, Arsenal would go into their match at Stoke City six points behind Manchester City and Liverpool.
"Points for either of them - or no win for Arsenal at Stoke - would mean that there was no longer a chance of a top-four place."
Gleave suggested that the cut-off could come sooner for Arsenal, currently sixth, based on recent form.
That is because they have taken fewer points per match since the turn of the year than they did in the first part of the season.
Arsenal have lost four consecutive away Premier League games for the first time under Wenger
"If the four clubs were to continue taking points at the rate they have been since New Year's Day, it will no longer be mathematically possible for Arsenal to achieve a top-four place before that match against Stoke City," Gleave added.
"However, given their backlog of fixtures, the likelihood is that Arsenal will have an extra midweek match still to play after that Stoke fixture.
"Either way, Arsenal's visit to Stoke looks likely to be the point that Arsenal's top-four streak could come to an end.
"Football, though, continues to surprise us, so perhaps Arsene Wenger's charges will now go on an unlikely run of wins and still be in the mix for a top-four place in a month's time."
Wenger, who is out of contract at the end of the season, has yet to announce whether he will continue as Arsenal manager.
Following Monday's 3-0 defeat at Crystal Palace, he denied his failure to announce his future plans had affected the team.
Media playback is not supported on this device Wenger 'not in the mood' to discuss his future
No St Totteringham's Day? The run-in
'St Totteringham's Day' has long been celebrated by Arsenal fans - the time of the season where it is mathematically impossible for north London neighbours Tottenham to finish above them in the league.
However, Tottenham look set to finish in the top four and are 14 points ahead of Wenger's side.
Wenger has never finished below Tottenham in the league since he took over as manager - and Arsenal have not finished below Spurs at all since 1994-95.
Fixture list for the top-four hopefuls Date Liverpool Man City Man Utd Arsenal Everton 15 April So'ton (A) Burnley (H) 16 April West Brom (A) Chelsea (H) 17 April Middlesbro (A) 22 April West Ham (A) 23 April C Palace (H) Burnley (A) 26 April Leicester (H) 27 April Man Utd (H) Man City (A) 30 April Middlesbro (A) Swansea (H) Tottenham (A) Chelsea (H) 1 May Watford (A) 6 May C Palace (H) Swansea (A) 7 May So'ton (H) Arsenal (A) Man Utd (H) 13 May West Ham (A) Leicester (H) Tottenham (A) Stoke (A) Watford (H) 21 May Middlesbro (A) Watford (A) C Palace (H) Everton (H) Arsenal (A) TBA West Brom (H) So'ton (A) Sunderland (H) So'ton (A)
'It's time for him to go'
Former Arsenal striker John Hartson, who played for Arsenal during the opening months of Wenger's reign, said he expected them to finish in fifth or sixth place.
"I worked under Arsene Wenger and I've always sort of been in the camp of 'Arsene Wenger's great and he's done fantastic,'" Hartson told BBC Radio 5 live on Tuesday.
"I just think now it's time for him to go. I really do and it hurts me to say that because I like Arsene Wenger."
'Invincibles to Invisibles' - analysis
Former Blackburn and Chelsea striker Chris Sutton on BBC Radio 5 live:
"At one time, Arsene Wenger managed the Invincibles. He is now managing the Invisibles. He has to go, because the players are not listening.
"The biggest problem with Arsenal is that it's Wenger who makes the decision on his future. I don't get it. It should be up to the owners.
"They must be embarrassed by tonight's performance. It was limp. They were played off the park by a team in danger of relegation.
"It was a pathetic showing."From American Rennaissance, we have a detailed article about the hypocrisies of Bill Gates by Greg Hood. It might be one of the best things that he’s written, and he often writes well.
Mr. Gates also realized that the tech industry was in a fierce competition for high-IQ workers. He famously said his biggest adversary was Goldman Sachs, because they were competing with him for the brightest employees. Unfortunately for him, Griggs vs. Duke Power makes it difficult to use IQ tests for job interviews because of the “disparate impact” such tests have on blacks. Therefore, Microsoft’s job interviews featured word teasers and other questions specifically designed to get the effect of IQ tests without actually using them. There is an example at the end of this article.
Bill Gates is known to be obsessed with IQ. After traveling the country for five days with Mr. Gates, a reporter from Forbes said that he “must have talked about IQ a hundred times. Getting the brightest bulbs to work at Microsoft has always been his obsession.” Years later, the same reporter noted that “Gates has always loved IQ.... It never seems to occur to Gates that IQ has become a politically incorrect subject for many.”
Even though he has not run Microsoft for some time, Mr. Gates remains passionately interested in IQ. He stresses the importance of raw intelligence in his public statements, and he is clearly aware of one of the great challenges of a globalized economy–the low IQ of people in developing countries. In a speech in July 2013, Mr. Gates noted that “the average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa is about 82.”Under-pressure West Coast wingman Lewis Jetta looks to have suffered a pre-Christmas injury setback after limping off Lathlain Park on Monday.
The players were only about 15 minutes into the almost two-hour session in wet conditions when Jetta pulled up and left the field.
The 28-year-old watched from the dugout with his left calf iced while his teammates completed the session.
Star ruckman Nic Naitanui failed to join full training as promised last week.
He trained mostly away from his teammates completing some running and kicking. He joined in match simulation only to palm the ball down from throw ins opposed to part-time ruck coach and retired journeyman Jonathan Giles.
Camera Icon Naitanui gets around a not-so-close-checking defender. Picture: Danella Bevis
Naitanui denied last week he had had a setback in his return from a knee reconstruction.
Dual Coleman medallist Josh Kennedy was also on light duties, running laps with rising defender Tom Barrass.
Elliot Yeo, who is being eased in due to a hip injury, appeared to be an absentee after signing a new five-year deal on Friday.
Gun midfielders Luke Shuey and Andrew Gaff both moved well, as did veteran forward Mark LeCras.
Liam Ryan and a slimmed down Willie Rioli were both lively during ball movement drills.Georgia Tech is off to a 3-0 start and will try to remain undefeated Thursday when it plans to wear white throwback jerseys while playing host to Virginia Tech. The school is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
The jerseys are reminiscent of those the Yellowjackets wore during their heyday in the 1950s with blue numbers and striped sleeves.
In addition to wearing throwbacks, the school is welcoming back at least 35 former All-Americans and plans a halftime fireworks show. It also had 5,000 limited edition gold coins minted to commemorate the 100th anniversary celebration of the field.
- - -
Want to join the conversation? Hit us up on Twitter @YahooDrSaturday be sure to "Like" Dr. Saturday on Facebook for football conversations and stuff you won't see on the blog.Could Detectives Use Microbes To Solve Murders?
Hide caption Editor's Note: Viewers may find some of the following images disturbing. Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption Sibyl Bucheli (center) and Rob Knight take soil samples from beneath one of the decomposing bodies. Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption Bucheli is a forensic entomologist at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and a staff researcher at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility, which conducts research on human bodies that have been donated to science. "I'm deeply appreciative," Bucheli says, "of the people who make my research possible — all of them." Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption Cotton swabs are used for sampling bacteria and other microbes from the skin of the corpses placed in the field. Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption Researchers have found that, at least in mice, the communities of bacteria on corpses seem to change in predictable ways over time. Eventually working out this sort of "microbial clock" for various microorganisms on human bodies could help crime investigators pinpoint how long someone has been dead. Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption From left, researchers Jessica Metcalf, Aaron Lynne, Bucheli and Daniel Harmaan mark the precise spot to place a fresh body. Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption Metcalf and Harmaan collect soil samples before placing a body. The researchers will catalog any microbial colonies already living in the dirt and see how the communities of tiny organisms in that spot change over time. Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
Hide caption Bucheli hopes that eventually her microbial research will help answer one of the most important questions for families of murder victims: Who is responsible? Previous Next Katie Hayes Luke for NPR 1 of 8 i View slideshow
In the woods outside Huntsville, Texas, scientists are trying to determine whether they can use the microbes that live on the human body as microscopic witnesses that could help catch criminals.
It's a strange scene at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility. At first, it's easy to miss the human bodies scattered among the tall pines, wild grass and weeds.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Katie Hayes Luke for NPR Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
"We hope microbes can tell crime scene investigators how long a person has been dead," Sibyl Bucheli of Sam Houston State University explains, as she leads a group of researchers and visitors from NPR through a tall, chain-link fence surrounding the facility and down a dusty path to her research plot.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Katie Hayes Luke for NPR Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
The facility is one of the few places where, in the interest of developing new tools for forensic science, researchers can leave human bodies out in the open to study what happens as the remains decompose.
Bucheli is an entomologist who has spent years studying the ways insects on a body can help pinpoint how long a murder victim has been dead. Knowing how long it takes a particular species of fly to complete its life cycle from egg to larva to pupa to winged insect, for example, can help an investigator figure out how long a corpse has been exposed to the insects, establishing a minimum time since death.
That got Bucheli thinking. "If insects change through time, then so do bacteria," she says. "And if insects can be used, so can the bacteria."
It's possible, she says, that information from bacteria could improve the accuracy of these time-of-death estimates. The microbes might also be useful when insects aren't present, she says, helping to determine how long a person has been dead, when insects aren't available to do that.
Such research is just in the beginning stages, but already, a scientific team at the University of Colorado has been able to use bacteria alone to narrow down how long a mouse has been dead to within three days.
"We're really pushing the envelope of microbial forensic science," says microbial ecologist Jessica Metcalf, a member of that Colorado team. She and her boss, microbiome researcher Rob Knight, have come to the forensics facility in southeastern Texas to collaborate with Bucheli, hoping to do with human bodies what they did in the mice.
One of the first tasks the day we visit is placing three fresh bodies in the woods. A small tractor pulls up, carrying the first body inside a blue plastic body bag. Three men lift the body off the tractor and place it on the ground. They unzip the bag and carefully unwrap the white sheet that swaddles the cadaver.
"We want to do this as respectfully as possible," Bucheli says.
It's a difficult moment. Corpses that have been in the field a little longer look like mummies, barely recognizable as human. The new remains are from people who have only recently died and donated their bodies for scientific research. Bucheli is clearly moved. She pauses briefly for what she calls her "thank-you moment."
"I'm deeply appreciative of the people who make my research possible... all of them," she says.
The scientists mark each body's position with a metal post and then begin several hours of intense work, meticulously gathering dozens of samples of bacteria.
They carefully scrape the skin in the same spots on each body and methodically scoop up dirt from precise locations near the remains. Their plan is to come back day after day, month after month, to sample these exact spots, to figure out if, over time, the communities of bacteria in these various spots change in predictable ways as time passes and the remains decompose.
"We're looking for a microbial clock," Metcalf says. A clock like that could be used as a reference tool in forensic investigations.
Microbes might one day help police in other ways, too, the scientists say. The population of bacteria on a person who died of natural causes, for example, might look different than the bacteria on someone who was beaten to death.
And because different varieties of microbes are found in different places, the bacterial census of a corpse might show whether a body has been killed in one place and then dumped in another. Microbes might also help police who are searching for unmarked graves.
"If you suspected that there's a body buried in a certain field, can you just swab little bits of soil and say, 'Oh this particular area has microbial organisms that we usually find associated with a decomposing corpse?' " Metcalf asks. That's the sort of question she and Bucheli hope their work will help answer.
And that's not all. Knight says he thinks microbes could one day provide for each of us a kind of microbial fingerprint that could help police solve all sorts of crimes while we're alive, as well as after we're dead.
Back on campus, Knight demonstrates how it works. He pops open a small plastic vial, grabs a cotton swab and pulls out his laptop to test the keyboard.
toggle caption Katie Hayes Luke for NPR
"You dip the Q-tip in the saline solution and you rub it thoroughly on the individual key," he explains. The swab quickly turns a greasy brown.
"So what's on there is a combination of finger grease, dust and bacteria... maybe as many as a billion," Knight says. "Definitely enough to track it back to an individual."
Knight has been able to use an analysis of these communities of bacteria to match people to objects they've touched. So microbes might be able to do things like link a suspect to a murder weapon or the scene of the crime, he says.
"There are a lot of cases where it's clear that the suspect touched something but you don't have a print you can use off it," Knight says.
He even thinks that analyzing the different communities of microbes on peoples' bodies might eventually prove to be a useful tool for tracking an individual's movements — to see if the person had recently returned from Afghanistan or been in Boston, for example.
All of this, Bucheli hopes, will one day help answer the most important question for the families of victims: Who is responsible?
"I'm somebody's mom," Bucheli says. "I'm somebody's sister. You always think about: Who? Who did this?"
Now, no one yet knows how much of this research will prove useful in forensics. Most practical applications are likely years away. But it's already clear that some of these techniques will likely raise lots of questions — about privacy, civil liberties and how much we want our microbes to reveal about ourselves.Like most, I assume, I loved snow as a kid. It brought about all sorts of possibilities that would get you a visit from a social worker any other time of year. Wanna pick something up for the sole purpose of throwing it at someone else? No problem. Wanna slide down a hill or roll around on the ground? Have at it. How bout building your very own man? Yeah, we got that too. Nowadays though I’m less enthusiastic, probably because the responsibility to move it outta the way, in a manner that doesn’t involve pelting passersby or raiding the vegetable drawer for decorations, falls on my head. Or shoulders, or back, or something with muscles that hurt afterwards. Still, I like to see snow at least once a winter though, ideally at a time when I’ve got no good reason to leave the house. So, you know, any time really.Things are still up in the air with a potential Colin Kaepernick trade, which makes the newly acquired Mark Sanchez our de facto starter, at least for the time being. While his presence on the roster has received a lot of attention from the media and the butt-fumble has been hashed and re-hashed (to the point where Emmanuel Sander's grandma got in on it), I got curious about how Sanchez actually looked last year, and what he brings to the table.
Thus, I'll attempt to walk through some of Sanchez's throws last year and highlight what I see. Disclaimer: I am by no means a scout, and QB play has so many facets that is hard to get a clear picture from just a few plays/games. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to provide, if nothing else, a breakdown of what is happening and let you decide what kind of grade Sanchez gets.
Let's get to it. Today we are breaking down a drive from his first game action in week 10 of last year.
Play #1
Above you can see the situation. Bradford got hurt (shocker) near the end of the 3rd Q. Sanchez had a few plays on that drive but it stalled due to penalty and he was mostly throwing screens and short stuff.
Here's the All-22 angle. The Dolphins are in nickel with the Eagles in 11 personnel with Celek split out in the left slot. It looks to me like a cover 1 look from Miami and the weakside linebacker is going to blitz. The strong side LB has responsibility for the RB and so he gets sucked in by the play fake. Everyone else is in man coverage, with the safety covering Celek doing a terrible job, so much so that it took me awhile to decide if he actually was supposed to cover him.
Once the ball is snapped and the play action executed, the big thing to notice is the defensive end is unblocked. I assume this is by design to sell the run fake and the QB is just supposed to get rid of it quickly.
With that in mind, I see the reads as 1) being the quick hook route by the outside WR, and 2) being Celek across the formation. You can see how much space each of those receivers have, and Sanchez is looking at the hook. He may have been able to fire this in there before the DE got to him, but neither of the routes were developed enough, in my opinion. So, with both reads getting close to wide open, Sanchez buys some time and actually shows some good elusiveness avoiding the DE.
After avoiding the DE he is on the move to his right with the WR at the 25 wide open, and Celek just as open at the 30. So he takes the deeper route and puts in a nice throw on the move to Celek for the 1st down.
One thing I noticed and we will see in throughout these plays is that Sanchez seems pretty comfortable throwing on the move. Actually, a good bit of his throws in this game came on the move; partly by design and partly because the Eagles line is just really bad. Sanchez and Bradford were often running for their lives or getting pummeled behind this line.
Play #2
Case and point on this play from later on in the drive. Sanchez again scrambles and makes something happen.
Here's the All-22 breakdown of the play above. Sanchez checked into this play from shotgun and goes under center in 12 personnel. Miami is in cover 1 again and the corner covering Ertz as he goes across the field lost from the beginning as he has outside leverage and Ertz easily took the inside leaving the corner chasing the whole play. The deep safety is late to react as well. Sanchez feels/sees the pressure from the DE who is being blocked by a TE and steps up in the pocket and kind of just flings it out there to Ertz as Suh is grabbing his jersey. The ball ends up being pretty close to on the money even though it looks bad. First down Eagles.
Freebies
I'm not going to break these plays down for length and time sake, but here are 2 potential TD throws that happened on this drive as well.
This one Sanchez had all day to throw and looked like he was going to go to the middle of the field, then saw Austin deep at the last second and decided to go for it all. It was a pretty good throw, maybe a little high. Austin didn't drag a toe and juuuussst steps on the chalk.
This one is another great play with Sanchez on the move again. Alas, it was called back by an illegal shift. That was a pretty ball though.
The Eagles would end up settling for a field goal on that drive, making it 20-19 with Miami still in the lead.
After a few punts, the Eagles are driving again with only 5 minutes left in the game.
Sanchez once again makes a nice play with his legs and shows good accuracy on the move. This moves them into sure field goal range.
Play #3
This last play breakdown is where Mark Sanchez gets his bad reputation.
As a QB, that's the last thing you should let happen in that situation where a field goal puts you ahead. Let's take a look at what went wrong.
The Eagles are in 12 personnel again with Ertz and Celek bunched up together on the left side of the formation. Miami switches to what looks like a quarters coverage on this play. This is a play action pass designed to get the defense moving right while the QB and all the routes work towards the left. They didn't get the movement they were looking for from the LBs as they were not fooled by the fake.
Ertz runs a corner route with Celek blocking and then releasing in the flat. Miles Austin is going to work across the field and ends up being Sanchez's target, with Jordan Matthews (I think) running a slant(ish) on the outside.
I've been trying to figure out what went wrong here. I don't think the zone coverage fooled Sanchez because he had plenty of time to see the free safety pick up Austin. I think he just thought he could fit it in and forced the ball into coverage. Now if you look at the other angle below, it doesn't look like that bad of a throw, it almost seems like Austin quit on the route or didn't attempt to go up and fight for it, but I can't really tell.
Bottom line, it was a poor decision by Sanchez. He has to know the situation and know that you cannot under any circumstances turn the ball over. A field goal puts you in the lead, and the Dolphins offense has looked pretty bad all game. You take a sack before you throw that into coverage. Plus, he had 3 better options on that play. Ertz had outside leverage on his man, he could have thrown it up to the back pylon where only Ertz can get it or no one does; he has Celek right in front of him in the flat, check it down; or, just throw it away and live to fight another down.
Summary
There were some things to like from Sanchez in this game. He seemed in control of the offense, and surprised me with his mobility and ability to throw it on the run. He seems to project well into our play action/movement based scheme from what we saw in these clips. His achilles heel, however, is decision making in key situations. If he can manage the game and not try to be the hero, I think he'll be a suitable backup or maybe even a decent starter for us depending on how things shake out the rest of the off-season.
What do you think Broncos country!? Let me know in the comments below.
Also, feel free to hit me up or follow me on Twitter. I mostly just re-tweet and bug Scotty and Tim but occasionally I post something original/interesting!Don’t expect to see him marching in a Pride parade anytime soon, but gays may have found an unexpected ally in Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood.
In the October issue of GQ magazine, Eastwood said that Republicans were making a big mistake by opposing same sex marriage.
“These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage?” Eastwood opined. “I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of.”
“They go on and on with all this bullshit about ‘sanctity’ — don’t give me that sanctity crap! Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”
Although he is a registered Republican, Eastwood doesn’t consider himself a conservative. He has supported California’s former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and Democratic Rep. Sam Farr.
“I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War,” he told GQ. “And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let’s spend a little more time leaving everybody alone.”
The report has been updated to reflect that Rep. Sam Farr is currently serving as a congressman from California.The U.S. Department of Commerce is moving to level tariffs on Canadian lumber imports following decades of complaints from Maine and other American timber companies who say their northern competitors are unfairly subsidized.
The tariffs, which the department said would be as high as 24 percent, could boost prices for lumber companies in Maine and the rest of the U.S., though consumers also can expect higher costs for home building and construction projects.
In a preliminary determination in its “countervailing duty investigation” of softwood lumber from Canada, the federal agency announced Monday evening that it has found that Canadian lumber exporters are receiving subsidies in the range of 3.02 percent to 24.12 percent on sales that in 2016 totalled $5.66 billion.
The Department of Commerce “determined a need to impose countervailing duties of roughly $1 billion on Canadian softwood lumber exports to us,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.
The agency said it would instruct the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to impose duties on imports based on those preliminary rates for different companies, and that some companies will be subject to retroactive duties.
Under the preliminary subsidy rates for five major exporters, Canfor Corporation will pay 20.26 percent; J.D. Irving 3.02 percent; Resolute FP Canada 12.82 percent; Tolko Industries Ltd. 19.50 percent; and West Fraser Mills 24.12 percent. A rate of 19.88 percent was set for all other Canadian exporters.
New Brunswick-based J.D. Irving and Quebec-based Maibec both operate lumber mills in northern Maine |
– “Shoppers, there’s a sale on partying in my pants aisle. Everything in my pants must go. Well, not everything, that doesn’t… you know what I…” – Koogler
78. Basic Sandwich (S5 E13) Written by Ryan Ridley, Directed by Rob Schrab
There’s a moment on the DVD commentary for this episode where Dan Harmon says how lots of fans asked him on Twitter why he fucked up the season finale. He explains it’s the Dungeons and Dragons episode’s fault and also it appeared that they were going to get three more S5 episodes, and then didn’t. It seems a lot of justification for an episode that, whilst not a brilliant season, and possible series finale, was at least a decent episode paying tribute to The Goonies and such. Basic Story was a nice set up and most people rate it the better episode than the actual finale, but I have them the other way round and much closer together. To me, the joke here is that the only thing that could possibly save Community from ending at this point is something as ridiculous as buried treasure guarded by an emotional robot programmed by a drug fuelled Chris Elliot. But then it let itself get saved anyway. For what purpose though, we’re never really sure other than, yay, we saved Greendale. There doesn’t seem to much at stake for the school itself. Obviously there’s a lot at stake with the group stuck in the bunker but, this being TV and Community being as meta as it is, obviously they’d be getting out. And within that it retread some old rhythms the show is sometimes guilty of falling into. Namely being a little too over romantic about, well, romance for one thing. Jeff and Britta’s hastily planned marriage last week worked as a comment, this week Jeff’s look to Annie seemed more like fan service than actually digging into anything. Yet outside of the main story there was gold to be had. Abed’s explanation of spin offs to Annie was a well pitched bit of Community meta, Duncan’s electrocution, hang gliders and that nail in the coffin of NBC tag. If it weren’t a finale, you’d probably rate it higher.
Top line – “Was there a hang glider?” – Richie
77. Celebrity Pharmacology (S2 E13) Written by Hilary Winston, Directed by Fred Goss
A welcome Pierce based episode where he’s not just a racist old dude. As the study group have to put on a drug awareness show for at risk teens, Pierce takes over the show. Annie is directing and he’s given her a substantial cheque to help with the rent meaning he expects a bigger part in the show. In some senses, it’s a classic dick move by Pierce but there’s more to it than that we which we get into a little with a nice little interchange between he and Annie towards the end. It’s also a rare episode where the A, B and C story all revolve on the same event. Chang and Shirley are still having issues surrounding her pregnancy (which gives us a lovely little Shirley apology at the end) and Jeff’s been sending lewd texts from Britta’s phone to her younger relative, yet it all still exists within the framework of the drugs show. A show that, quite frankly, I wish I’d seen when I was in primary school. It’s a disaster, but a very funny one, especially the Dean’s improv section.
Top line – “Because that’s not what Drugs does baby! I’m gonna deep fry your dog and eat your momma’s face. And I’m going to wear your little brother’s skin like pajamas!” – Chang
76. App Development and Condiments (S5 E8) Written by Jordan Blum & Parkey Deay, Directed by Rob Scrab
This is an episode that whilst I didn’t love I absolutely love that it existed. That five seasons in, with the threat of cancelation hanging ever lower, Dan Harmon and co made this episode. They made a Logan’s Run dystopian show based off of an app called Meowmeowbeenz in which the savour is a Che Guevara-esque figure except with mustard on her face. Also the guy that created Arrested Development is going to be in it as basically an extra from Animal House. And they make a comment on class divide and social labels. I remember reading an interview somewhere with Joel McHale where he said, imagine just giving someone a copy of the pilot to watch, and then this episode, and trying to convince them it’s the same show. A lot of the episode is hilarious, a lot of it doesn’t work, but I flat out love that it exists. That they are still willing to try anything, try something new, push the boundaries and be damned if you do or don’t like it, we’re making it anyway. I think the attitude that’s clearly present in making this episode is part of the reason why I find eps like Modern Espionage a bit of a let down. This, in a weird way is Community at it’s best and worst at the same time.
Top line – “It comes down?” – Koogler
75. Basic Email Security (S6 E6) Written by Matt Roller, Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar
Greendale’s emails are hacked and leaked as a protest for an upcoming gig at the school. Credit to the writer’s for tackling the Sony hacking scandal when Sony are the people paying their bills, first and foremost. But this was the first episode of season six where, as I watching it, I thought, ‘This could do with a trim’. It’s a nice idea, and it’s always good to see the group at loggerheads with each other forgetting that that might actually impact people that aren’t themselves, but during the scene in which they all went at each other as they set up the controversial comic’s gig, I found myself checking my phone. Something I never do when watching a show I love. It just started to drag. There weren’t 28 minutes of episode in this one. One of only two, along with Intro to Recycled Cinema, this latest season that I thought was hurt by the extra runtime. And watching it back you can almost see the bits that they would’ve cut if it had to fit into 21 minutes. As an episode it was covering old ground in many respects, other than injecting Frankie and Elroy which really did add to it, especially as the two of them uncover more of the group’s back story, but that also made the flab was more noticeable to me. But it serves as a solid reminder of the strength of Community in that I laughed a lot. I enjoyed it a lot. The setup, the cops, the True Detective tag. And at the end I still put it in the bottom half of this list.
Top line – “Hey, silver and gold ladies, ain’t no losers there” – Chang
74. English as a Second Language (S1 E24) Written by Tim Hobert, Directed by Gail Mancuso
It’s now, after 110 episodes, an established trope that the study group need each other. They’re borderline codependent (as Frankie will later point out) and this episode provides the first solid look at that as Annie gets Chang fired in an attempt to have the class have to repeat Spanish together. They don’t have to as it turns out thanks to Pierce’s bribes, but here is where we have the verbalisation that they are more than a study group, they’re friends. And they have to be, because otherwise there is no show moving forward really is there? Well, S5 and S6 proved there can be, but that’s by the by at this point. It’s also the first indication that Troy is a naturally gifted plumber, something that will form a major arc of S3. It’s a solid episode for setting up further adventures though it’s only real highlight is Jeff’s takedown of Annie in the study room if I’m being honest.
Top line – “Who cares if you’re sorry!? We’re still screwed. Be sorry about this stuff before you do it. And then don’t do it!” – Jeff
73. Intro to Felt Surrogacy (S4 E9) Written by Gene Hong, Directed by Tristram Shapeero
When it was announced that season 4 was going to have a puppet episode there was a lot of mixed mumbling. Either it’d be brilliant or awful. It was the sort of big concept episode that only Harmon could pull off wasn’t it? Well, yes, sort of. I mean, it was good, just not as good as one might hope or expect from a puppet episode of Community. Firstly, the puppets voices sounded like they’d recorded the actors in a closet but maybe that’s by the by. The major problem was it tried to get by on the novelty and the good will of the frankly excellent puppets alone. With Harmon’s concept episodes the story fed the concept, not the other way around. When the concept is all there really is, then what’s the point of the story you’re telling? As it turns out in this episode, not a lot. And yet, for all of that, it was still kinda fun. It was nice to have Pierce back, the songs were ok, Troy asking where Duncan had got to was enjoyable, and it ended with another nice group bonding session. Also, I love puppets. I do. So that’s greatly biased my opinion here. If this was some sort of impossibly objective less, it’d probably be a lot lower. But as it is, it’d have to have been a pile of shit for me to hate it. It wasn’t that. The end tag though, with the real life cast playing with their puppets and ending with a group photo was probably the most out of place, cringeworthy moment of all 110 episodes. That is what DVD special features are for.
Top line – “The level to which we respect you as a political activist has definitely not changed”. – Jeff
72. Paranormal Parentage (S4 E2) Written by Megan Ganz, Directed by Tristram Shapeero
This feels like the sort of episode that if Harmon had’ve been involved it would’ve been an all time classic. It’s still a pretty damn good episode that gets absolutely slated because it’s cooler than cool to hate everything about season 4 until you’re blue in the face. But there’s a lot to like about this episode. Megan Ganz’s script is smart, funny and adds a little character development to a few people as well and it really feels like it’s just a McKenna or Harmon tweak from being great. That said, unchanged, if this was a Harmon episode people would probably like it a lot better just out of spite or hero worship. And that this was the season’s second episode, again, gave me a lot of hope for what was to came. Sadly, it dropped off. But to sit there, with a straight face and say this was a terrible episode, a bottom 20 episode of Community, I honestly can’t see how you could do that. Some stuff doesn’t land, but the stuff that does is on point. Annie’s Ring girl, Pierce’s password, the end tag, the tying up of whatever happened to Gilbert and it was, at points, good at creating that creepy vibe of those sort of haunted house films thanks to some, as usual, great Shapeero direction.
Top line – “We do some things. We do a lot of things. Not all the things. Things”. – Troy
71. Introduction to Finality (S3 E22) Written by Steve Basilone & Annie Mebane, Directed by Tristram Shapeero
After the madness of dealing with Chang taking over the school things kind of peter out a bit here. There’s still a few things to be addressed of course, and the episode is still damn funny, but given there was a real chance, more than at the end of 1 or 2, that this would be a series finale as well it falls a bit flat, offering too many sort of pleading cliffhangers at the end with Jeff looking up his family, the return of Starburns and so on. While Pierce, Shirley and Jeff in court is strong, especially as some growth for Pierce, the parallel bit with Evil Abed doesn’t work for me, funny as it is at times, it’s all a bit much. That he would go as far as he did isn’t a man lost in his own fantasy world, it’s severe mental illness that is dismissed far too easily narratively. Still, Troy’s final battle with the air conditioner school though is fantastic and has a proper end of season feel to it.
Top line – “No! No. Take him to the police. He murdered someone. Take him to jail. You guys are weird”. – Troy
Righto, more tomorrow lads and lasses.
Jump to 110-101 * Jump to 100-91 * Jump to 90-81 * Jump to 80-71 * Jump to 70-61 * Jump to 60-51 * Jump to 50 -41 * Jump to 40-31 * Jump to 30-26 * Jump to 25-21 * Jump to 20-16 * Jump to 15-11 * Jump to 10-6 * Jump to 5-1 * Wrap UpShimmering mists gave way to an eerie sight: a familiar visage stood beneath a tree whose bark was translucent and grey. Beneath the surface of the tree, thin veins pumped a glowing red liquid up and down the boughs and branches of the tree. The veins struggled inside the thick wood of the tree, their every movement and action exaggerated and painful to watch. Atop the tree, where leaves should be, was a mass of pink and brown eyes, glancing back and forth and all around, scanning their landscape for signs of activity. In that regard, it was hardly a tree at all. Behind the many-eyed plant shone the moon, whose surface was whole and unblemished, with a brilliant aura that silhouetted the many-eyed plant. At a glance, the many-eyed plant could appear to be an ordinary tree, but was nothing of the sort.
Beneath the tree was another Neo, whose pink eyes stared past Neo and into the void behind her. She stood at the precipice of a great lake, whose surface reflected the great white light of the moon. Her toes just barely sunk into the water, casting ripples across the lake that shone like diamonds. As Neo looked down, she realized that she stood on the lake's surface, whose water seemed to stretch down for ages until it was nothing but a black chasm. She ran her foot across its surface, making a scraping sound not unlike fingernails on a pane of glass. It made her skin crawl
"So you've finally made it," The other Neo spoke. Her voice was a droning monotone, which had an ever-so-slight emphasis on the word "you." As she spoke, the many-eyed plant's eyes darted to her, staring in fear, awe and reverence. With the smallest and slightest of motions, she shied away from its scrutiny.
"What is all this? And who are you?" The eyes shifted their gaze to Neo, who fell back a step as her foot made another grinding screech against the surface of the lake.
"As I said, I am Neo. This place is… well it has been home to me for a long time, it seems. Do you like it here?"
"Um, no, not at all actually, why am I here?"
"You wanted your memories back, yes. Now you have them. That is why you are here."
Neo raised an eyebrow at her, "Just what are you, actually? You're Neo, I get it, but you're not… human."
The previously blank faced Neo titled her head back as a twisted, disturbed grin spread from ear to ear. Though her voice remained monotone, it had raised in tone, making her seem happy, "I am what your subconscious believes me to be: I am what you consider the Old Neo. I am manipulative, I am uncaring, and I am evil. Is that right? But you know that to be false. You have seen otherwise. You know that we are not merely insane, but damaged."
Neo nodded to her counterpart, "Your love for Roman broke you, didn't it? Why? He was terrible to you, made you his servant, sold your body and made you a murderer. Why insist on his love after all that?"
"Why does anyone love?" Her head tilted to the left, "I can answer that no better than you can. I can merely say that I love him and that I can think of nothing but loving him."
"Then you realize he's dead? You're part of my mind, you must know that."
She nodded somberly. An eye on the tree suddenly burst, spilling glowing red pus into the water, which mixed with the ripples caused by Neo's feet to form a pink slush on the surface of the water, "It is sad he is gone. I will never be able to show him my love. Instead I have to show everyone else my love."
"What do you mean?"
"The girl in the hood. She killed him. I will start with her. Just the thought of it fills us both with excitement. I'll kill her to show the world that I truly loved him. Do not lie, you feel that joy too. The anticipation. The arousal. You cannot resist."
"You're wrong. Ruby is my friend now, I wouldn't do that to her. I won't let you do that to her."
Several more eyes burst in rapid succession. Their sludge washed towards Neo's feet. She tried to avoid its path, but slipped and fell. As she looked up, a new Neo stood over her, this one with red irises that were completely contracted, making her pupils appear like small pinpricks, "We failed him! We did nothing!" She screamed as she stomped her stiletto-ed boot down. Neo rolled to her right to avoid it, and the boot punctured the water beneath, forming a strong, gushing wave.
More bursting eyes, Neo could hear them popping like bloody balloons. She looked ahead of her. She saw another Neo several feet ahead of her, curled up with her knees pressed to her face. Neo looked back to her left, but the Neo who had attacked her was gone. She stood up and walked to her crying apparition, kneeling down and placing a hand on her shoulder. She was sobbing the same phrase to herself over and over, "It should've been me, it should've been me…"
Just as Neo stood up, her apparition jumped to her feet, swiping and jabbing at Neo with an umbrella. The strikes stung, more than Neo ever knew her hits could, before Neo finally managed to tackle her other self. Just as she made contact, the apparition shattered like glass. More eyes burst, as the water that had once shone white now reflected a dull red.
When she got to her feet, dozens of Neos surrounded her, their faces contorted with a variety of emotions ranging from sadness to anger, pleasure to disgust, arousal to disinterest, they all stared at her directly. Then they began muttering.
"Murderer."
"Roman's whore."
"Psycho bitch."
"How many have you killed?"
"Did you enjoy it?"
"Why did you kill them?"
"Do you ever think for yourself?"
"Are you just a slave to your desires?"
"Or a slave to that criminal mastermind of yours?"
Neo covered her ears, "Shut up! Stop! That isn't me! I'm not her!"
In unison, the crowd of Neos spoke, "Even you know that isn't true anymore."
In the blink of an eye, the Neos were gone, and standing only an inch from her face in front of the moon and the many-eyed plant was the original pink-eyed Neo, "I am afraid my time is up. You must return now."
The remaining eyes burst all at once, forming a gushing red torrent the blocked out the moon for a moment, casting Neo in darkness. When the torrent fell, the moon had shattered once more and all was silent. There were no Neos to be found. She looked down to brush herself off and her eyes went wide in horror. Beneath her feet was Nora, battered and beaten. A few feet away, Ren was face down in a pile of red snow. Neo bought her hands to her face, covering her mouth as her eyes grew red and bleary. It was then that she heard her parasol come clattering to the ground, its sharp tip extended.
She dropped to her knees. Her stomach churned as she felt herself grow weak. Then she heard them. Yang and Jaune called her, Nora and Ren's names. They were right in front of her. Fear and shock came over all Jaune and Yang. The world grew dark around Neo as she slumped to the ground and blacked out.
Hey everybody. Not a lot of work this weekend so I might have another chapter out pretty soon. In the meantime, if you liked my other story, Better Red than Dead, its up for selection for the RWBY Subreddit's March MonCon contest! You can vote and find all the nominees for both Fanfiction and Art here: r/RWBY/comments/4bxsbg/official_rrwby_moncon_march_2016_voting/. I'd really appreciate it if ya'll voted!
Otherwise I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend and that you enjoy this chapter!Chemistry Problem Set Chemical Bonds 1.
Explain why the lattice energy of lithium chloride (861 kJ/mol) is greater than that of rubidium chloride (695 kJ/mol), given that they have similar arrangements of ions in the crystal lattice. (Atkins & Jones 85) 2.
Give the number of valence electrons for each of the following elements: (a) Sb; (b) Si; (c) Mn; (d) B. (Atkins & Jones 86) 3.
Give the ground-state electron configuration expected for each of the following ions: (a) S
2-
; (b) As
3+
;
(c) Ru
3+
; (d) Ge
2+
. (Atkins & Jones 86)
4.
For each of the following ground-state ions, predict the type of orbital (1
s
, 2
p
, 3
d
, 4
f,
etc.) that the electrons of highest energy will occupy: (a) Ca
2+
; (b) In+; (c) Te
2-
; (d) Ag
+
. (Atkins & Jones 86) 5.
On the basis of the expected charges on the monatomic ions, give the chemical formula of each of the following compounds: (a) magnesium arsenide; (b) indium(III) sulfide; (c) aluminum hydride; (d) hydrogen telluride; (e) bismuth(III) fluoride. (Atkins & Jones 86) 6.
Write the complete Lewis structure for each of the following compounds: (a) ammonium chloride; (b) potassium phosphide; (c) sodium hypochlorite. (Atkins & Jones 87) 7.
Draw the Lewis structure and determine the formal charge on each atom in (a) NO
+
; (b) N
2
; (c) CO; (d) C
2 2-
; (e) CN
-
(Atkins & Jones 87) 8.
Draw the Lewis structures that contribute to the resonance hybrid of the guanadium ion, C(NH
2
)
3 +
. (Atkins & Jones 87) 9.In this day and age of financial and technological innovation, there is a lot of focus on rethinking business models and future partnerships. Euronext, one of the world’s leading pan-European exchange platform sin the world, is carefully weighing in options for the future. There is an option to merge with other European exchange platforms, or even reinforce and improve the existing trading infrastructure. But Euronext is keeping an open mind towards blockchain technology as well.
Also read: Slock.it Dapp is Coming to Ethereum Microsoft Azure Cloud Users
Euronext Wants to Evolve its Platform
It is commendable to see established players such as Euronext look at various ways to evolve their platform, and keeping an open mind towards different options to achieve that goal. A proper strategic plan for the future has never been more important than right now, as the financial crisis continues to weigh down trading platforms and markets all over the world.
While Euronext is figuring out the path to forge ahead on, the merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse is throwing a monkey wrench into the “slow and steady” approach Euronext CEO Stephane Boujnah would have preferred. Even though the conditions of this merger have not been revealed yet, the financial landscape will change significantly as a result.
The major problem for Euronext is how, despite its allure, the platform fails to bring any significant value to the table to sign a potential merger with another platform or major bank. Even though Euronext focuses on the pan-European market, their overall “share of the pie” is far too small, and they remain exposed to the stock market trends around the world.Going on the offensive is not a likely possibility for this company in the coming years.
But sometimes, defense is the best offense, which is why various strategies are being considered at the moment. Improving the market infrastructure would be a significant step in the right direction for Euronext, although that process will not be as easy as it sounds. With thin operational margins, there is very little room to make drastic changes.
First and foremost, there is an option to be absorbed by other European exchange platforms, and create a more united front to tackle this market. Bolsa de Madrid would be a very likely partner, although there is no significant progress made over the past few months which could indicate a potential deal in the future.But there are other South-European and Central-European options to consider as well.
Secondly, improving the clearing and settlement of trades executed on the Euronext platform is well worth considering. Rather than merging with or being absorbed by another exchange platform, Euronext would be able to reinforce their position on the market and increase overall profits.
Last but not least, there’s the option of exploring blockchain technology, which may turn out to be the most logical solution in the end. Although this approach would require a lot more time to fully develop, it would also be the most innovative solution for enforcing the position of Euronext. Research of blockchain technology is not cheap, though, which could make it a less favorable option for the company.
In the end, it will all come down to how the deal between London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse looks like. This deal has not been inked just yet, and it could be shut down by other stock market players, such as Paris Bourse. The next few weeks will be crucial for Euronext and other companies active in the pan-European market.
Source: Les EchosI was a samurai warrior in a past life.
Eastern philosophy and culture intrigue me.
Asian cuisine is one of my favorites.
When I heard that an Asian themed “bar arcade” genre restaurant was opening on Main Street, across from the Hyatt, I immediately hopped on Google and calculated how long it would take me to walk there. 12 minutes.
I met Johny Chow a couple years ago when he was running the show at Allen Burger Venture. My first impression: very cool, but more importantly, super nice. He was authentic and pure – worldly, but has that Buffalo gene that exudes gratitude and compassion.
After learning about this idea for the bar arcade, I set up a meeting with Johny to hear all about it. I had to. After all, I grew up playing Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Galaga. But I never combined playing video games with good booze and Asian food. Well, at least not in the same setting. This, to me, is a glorious trifecta.
Johny brought life and business partner Christi Allen along to our initial rendezvous. Christi, the brains behind the project, balances Johny’s artistic vision. The 3rd partner, Lorenz Wustner, was busy behind the bar at ABV and couldn’t attend. We caught up with Lorenz a little later in the evening- after about four drinks and three shots to be exact. For years, Lorenz has been a staple bartender in the Buffalo bar scene.
It turns out that after setting out on an exhaustive search for a space, it took developer Roger Trettel to present the perfect setup. Trettel is combining three adjacent buildings in the 500 block of Main Street into a single facility with four first-floor commercial spaces and eight live-work apartments on the three upper floors. This in itself is exciting news. I love this area of Main Street. Awesome energy, but I feel lacks the edgy factor that the Misuta Chow’s team will bring to the table.
The partners are working with Stieglitz Snyder Architecture and Tommaso Briatico Architects to change the feel of the 500 block – 521 Main Street to be exact. Misuta Chow’s, a totally unique concept to Buffalo, will eventually occupy three floors – the first two should open later this year. Plans for a third floor Rabbit’s Foot Club (a private club) are in the works. The team is still working on the details, but from what they have shared, it’s going to be the real deal… something that Buffalo has not seen since its heyday.
In order to elevate the experience, Christi (formerly in the film business) will be tapping her resources in Los Angeles and New York to form a production design team that intends to recreate a Tokyo City look and feel for the first two floors. The customer will be temporarily transported into a different world. Christi exclaimed, “Misuta Chow’s will be an eclectic energy of old school meets new school Japan, pulling elements from Tokyo City’s Yokocho Alley to the new beyond modern futuristic robot bar. Misuta Chow’s is slated to be the next trendsetting brand to launch in Western New York.”
The first floor of the establishment will house the restaurant/bar. Consulting Executive Chef Dunbar Berdine, one of Buffalo’s finest, is developing a sexy asian street food menu with a soulful twist. Misuta Chow’s will offer custom bento boxes available for restaurant dining, to-go, or delivery for lunch and dinner. Bento combination choices will consist of organic vegetables, egg, rice, noodles and dumplings; banh mi sandwiches with braised or poached proteins and vegetables; steamer baskets with nikoman dumplings, potstickers and edamame; custom built lettuce wraps with a variety of protein and vegetable combinations to choose from. All locally sourced, organic and hormone free when possible. The bar will offer an extensive local and international beer menu, classic cocktails, extensive whisky, bourbon and sake selections as well as sake infused specialty drinks and cold pressed coffee on tap. Retro bottled sodas such as Orange Crush, Dr. Pepper, TaB, and cream soda will also be available.
Misuta Chow’s Game Room (the entire second floor) will feature dozens of classic 80’s arcade games (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Rampage, Donkey Kong and Centipede to name a few), multiple pinball machines, two side by side skeeball lanes and two pool tables. The walls will feature murals created and installed by local and international street artists and splashed with neon lighting. I found it fascinating that they will be keeping seconds on hand, so when a game goes down, another one will replace it. To keep the games operating optimally, they have retained the services of a game tech who will be tending to the game stock.
Misuta Chow’s has a lot going for it. The owners are masters of their domains, and have a ton of bar and restaurant experience. Johny was once the manager of the The Viper Room in LA. He’s also a raging rockstar who travels the globe playing bass for a heralded band by the name of Stone Sour (touring with Korn this summer). Christi has been busy opening a number of Mike Shatzel’s restaurants, including ABV, Colter Bay and The Terrace. She has cut her teeth in the restaurant industry, as well as the film industry. She will be bringing both elements together, to help create a bold and bizarro dream that has been building up in Johny’s head – a dream that will soon be unleashed unto Buffalo.
Johny’s experience traveling the world five times over scoping out the hottest bars and restaurant s…
Christi’s logistical and budgeting experience in the entertainment and hospitality markets for over two+ decades…
Lorenz’s 25 + background with the front and back of the house…
… and a completely off the wall concept, all bode well for this fascinating restaurant concept. I have a feeling that this is going to be a real game changer for Buffalo. Often times, restaurant and bar owners don’t want to go too far out on limb, because they are afraid that locals won’t ‘get it’. Well, this gang is taking that limb and smashing it to pieces, leaving us with a concept that could work in LA, Tokyo, and most certainly Buffalo.
Kampai!
Twitter @misutachows
Facebook
Instagram @misutachows
Snapchat misutachowsGet 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
Ashley Young shrugged off Louis van Gaal’s cutting remark that he’s ‘not a Neymar’ and aims to prove he can be a game changer for Manchester United.
It was a bizarre summer for Young after the Reds manager’s blunt comments on the pre-season tour of America.
“Barcelona has Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez. We have to look also for that kind of player. We look for more creativity. You can expect things from Ashley Young. He had a fantastic season. But he is not a Neymar and we have to compete with that kind of class,” said Van Gaal in the States.
The assessment suggested that Young might not even get his wish for a new Old Trafford contract as United planned their late transfer window strategy.
In pictures: United v Sunderland
However, on the eve of the campaign the club announced the 30-year-old had signed a new three year deal.
He started the Premier League opener against Spurs but since has been in LVG’s XI just twice against PSV and Ipswich in the League Cup. His game time has been made up with five sub appearances.
But what of Van Gaal’s ‘Neymar’ comment?
“I wasn’t bothered,” he says.
“I was delighted to sign the contract. I am at the best club in the world. Obviously players come in and there is competition. The manager wants competition and he wants to rotate. I have had that competition throughout my career.
“We have fantastic players here. I said at the start of the season we have fantastic competition. Everybody wants to play but we all have to keep each other on their toes. I will look to give 100 per cent when I am called upon.
“The manager knows what I am capable of and that is why he has used me in games. I know my ability. I am always looking to attack in the position I am. I am one of those players who is creative on the ball and wants to attack. Whenever I am called upon I will go out and do that.
“When you are called upon as a winger you want to create chances and get shots off and hopefully I am doing that. Every player is there to do a job. I am just glad I am not the manager who has to pick the team. He has that headache."
United opened their Champions League Group return with a 2-1 defeat in Eindhoven and now German side Wolfsburg visit Old Trafford on Wednesday.
“It is important to get a win against Wolfsburg. If you want to win the Champions league then you have to win your home games," added Young.
"It was a disappointing start to the European campaign especially the possession and chances we had in Eindhoven that really was disappointing. We have start winning in the group now.”
MORE: Jones blood clot fearsIn my series of interviews with Chinese intellectuals, there is an empty chair for Ilham Tohti, the economist and Uighur activist. It’s not that I hadn’t heard of him or hadn’t been in China long enough to have met him before he was arrested earlier this year. I had, but foolishly had put off pursuing a meeting, thinking that of all the people who might be snapped up by the authorities, he was the least likely. We had many mutual friends and I knew him to oppose independence for Xinjiang, the giant, sparsely populated province in China’s far west that is now the source of a serious terrorism problem. Even though Ilham Tohti is a fierce critic of the government and often followed by state security agents, I didn’t think the forty-four-year-old professor at Beijing’s Minzu University would be lumped in with those who want independence for China’s minority regions.
I was wrong. In January, Ilham Tohti was detained. And unlike in a previous detention, he was not released. Last week he was put on trial in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on charges of “separatism,” a loosely defined crime of seeking independence for a part of China that can carry severe penalties. The only suspense about the verdict was how long his sentence will be. [Update: On September 23 Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life in prison. He plans to appeal the verdict.] Over the last few months, I have asked several prominent public intellectuals who knew him for their thoughts on him and his trial. Some of these people have appeared separately in this series, but their views on Ilham Tohti appear here for the first time.
The Tibetan activist Tsering Woeser, who usually goes by Woeser, and the Chinese intellectual Wang Lixiong were close friends of Ilham Tohti and his family. Woeser has written about visits made to his wife, Guzelnur, who is now under house arrest, and collected some of Ilham Tohti’s statements and views about Xinjiang, which were recently translated into English.
Wang Lixiong: First, I’d like to clarify his name. His real name is just Ilham. For Uighurs, the second name isn’t their family name; it’s their father’s name. So if you call him Tohti or Mr. Tohti, you’re addressing his father! The meaning of the name Ilham Tohti is “Tohti’s son, Ilham.” But if Ilham had a son say named Mehmet, his name would be Mehmet Ilham, not Mehmet Tohti.
I met him in 2008. Friends introduced us because they knew we had strong interests in ethnic issues in China. But back then he |
ultures of stool samples are examined to identify the organism causing dysentery. Usually, several samples must be obtained due to the number of amoebae, which changes daily.[7] Blood tests can be used to measure abnormalities in the levels of essential minerals and salts.[7]
Treatment [ edit ]
Dysentery is managed by maintaining fluids by using oral rehydration therapy. If this treatment cannot be adequately maintained due to vomiting or the profuseness of diarrhea, hospital admission may be required for intravenous fluid replacement. In ideal situations, no antimicrobial therapy should be administered until microbiological microscopy and culture studies have established the specific infection involved. When laboratory services are not available, it may be necessary to administer a combination of drugs, including an amoebicidal drug to kill the parasite, and an antibiotic to treat any associated bacterial infection.
If shigellosis is suspected and it is not too severe, letting it run its course may be reasonable — usually less than a week. If the case is severe, antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin or TMP-SMX may be useful. However, many strains of Shigella are becoming resistant to common antibiotics, and effective medications are often in short supply in developing countries. If necessary, a doctor may have to reserve antibiotics for those at highest risk for death, including young children, people over 50, and anyone suffering from dehydration or malnutrition.
Amoebic dysentery is often treated with two antimicrobial drugs such as metronidazole and paromomycin or iodoquinol.[13]
The seed, leaves, and bark of the kapok tree have been used in traditional medicine by indigenous peoples of the rainforest regions in the Americas, west-central Africa, and Southeast Asia to treat this disease.[14][15][16] Bacillus subtilis was marketed throughout America and Europe from 1946 as an immunostimulatory aid in the treatment of gut and urinary tract diseases such as rotavirus and Shigella,[17] but declined in popularity after the introduction of consumer antibiotics.
Prognosis [ edit ]
With correct treatment, most cases of amoebic and bacterial dysentery subside within 10 days, and most individuals achieve a full recovery within two to four weeks after beginning proper treatment. If the disease is left untreated, the prognosis varies with the immune status of the individual patient and the severity of disease. Extreme dehydration can delay recovery and significantly raises the risk for serious complications.[18]
Epidemiology [ edit ]
Insufficient data exists, but Shigella is estimated to have caused the death of 34,000 children under the age of five in 2013, and 40,000 deaths in people over five years of age.[19] Amoebiasis infects over 50 million people each year, of whom 50,000 die.[20]
Notable cases [ edit ]
Red Army soldier dies of dysentery after eating unwashed vegetables. From a health advisory pamphlet given to soldiers.
Research [ edit ]
Although there is currently no vaccine which protects against Shigella infection, several are in development.[19][34] Vaccination may eventually become a critical part of the strategy to reduce the incidence and severity of diarrhea, particularly among children in low-resource settings. For example, Shigella is a longstanding World Health Organization (WHO) target for vaccine development, and sharp declines in age-specific diarrhea/dysentery attack rates for this pathogen indicate that natural immunity does develop following exposure; thus, vaccination to prevent this disease should be feasible. The development of vaccines against these types of infection has been hampered by technical constraints, insufficient support for coordination, and a lack of market forces for research and development. Most vaccine development efforts are taking place in the public sector or as research programs within biotechnology companies.
See also [ edit ]
Cholera, a bacterial infection of the small intestine which produces severe diarrhea.Rep. Anne Kaiser, D-Montgomery, an openly gay member of the Maryland General Assembly, holds Natalie Vincent, 10 months, the daughter of a member of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's staff, after O'Malley signed the Civil Marriage Protection Act on Thursday. Same sex, opposite impact Marriage equality always seemed a losing issue for the left. That's all changed. Just ask Ken Mehlman
As Maryland and Washington join six other states in approving same-sex marriage, it's clear that the era of politicians exploiting the issue for political game appears over. Just ask former Republican strategist Ken Mehlman, the man who managed George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, noted for its aggressive anti-gay marriage stance.
“If you look at attitudes today and where they are headed, it’s clear to me that supporting equal rights, including the rights to civil marriage, is a net positive for winning elections, as well as the right thing to do,” Mehlman said in an interview. “By contrast, opposing equal rights is a net negative that gets problematic to more voters each year.”
Advertisement:
Few political figures in contemporary politics embody America’s transformation on same-sex marriage as much as Mehlman. After years of whisper campaigns about his sexual orientation, as well as personal criticism for managing Bush’s reelection, Mehlman announced in 2010 that he is gay; since then, despite taking flak from both right and left, he has fought on behalf of equality.
When I asked Mehlman, a partner at a New York private equity firm, to handicap gay marriage as a state and national political-electoral issue today, he said: “Most polls now show that a majority of Americans support gay marriage. What you see in Maryland and Washington, and states like New York earlier, is a reflection of politicians representing their constituents.”
As for his role in the 2004 Bush campaign and its exploitation of marital politics, Mehlman is candid — and remorseful.
“At a personal level, I wish I had spoken out against the effort,” he says. “As I’ve been involved in the fight for marriage equality, one of the things I’ve learned is how many people were harmed by the campaigns in which I was involved. I apologize to them and tell them I am sorry. While there have been recent victories, this could still be a long struggle in which there will be setbacks, and I’ll do my part to be helpful.”
Mehlman's personal story reflects a national trend.
“The nation has transformed since 2004,” agrees E.J. Graff, a resident scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center and author of "What Is Marriage For?"
Advertisement:
“Marriage equality advocates have so much more support now than in 2004 that running anti-gay referendums, like the Republicans did in 2004, would now have the reverse effect of bringing out more Democrats and straight supporters of gay rights,” she said. Graff, also a contributing editor at the American Prospect, laments that the battle to undo many of those 2004 referendums barring recognition of same-sex marriage “will not be any fun.” But she firmly believes “Americans aren’t shocked anymore at the idea that two women or two men want to marry.” After the initial backlash, rapid changes in public opinion mean that same-sex marriage “is just not as much of an issue today.”
It's incredible progress in just eight short years. Actually, let’s make that 16 years.
In case self-congratulatory liberals have forgotten, in an effort to appeal to religious conservatives during his 1996 reelection bid, Democrat Bill Clinton ran radio ads touting his support for the Defense of Marriage Act. Surely few liberals have forgotten that, in an effort to appeal to religious conservatives during his own 2004 reelection bid, Republican George W. Bush supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and state referendums that would do the same.
It’s unclear whether Clinton’s support of DOMA helped or hurt him in 1996. As for 2004, subsequent analyses of the election results that year revealed two things: that turnout in the 11 states with ballot measures banning same-sex marriage was no higher than in the 39 without them. Contrary to one political myth, the presence of these referendums likely had no effect on the outcome of the Bush-Kerry presidential contest. But this we do know: Clinton advisor Dick Morris and Bush guru Karl Rove obviously believed their bosses’ anti-gay postures met the Hippocratic electoral standard — that is, their positions would do no harm to either president’s reelection chances.
Advertisement:
This year, how much attention marital politics attracts during the general election may largely hinge upon whom the Republicans nominate. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for example, says that although he personally opposes same-sex marriage, from a federalist standpoint he approves of the way politicians are using public ballot measures to give voters, rather than courts, the power to decide the issue in each state. Ron Paul’s view is similar to Gingrich’s.
Rick Santorum, meanwhile, remains firmly opposed, and is practiced in the dark art of depicting anything other than heterosexual, monogamous marriage as an immoral affront to divine design. As for beleaguered front-runner Mitt Romney, his position is just as flip-floppy as it is on so many other issues: He was for same-sex marriage as Massachusetts governor (issuing at least 189 special licenses to gay couples) before he was against it.
But Mehlman is encouraged by changes within his party, especially the support among younger Republicans for marital equality and related positions. In 2011, Mehlman personally lobbied 13 New York state Republican legislators to help pass the state’s same-sex marriage law, and did the same with 10 Republican U.S. senators during the congressional battle to repeal "don’t ask, don’t tell." Although he is still a loyal Republican — he recently contributed to a fundraiser for House Speaker John Boehner, a gay marriage opponent — a month ago Mehlman published an Op-Ed in the conservative Manchester Union-Leader in which he explained to conservatives and Republicans why supporting same-sex marriage venerates their beliefs not only in individual and economic freedoms, but personal responsibility and family values.
Advertisement:
Freedom to Marry founder and president Evan Wolfson says that, although he realizes Americans will have important economic concerns on their minds during this presidential election, he expects that “from time to time” marriage equality will surface as an issue throughout the year. “All of the Republican nominees have, to varying degrees, pandered to their party’s base — a base that’s out of touch with many Republicans,” Wolfson told me. He cited a July 2011 national polling memo co-authored by Obama pollster Joel Benenson and former Bush pollster Jan van Lohuizen that confirms the dramatic, recent shift toward public acceptance, if not approval, for same-sex marriage.
As for the 2012 Democratic nominee, President Obama’s record on same-sex marriage is “evolving” but still mixed. He and his White House are already feeling pressure from marriage equality advocates, the Democratic Party and even his own campaign leadership to endorse marital equality as part of the Democrats’ 2012 national party platform. “We have strongly urged the president to complete his journey — his evolution, as he puts it — on the freedom to marry,” says Wolfson, “because it’s not just the right thing to do, but the right thing to do politically.”
Progress toward nationalizing same-sex marriage is hardly linear. For every step forward there is often a half-step backward. The passage of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008 was a crushing blow to the movement, and although the Court of Appeals’ 9th Circuit recently invalidated Proposition 8’s same-sex marriage ban and a new poll this week reveals a significant jump in approval for same-sex marriage in the state, the popular vote defeat in an otherwise liberal state that Obama won comfortably still stings. There are also reports this week about a serious effort to revoke the same-sex marriage law in New Hampshire, where Republicans regained control of the Legislature in 2010.
Advertisement:
But as the 2012 general election approaches — and despite Santorum’s earnest attempts to reinvigorate culture war politics — the reality is that same-sex marriage fear-mongering and other forms of electoral gay-baiting no longer work as wedge issues the way they used do. DADT is dead, and thanks to a court ruling this week penned by a Bush-appointed federal judge, DOMA is on the ropes, too. If not already, soon enough same-sex marriage will act as a wedge issue that works against conservatives, Republicans and opponents of marital equality.Firefighters battled massive flames at a house in Durham Sunday afternoon after authorities say a kerosene heater was filled with gasoline.It happened around 4:25 p.m. in the 900 block of Exum Street. When crews arrived the house had fire and smoke coming from the roof and the first floor. All of the residents were already out of the house, firefighters say.Officials say it took about 30 minutes to put out the fire. No one was injured, but the house and everything inside were completely destroyed. The American Red Cross is assisting the residents.The residents say they filled a kerosene heater five to ten minutes before what they called "an explosion."Authorities stress how extremely important it is make sure only kerosene is used in a kerosene heater. Always use a container that is marked "Kerosene", and always make sure you are purchasing kerosene when you fill that container.Let’s get the usual explanation out of the way: homeopathy is the belief that “like cures like” (if you get a burn, you should hold it over a flame!) and the more you dilute something, the stronger it gets (the majority of dilutions don’t have a single atom left of the original material).
Knowing this, we bet you can’t wait to hear how homeopath Binal Master says she can cure domestic violence! Obvious trigger warning is obvious.
Don’t worry, she’s not suggesting your abusive partner give you a light spanking, or anything. She’s just printed some sensible advice for people who are escaping an abusive relationship alongside a list of useless “remedies” for the psychological problems that might plague both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.
Let’s start with the very worst thing she wrote:
Some cases are due to psychiatric disorders such as antisocial personality, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Homeopathy has been found effective in such cases also, where it gives people a second chance to adapt to society and live within the community.
Yep, she’s saying that homeopathy can help people with schizophrenia who are abusing their partners. I don’t know if you’re a person with schizophrenia or if you know anyone who is, but let me tell you what I know: finding the right real medication, like an anti-psychotic, is very, very important for someone with schizophrenia to live a normal, happy life. And once they find the right medication, staying on it can be extremely difficult but necessary. You know what people with severe psychiatric disorders don’t need? Magical water masquerading as medicine.
Let’s just say this clearly: homeopathy has not been found to be effective for psychiatric disorders in clinical trials. In perusing controlled studies, the most positive conclusion I could find was this, in a meta-analysis of 25 studies:
The database on studies of homeopathy and placebo in psychiatry is very limited, but results do not preclude the possibility of some benefit.
Even with that kind of waffling, the authors still state outright that there was no efficacy at all found for stress and anxiety. (They only saw the chance of some efficacy for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, both of which are medical mysteries in their own right.) Here’s one randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study that found there was no difference between homeopathy and placebo when it comes to anxiety. However, both placebo and homeopathy had substantial positive results, which helps explain why people actually think that the magical water works. In fact, according to a study last month, most people who use homeopathy for psychiatric issues use it for anxiety.
I couldn’t find any studies that looked into the homeopathic treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or antisocial personality, probably because it would be highly unethical for researchers to treat severe psychological disorders with magical water. But I guess that in Binal Master’s professional opinion, if it seems to work for anxiety, it must work for severe psychological disorders, right? And according to her bio at the end of the article, she “wants homeopathy to be considered the first line of treatment and not merely alternative.” If you had an abusive, schizophrenic partner, would you want his or her first line of treatment to be sugar water?
Anyway, Master goes on to provides an entire list of which magic sugar water mixture should be used for which case of domestic violence. For instance, Ignatia should be used if your partner’s abuse caused you “disappointment in one’s life dreams”. Like, your life dream had been to be safe and healthy, and so now you are very disappointed. Natrum Muriaticum should be used if, because of your partner’s abuse, you now “cry horribly while alone looking at pictures and listening to music”. Arnica, which has been shown again and again to not have any effect, will help if the spousal abuse has made you feel “hurt, bruised, and tender”.
There are also “remedies” for the abuser. It’s unclear whether Master expects abusers to read this article, recognize themselves, and medicate accordingly, or whether she wants the abused partner to surreptitiously dose the abuser and wait for a magical cure, rather than get out of the relationship. Regardless, one cure is apparently Lycopodium to improve his self-esteem. Master says he may be domineering to family but meek in public, so Lycopodium should... make him... domineering everywhere? Unclear.
Lachesis is for the partner who is abusing you out of jealousy, and Anacardium is just for your typical violent, raging abuser. Considering the homeopathic principal of “like cures like,” I assume that Anacardium is a plant that, when eaten, gives you rabies.
I would say that this is the most irresponsible article on alternative medicine I’ve ever read, but let’s be honest, I read a lot of irresponsible articles on alt med. Master gets a few points for actually suggesting that domestic violence victims alert authorities and seek help from a doctor, even if by “doctor” she actually means “the magical shaman who hangs out at the Whole Foods on 15th Street.” Overall, on a scale from “harmless nonsense” to “horrific bullshit,” I’d rate this one as “deplorable fuckery.”Since 2005, air in the European Union has no longer been free. Any business or industry that emits so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has to pay for them in the form of emission certificates which, in turn, are traded on energy exchanges.
Basically, it is a clean solution, says climate expert Stefan Krug from Greenpeace. In practice, however, the price per ton of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is currently 6.50 euros, or roughly $8.12, and unfortunately the European Union had expected the price to be around 20 euros. "That means all the planning doesn't work right now," said Krug.
The price is so low, in fact, that the Bavarian exchange stopped trading emission certificates at the end of May. "The volume traded on European exchanges in recent months has dropped drastically to nearly zero," the Munich-based bourse said in a statement.
CO 2 trading as a regulator
The economics of CO² trading don't work right now, says Krug
The idea behind certificates is to regulate CO 2 emissions. The EU hopes to reduce emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2050. To achieve that goal, the EU introduced emission certificates in 2005. The concept gives industry and the energy utilities a certain number of pollution rights, quantified in tons. If a company emits more than the basic amount, it can buy certificates. By contrast, a company that sharply reduces its emissions – for example, by switching to more climate-friendly production methods – is rewarded with the possibility of selling its excess and unused emission ceiling for a profit.
If, however, the price of certificates drops, businesses have less incentive to cut their emissions because they can't earn enough from selling certificates to offset investments in renewable energies or climate-friendly production.
The price has dropped, for the most part, due to certificate giveaways by the government, says Krug, adding that half of all certificates have been distributed free of charge. "This has led to a huge mountain of certificates that companies can't get rid of," he notes, "and accordingly, the incentive to save CO 2 is low."
Resistance in the EU
New proposals are coming from the EU this year, says Hedegaard
EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has announced that she will present proposals by the end of the year on reforming emissions trading. But even within the EU there is opposition to cutting back on the number of certificates to breathe life into the market. In particular, Poland, which generates 80 percent of its electricity with coal-fired power plants, is strongly against any such measure.
Energy intensive industries share the Poles' view. Hans-Jürgen Kerkhoff, president of the German steel manufacturers' association WV Stahl, wrote recently in the Frankfurt Allgemeine newspaper that emissions trading would "lead to deindustrialization." He warned that Europeans were not competitive because they were the only ones paying for their CO 2 emissions.
China plans to join
That could change, however. China has said that it is planning to introduce a national CO 2 emissions trading scheme next year. Initially, certificates would go on sale in five cities and two provinces in a test phase. Industries in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen and Tianjin, and the provinces of Guangdong and Hubei, would have to buy pollution rights. Some 250 million people live and work in these economic zones. If the test-run works well, emissions trading would be introduced nationwide in China in 2015.
China plans a test run for emissions trading in 2013
Australia, South Korea, the US state of California and the Canadian province of Quebec have also announced their intentions to start emissions trading. But mostly China, which for a long time resisted binding climate rules, could bring a turnaround to the international CO 2 market. Experts hope that such a broad market would then drive investments in climate-friendly technologies.
Certificates instead of taxes
The climate could already benefit from emissions markets in China, Australia, South Korea, California and Quebec. More than 40 percent of global emissions would be regulated by CO 2 trading with these areas. EU emissions account for about 14 percent of total greenhouse gases.
For such a market mechanism to function properly, however, the CO 2 price would have to be high enough. The alternative, says Stefan Krug of Greenpeace, would be a CO 2 tax. But that would be more difficult, he admits, because tax issues are regulated at the national level. Besides, with taxes there is no guarantee that the money would actually be used for climate-friendly projects.
Author: Helle Jeppesen / gb
Editor: Ben KnightYou have probably heard of Waze, the traffic and navigation app that combines traffic direction and a huge community that passes on real-time information of what is happening in your daily commute route - and if you don't, you should. One of the most iconic features of the app is the introduction of famous voices for the driving instructions, which are usually funny ones. For example, back in September U.S. users had the voices of Stephen Colbert, Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother and Rob Gronkowski, a famous football player. As the launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens approaches, fans of the franchise are getting really excited for seeing the newest installment of the epic sci-fi classic, and if you use Waze for your daily commute, you can have fun with the C-3PO robot voice cheering your way to work and back home.
This time Waze made things a little bit different and interesting: instead of only guiding you, C-3PO actually has his own missions too, as it will be looking for his friends R2-D2 and BB-8. The cool thing is that if you join the special Star Wars community on Waze, you score points each time a robot is found on the map. Other characters and items from Star Wars universe will also be fiddling around your city, including stormtroopers, lightsabers, and Tie fighters, and you should see them on your map while driving around. To join the Star Wars community, just click the Waze icon on the bottom left area, click My Waze, then "Teams" and finally the branded item "Star Wars". The free update should already be available in the Play Store.
If you have your apps to update automatically, just go to the app settings in order to activate the voice. If English is not your preferred language, you can choose from a list of different voices, including Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and much more. Bought by Google for $1.2 billion in 2013, Waze has hundreds of millions of users around the world and their algorithms provide important information about traffic in real time, which are also included in Google Maps and are extremely helpful when you want to plan a commute, and now you can commute using the Force.Europe has tapped out its supply of Internet addresses in its assigned range, but some tech prospectors believe they've found some IPv4 gold—a full block of 16,777,216 addresses that isn't used to connect to the Internet. But the British government agency that owns the block of addresses (referred to in IP networking as a /8 block) has no intentions of giving it up, even though almost none of the addresses will ever be publicly accessible. That has inspired an electronic petition campaign on a House of Commons website to convince British lawmakers to auction off the address block.
John Graham-Cumming, a programmer for CloudFlare and technology book author, pointed out the address block (from 51.0.0.0 to 51.255.255.255) in a recent blog post, noting that it was apparently unused. Based on a Network World article from May, he estimated the block coud be worth as much as $1.5 billion on the open market, given that it's essentially the last unused block of its size.
The Department of Works and Pensions, which was assigned the block by RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre), acknowledged its ownership of the address block in a response to a Freedom of Information request made by James Marten on behalf of the public watchdog site Whatdotheyknow.com last December. The addresses—or at least about 80 percent of them—are in use, according to a letter from DWP spokesman Phil Tomlinson on behalf of the department's IT group, but none are intended to be accessed from the public Internet. The remainder are being used as the basis for a proposed Public Services Network—a private government intranet.
That would make the addresses ripe, so to speak, for conversion to a private network, and for the addresses to be freed up for other use. However, Tomlinson wrote, "DWP have no plans to release any of the address space for use on the public Internet." The reason, he claimed, was that readdressing the existing systems already configured with addresses from the block would be too expensive. "DWP are aware that the worldwide IPv4 address space is almost exhausted, but knows that in the short to medium term there are mechanisms available to ISPs that will allow continued expansion of the Internet, and believes that in the long-term a transition to IPv6 will resolve address exhaustion," he wrote; besides, the address pool would only last a few months.Following President Trump's sign off last Friday on a short-term debt-ceiling/government funding/hurricane aid deal (thanks to Democrats' votes), the US Treasury was finally freed from the shackles of the debt ceiling which it hit nearly one year ago and which meant that US federal debt would be at roughly $19.808 trillion for months.
Well, no more: according to the latest Daily Trasury Statement as of Friday, total US debt surged by $317.6 billion from its Thursday closing print of $19.845 trillion, following the short-term debt suspension which kicked the can through December 8, to finally rise above the "psychological barrier" of $20 trillion, or $20,162,176,797,904.13 to be precise.
As shown in the chart below, from March 16 until Thursday, Sept. 8, the official federal debt subject to the legal limit was at $19,808,747,000,000, i.e. the statutory debt ceiling. This is because the previous suspension of the debt limit expired on March 15 and the debt limit had been reset on that day at the level the debt reached at the close of business that day. On that day, the Treasury started using "extraordinary measures" to keep the debt subject to the limit about $25 milion below the limit.
The Treasury was finally freed from this limit on Friday, and thus the $317.6 billion surge in one day as the US Government replenished its extraordinary measures, which should allow the Treasury to coast until some time in March even after the next debt ceiling is hit on December 8.In a mere nine minutes of Q&A, we noted Welker making an oddly high number of foot references. Here they all are for your sexual listening pleasure. The Patriots' trash-talking is a little more subtle than the Jets'.
The transcript:
Q: How valuable is it to have a guy like Tom Brady standing in the huddle, especially in the intense situations of the playoff atmosphere?
WW: Having Tom in there - it goes without saying, the guy is who he is and he does a great job of making sure everyone is on the same page and putting their best foot forward going out there and playing well and doing what they can out there.
Q: How do you approach the young guys about what to expect in the post season?
WW: You just talk to them. It's a playoff atmosphere and you can't just stick your toe in the water, you've got to jump right in and make sure you're ready to go and make things happen. In a playoff atmosphere that's what you have to do.
Q: Do you try to convey a sense of urgency with the younger players? If something comes up during the game - they have to take advantage of that opportunity because they may not get another one...
WW: Absolutely. Every play is so critical and that is something that we talk about quite a bit. Going out there and in every single play if there is a bust or a mental error - it could cost you the game and that is something that we have to stay on top of and make sure that we are doing everything possible to be ready to go on every single play.
Q: I know you are excited to play football every game no matter what the situation is but considering last year when you were forced to sit and watch the playoff game, is there a little bit more excitement for you because you are getting back in the playoffs?
WW: It is definitely a little bit different especially [last year] I had my foot up in the air trying to get the swelling to go down and things like that. [I'm] definitely excited about getting the opportunity to go out there and have some fun and get in the playoff atmosphere. This is what it's all about. This is where you want to get to. This being my seventh year in the league now, and understanding what this means and how rare of an opportunity it is - [we've] got to make sure we take full advantage of it.
Q: How frustrating was it to not be on the field last year? You haven't played a playoff game since Glendale in 2007. How did it feel not being out there last year?
WW: It was tough. It was definitely hard to watch, especially the way the game went. I am definitely excited to be out there and these are the types of games you play for. This is what you spend all year getting ready for and you want to go out there and put your best foot forward.
Q: Where were you physically last year for the Baltimore game?
WW: Where was I physically?
Q: Were you on the field, at home or in a box?
WW: I was actually in the box. Yeah, I was up there watching the game.
Q: Can you put a number on how much Darrelle Revis was covering you on the Dec. 6th game? It seemed significantly more than the first game.
WW: It was definitely a little more. I don't really know a number. It was quite a bit, especially any time they did any sort of man coverages and things like that. It seemed to be a lot more, so you've got to be ready for everything and study film on everybody, and make sure you are definitely ready for him and you've got to bring it every play because he is a great player. He's got great feet, he moves around well and [he] does some good things out there.
Q: A lot of the defensive players have been talking this week about what you guys needed physically to move forward after the Cleveland game. Offensively how have you guys grown as a unit since that Cleveland game?
WW: I think we have had some younger players really step up this year. Over the year that has been how it goes - guys start to mature, start to understand things, start to understand what the coaches want, and get more comfortable in what they're doing. That's huge - having some of the younger guys do that throughout this season and that's big. They really have grown a lot and I think it has really helped our offense.
Q: What makes Revis as good as he is?
WW: I think he is very patient. He has good feet. He moves around really well. He understands the game. He gets his hands on you pretty well. [He] understands what you're trying to do to him, so he definitely is a tough guy to really set up and get open against. You've got to be on top of your game and make sure that you're doing everything possible to get open.
Q: From what you've seen from Aaron [Hernandez] and Rob [Gronkowski] in practice and obviously in the games are they not typical rookies and for that reason, are they going to have no problem handling the playoff pressure?
WW: I think being as young as they are, I don't think they really don't understand the significance of this game which is sometimes a good thing. They just go out there and play ball and [they] know what they know. They play hard and play well and I think that will be good for them. I know they are going to go out there and give it everything they've got and that's something that they've done all year. That is something that won't change this week, so we are definitely excited to have them be apart of our team and [we're] excited to have them go out there and make some plays in a critical game.
Q: Isn't that what veterans strive for too? To just go out there and play a game even if it's a championship game, as if it's a regular season game to keep on an even-keel?
WW: In a way, yeah, but it's different still. It's the playoffs and this is what you strive for. This is what you work all season for - to get this opportunity and to get this chance and you've got to take full advantage of it.
Q: What has Deion Branch brought to the offense?
WW: Deion is such a great player and such a great teammate. The guy is tough to cover. He does a lot of great things out there - he runs some really good routes. Tom [Brady] trusts him and they are kind of on the same page. He is another guy with great feet and he can really move around and do some great things out there.
Q: You guys were on such an impressive role heading into the last 5 - 6 weeks of the season, how do you guys feel you will handle the bye week, are you afraid that you have lost any momentum at all?
WW: To be honest with you, I feel like our practices have almost simulated a game as well as we could have. We really got after it during the bye week and even this week of really concentrating and practicing hard and making sure that every play, even in practice... you never know when you will get the chance to run it again before the game, so you want to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward out there and making it happen.
Q: How does the playoff atmosphere translate to practices this week of preparation, do you sense it?
WW: Yeah, absolutely. [We're] really moving forward and we're going out there being good little foot soldiers. We are making sure we are going out there doing everything coach [Belichick] asks us to do: making plays and doing everything necessary to get ready for the game.
Q: You've been on both sides of blow-out games in your career. Who does it help motivate more, when you've been blown- out or when you've been on the team that did the blowing out?
WW: I don't know. I think at this point in the year, its playoffs and you understand that even though it ended up being a blow-out last game, one or two plays here and there and it could have been a different ball game so, you've got to make sure you are bringing it every single week, especially this time of year. You've got to bring it every single play and make sure you are putting yourself in the best opportunity to win. The last game doesn't really mean anything and it's all about moving forward and what we do this week.
Q: Is communication a big factor this week with all of the Jets blitz packages? You've really got to focus and be alert and make sure everyone is on the same page.
WW: You definitely have to make sure you are on top of things. Especially with this team, they do so many different things. [They] move people around and do a lot of blitzes. A lot of teams you don't see all year, so you definitely have to be on your toes and make sure that you're ready to go. You've got to make sure you are putting everything out there that you need to, to be ready to go but communication is definitely a huge thing.Capital Economics tells us why the most pessimistic visions of a post-Brexit economy are wrong and why a fresh austerity drive by the Government would be disasterous.
Capital Economics was started by Woolfson prize-winning economist Roger Bootle, who has for some time argued Brexit would not be a complete disaster.
Bootle thinks that the economic impact of Brexit may be substantially cushioned by the right response from policymakers and politicians
The post-Brexit doomsday scenarios painted by some economists are over-exaggerated argue Capital Economics Jonathan Loynes and Paul Hollingworth, |
spending well beyond their salaries.”
Abedin’s ex-husband, Anthony Weiner, is now under investigation for reportedly sexting a 15-year-old, which is how the FBI apparently uncovered Abedin’s Yahoo emails which Weiner had access to.
Even if Abedin’s personal Yahoo account wasn’t one of the 500 million hacked, a foreign entity – or a terrorist group – could have potentially blackmailed Weiner into handing over classified information given his past sexual misconduct.
This article was posted: Monday, October 31, 2016 at 11:13 am
Print this page.
Infowars.com Videos:
Comment on this articleWhen Tifatul Sembiring's minstry isn't shutting down non-salacious gay rights Web sites, it's threatening obnoxious Twitter users with a dozen years behind bars.
Tifatul, who heads Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Information, has suggested that offensive Tweets can be punished with up to 12 years in prison.
Given the often rancorous nature of Twitter, proactive enforcement would require Indonesia to build lots of new prisons: the nation is the world's third-biggest Twitter market.
But is this campaign driven by the whims of one man?
An Indonesian media commentator, Wimar Witoelar, tells Radio Australia that the Tifatul pays "less heed to the constitution than through his own personal notions of propriety and morality" and that his statement "goes against the grain of most internet users and observers."
Indeed, Islamic piety appears to be Titaful's pet subject and his role as information minister is largely marked by a crusade to rid the Web of wickedness. He's an appointee from the Prosperous Justice Party, which seeks to entrench Islamic values into government. The party, however, can't win elections outright and has pulled in only a marginal percentage of votes in past elections.
Policing online porn with keyword flags is one thing but policing "offensive" Tweets -- whatever that means -- is hugely difficult.
As Wimar suggests, the pious minister may be " just crying wolf and shouting in the desert."LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Islamic militants killed hundreds of people in an attack on a border town in Nigeria's remote northeast, escalating the country's violent insurrection in which more than 270 schoolgirls have been kidnapped.
As many as 300 people were killed when a band of extremists attacked the town of Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, according to local press reports. The attack and hundreds of casualties were confirmed Wednesday by Borno state information commissioner Mohammed Bulama who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday. Shops and homes were set ablaze and razed in the attack, he said.
Workers sit beside a banner as they press for the release of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram more than two weeks ago during a workers' rally in Lagos on May 1, 2014. The mass kidnapping in the Chibok area of northeastern Borno state was one of the most shocking attacks in Boko Haram's five-year extremist uprising, which has killed thousands across the north and centre of the country. AFP PHOTO/PIUS UTOMI EKPEI PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images
The news of the attack adds to Nigeria's growing crisis from the Islamic extremists' violent campaign of bombings, attacks and abductions. The militant Boko Haram rebels are holding captive 276 teenage students, after abducting them from their boarding school in Chibok, also in northeastern Borno state.
In the attack on Gamboru Ngala the militants sprayed gunfire into the crowds of people at a busy market that was open Monday night when temperatures cool in the semi-desert region, reported ThisDay newspaper.
Nigerian federal Senator Ahmed Zannah said the attack lasted about 12 hours, according to the newspaper. The insurgents set homes on fire and gunned down residents who tried to escape from the flames, reported the paper.
A picture taken on April 3, 2014 in Maine-Soroa, eastern Niger, shows Nigerian children standing near a tent at a camp for refugees who fled the fighting between the Nigerian army and the Islamist rebels of Boko Haram. AFP PHOTO / STR BOUREIMA HAMA/AFP/Getty Images
Zannah blamed fighters of Nigeria's homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network that has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 276 teenage girls and is threatening to sell them into slavery.
Boko Haram's five-year-old Islamic uprising has claimed the lives of thousands of Muslims and Christians. More than 1,500 people have died in their attacks so far this year. The insurgents say Western influences are corrupting and they want to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of 170 million of whom half are Christian.TWO Sydney brothers have reportedly done a deal with Apple to provide their e-ink keyboard to be included in next year’s Apple MacBooks.
The Wall Street Journal reports Apple has done a deal with Sonder founders, Felipe and Francisco Serra-Martins, who have developed a keyboard that has e-ink keys that change depending on which application you’re using, automatically switching from a Qwerty keyboard to shortcuts for programs like Photoshop.
The Wall Street Journal says: “the new keyboards will be a standard feature on MacBook laptops, and will be able to display any alphabet, along with an unlimited number of special commands and emojis.”
But other publications including Apple Insider have dismissed the report as false.
Apple has not commented on the report.
Sonder issued a statement that did not deny a deal with Apple but did say that an article reporting the detal contained errors, including details of a meeting between Sonder and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“Sonder founder Francisco Serra-Martins did not meet Tim Cook on Wednesday 12th October 2016, although we would very much like the opportunity to do so in the future,” the statement said.
“We are not able to comment further on information on any single company or customer.”
The brothers unveiled their keyboard last year, using e-ink to change the display on the keys like an ebook reader changes its display.
In an interview last year with Start Up Daily, Francisco said the inspiration for the keyboard came from the presentation Steve Jobs gave in 2007 in launching the iPhone.
There are reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook met with the Sonder in China last week.Despite multiple reports from various sources that say Weld County and Greeley are at the forefront of recession recovery, nearly one-in-six children are living in poverty.
A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau says Weld is among those areas where the number of children living in poverty has continued to increase in recent years, despite robust economic recovery from the Great Recession. The local numbers, which surpass state averages, took into consideration all children between 5-17 who the Census Bureau identified as living in families in poverty.
The county's child poverty rate of 14.9. percent is below the national average of 20.8 percent.
The report offered data for children of all ages who were living in poverty. It broke that data down by state, county and school district. It looked at the students living within the boundaries of a school district, not the number of students actually attending school in that district.
In Greeley-Evans School District 6, the numbers are staggering.
According to the report, in 2003, of the 20,270 students in the district, 3,071, or 15 percent, were living in poverty. By 2009, when the recession that most say started in December 2007 had ended, those numbers grew to 23,317, 4,883 and 21 percent, respectively. They spiked to an all-time high of 21,998, 5,315 and 24 percent in 2012 before decreasing to 22,410, 4,757 and 21 percent in 2013, the last year for which figures were available.
Recommended Stories For You
"It doesn't surprise us," said Theresa Myers, director of communications for District 6. "They are the same figures that we see reflected in our free and reduced lunches."
Myers said the school district does everything it can to support the students.
"It has always been our mission to counteract poverty by giving them a good education. We are the best hope they have for ending the cycle of poverty."
Weld's numbers in general were a mixed bag.
In 2003, 11.9 percent (5,038) of Weld students between 5-17 were living in poverty. In 2009, that number was 16.4 percent (7,901). It dropped to 14.9 percent in 2013 (7,740).
That's higher than the state average, but lower than the national average.
Colorado in 2003 was at 11.6 percent, 14.6 percent in 2009 and 15.7 percent in 2013.
The United States had 16.1 percent of students living in poverty in 2003, 18.2 percent in 2009 and 20.8 percent in 2013.
Just two districts in Weld, Johnstown-Milliken Re-5J and Windsor-Severance Re-4, have reduced in the number of students living in poverty.
Johnstown, at 10 percent in 2003, was at 9 percent in 2013. Windsor, the lowest in the county, has fluctuated from 7 percent in 2003 to an all-time high of 9 percent in 2009 and down to 6 percent in 2013.
Windsor Superintendent Karen Trusler said she was not surprised by the numbers, adding the cost of living in Windsor is simply too high for many people.
"If you check rental prices, we have workforce housing but not low-income housing," Trusler said. "Knowing what it costs to rent or buy a house or apartment here, it's hard for a family living in poverty to live here."
Trusler said the district has programs and other mechanisms in place to support those students who are struggling.
Johnstown Superintendent Martin Foster said the same is true in his district, where the only direction for growth is west toward Interstate 25, and the homes going up are at the higher end of the socioeconomic scale. He added, however, that most of that growth to the district was in 2003-05.
"We all know what happened in '08," he said. "The growth is back to between 1 and 2 percent. But when the new homes were built, they had the higher incomes reflected."
Lyle SmithGraybeal, vice president of community impact for United Way of Weld County said, his office also has noticed a higher need for services. He attributes it to the high cost of housing in Greeley.
"Three things have happened that have led to an even less affordable Greeley," he said. "The 2008 slowdown that caused builders to slow down their efforts for affordable housing. The flood, we lost mobile homes, in Evans alone 260 units, those were affordable housing. And the energy development efforts of oil and gas, simply with just people moving in."
Everyone said they doubt the trend will change much as housing shortages continue and more people become working poor.
"They are not relying on public resources to live off of, they just don't have the job that meet the needs of their family," Myers said.
SmithGraybeal agreed. Adding the need for early childhood intervention is also growing because the cost of housing is also rising and more and more parents are taking on multiple jobs.
"They are either going to take on more employment or reach out for emergency services," he said. "That means there is not as much parenting ability to help them do well in getting ready for school."
Myers added: "It's tough. But it takes an entire community."This month saw the latest batch of appointments to the House of Lords, the unelected second house of British legislature. The people who were ‘elevated’ to the lords as peers of the realm can now claim attendance fee’s and a raft of allowances as working peers. Only the England and Wales Green’s Jenny Jones has been put there through a member ballot, all the rest are direct nominees from parties. The Greens only nominated after some debate, reasoning they can quicker bring about change by having someone on the inside.
Many of those who have been ‘elevated’ are party donors or big business supporters of those who have put them in the Lords. Ever get the feeling you’re being cheated? This is an unaccountable level of our democracy which is a relic of our feudal past and has no place in a modern democracy, but it’s ok, because as a modern democracy surely our elected representatives will be looking to reform this system… right?
Nope. Reform of the House of Lords is off the table again, after the Lib Dems meekly ditched it after their Tory ‘partners’ decided they’d rather not honour the coalition agreement on this issue (something worth remembering when further devolution is waved under our noses by Better Together). There are no plans for any reform at Westminster, save the Tories desire to redraw electoral boundaries to suit their desires.
Someone mentioned to me on Twitter that this was nothing to do with the independence referendum. I couldn’t quite believe it. This is EVERYTHING to do with the referendum. Unaccountability and underrepresentation is the most valid reason to vote for independence; we can create a fully accountable and representative parliament that people relate to; no more Barons, Lords and Bishops creating, vetoing and meddling with our democracy (unless they stand for election of course).
There is no argument for retaining the House of Lords. It is useful to have a second chamber to review the work of parliament but as a new nation we could innovate, not hold onto relics like the Lords. Let’s find new systems that suit Scotland and allow our people to be truly represented and lawmakers to be sufficiently challenged.
I’m genuinely not content to sit back and campaign for independence as a continuation of the way things are. What’s the point in that? If we’re getting independence, let’s take the chance to do things differently and show the world what a great wee country we can be. Put fairness, representation and social democracy back to our heart and we can truly lead where the UK shamefully falls. This is what we’re fighting for and what the Unionists are protecting. The abolition of feudal right, privilege and archaic aristocracy.
Labour, Conservatives and the Lib Dems are protecting this system because they currently benefit from it. This is their career ladder, their birthright and their powerbase. If we take it away then the elite will be forced to do some soul-searching and our democracy might just be more representative of the people that live here, not the people that rule here. The MP’s and the Lords currently based in Scotland, will have lost a substantial cash cow. It is not necessarily your interests they have at heart when they claim we’re Better Together.
After we abolish the peerages we can look at the issue of land reform. In Scotland, 432 families own half the land in the country. That’s an astonishing figure. We need to place large amounts of this land in the hands of the community and out of the reach of the elite. Only then will we be able to address depopulation in rural communities and the dearth of social housing across the country.
At the end of the day, I don’t know if Scotland has a greater social conscience than the rest of the country; I’ve not been out and asked everyone. But I have to believe we can do better. I can only campaign and talk about what I would like to see and why I’m voting for independence. I want fairness to be put at the heart of this country and for the weakest and most vulnerable in our society to be protect, not the rich and most powerful.
What do you want?
David Officer
National CollectiveAs the presidential election marathon breaks into a final sprint, the Trump campaign faces a jaw-dropping gap in the ground game: Hillary Clinton currently has more than three times the number of campaign offices in critical states than does Donald Trump. Those figures include both Trump offices and Republican National Committee victory offices, as confirmed by the Trump campaign.
The contrast is a test for the conventional campaign model and points to the candidates’ stark differences in methods. Clinton is cleaving to the data-driven, on-the-ground machine that won two elections for Barack Obama. Trump, on the other hand, insists he does not need traditional campaign tactics to win the election, pointing to his overwhelming nomination victory achieved with a relatively small team and little spending.
Nevertheless, the ground game is poised to be critical in 2016. Undecided voters are becoming scarce, and targeted turnout may be the deciding factor on Nov. 8. That usually requires field offices with phone banks, organized volunteers and a coordinated effort to knock on doors and get people to the polls.
To pinpoint campaign operations, PBS NewsHour compiled office data from 15 key states, speaking with state and national campaign officials, cross-referencing Federal Election Commission spending reports and checking local news coverage.
As of Aug. 30, Hillary Clinton has 291 offices in those 15 battlegrounds. Donald Trump has 88. (Those figures include joint presidential and party offices.) Both campaigns pledge that more offices are coming.
The Trump campaign says its number will more than double — adding another 132 offices — in coming days and weeks.
Lagging so far behind in infrastructure as the campaigns enter the post-Labor Day blitz is unprecedented.
But lagging so far behind in infrastructure as the campaigns enter the post-Labor Day blitz is unprecedented. To win, the Trump team hopes that their candidate can rewrite the laws of the ground game.
Inside Campaign Offices
Donald Trump’s suite of offices in Alexandria, Virginia, is not a campaign field office, we are told when we visit.
That makes sense, given the lack of Trump posters or photos and the absence of any identifying sign outside the large glass doors. The solitary entryway campaign token is a Trump bobblehead doll, standing on the side of a long, brown and otherwise unadorned reception desk.
The sparsely-furnished space is devoted to national strategy and liaison work with Congress, an important function.
But it sits in Virginia, which was a key battleground state but lately is moving away from the Trump campaign’s grasp. It is a state where Hillary Clinton has 29 field offices open. Trump has 18, one of his largest totals at the moment, but the campaign clarified that all 18 are Republican Party offices. Trump is set to open 25 of his own Virginia offices soon, the campaign says. But until he does, the strategy hub was the closest thing we could find to a local Trump-staffed office.
In contrast, Clinton’s nearby Alexandria office is smaller, but full of signs of on-the-ground campaign life: A giant calendar of community outreach events, a room set aside as a phone bank, and posters swirling local flavor into national mantras. One says “Hillary Ya’ll!” Another, “Virginia is Stronger Together.”
Time, Not Space
For the Trump campaign, the deeper issue may be time, not space.
Take three make-or-break states. Pennsylvania has two Trump offices right now. North Carolina, one. Florida, the biggest swing state prize, also has just one – Trump’s Sarasota headquarters.
No matter how many staffers get on the ground, the Trump campaign faces a question of timing in many swing counties.
Those four Trump offices cover 165,000 square miles of critical election territory. Clinton has 100 offices in the same space.
That is just right now. The Trump campaign plans to open 57 Trump offices in those three states in the next few weeks, according to Susie Wiles, a communications strategist for the campaign.
But no matter how many staffers get on the ground, the Trump campaign faces a question of timing in many swing counties.
“There’s an element of time required to get operational,” said Steve Schale, Obama’s campaign manager in Florida in 2008. “Little things like getting leases signed for offices, getting cell phones for organization, getting volunteers trained, these are not turnkey operations.”
And even if Trump eventually closes the field office gap in Florida, the offices will be playing catch up compared to Clinton staffers who have been on the ground in the state for months, said Schale, who also served as a senior advisor to Obama’s Florida operation in 2012.
Fewer Offices = A Different Game?
The Trump campaign says it is reinventing the ground game. Its critics say the campaign simply doesn’t have one.
“I haven’t seen a successful candidate with less infrastructure, particularly in a presidential campaign, than this one,” said one longtime Florida political insider who asked not to give his name to speak candidly about Trump’s operation.
In response, Trump’s chief strategist in Florida points to an unconventional tactic just launched in the Sunshine State: three campaign RV’s on the road.
The mobile offices, a way to stretch resources and miles, launched in the past week. Two were scheduled to move out Tuesday.
Trump “wants to go after every voter,” said Karen Giorno, the chief strategist for Trump in Florida. “Politicians take voters for granted, and the idea [of campaign offices] is the old guard, which Hillary represents. That the voter comes to them. We are not the old guard, Mr. Trump wants to go to the voters.”
Giorno said one of the RV’s will focus on voters in the central I-4 corridor, between Tampa and Daytona. Another will tour farther north, from Pensacola to Jacksonville, along the I-10. And the third will rove everywhere else as needed.
The Trump campaign says it is reinventing the ground game. Its critics say the campaign does not have a ground game.
Moreover, Giorno stresses, the campaign is focusing on an unquestionably important ground game component that does not require offices: registering voters.
Since 2012, Republicans in Florida have registered some 300,000 more voters than Democrats. And Giorno has set a goal of registering 100,000 more Republicans in the next few weeks.
“We are not unaware of the fact that the ground game is important,” she said, “But we haven’t stopped registering voters.”
Clinton Strategy
In contrast to Trump, the Clinton campaign has invested in hundreds of field offices in places across the political map, including in several traditionally conservative states like Virginia and North Carolina that have become toss-ups in recent elections.
In Virginia, several of Clinton’s 29 offices are located in the rapidly expanding — and increasingly Democratic – suburbs of Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. But she has also opened up offices in more conservative counties farther south in the state, like Chesterfield and Henrico, a sign the campaign is confident voters in those areas are receptive to her message.
In North Carolina, which Obama won in 2008 and narrowly lost four years later, the Clinton campaign has opened 26 offices, most of them in the past month. Trump has just one field office in the state.
At the same time that Clinton appears focused on winning Obama-era tossup states like Virginia, the campaign remains heavily invested in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, three critical swing states.
Clinton has 34 field offices open in Florida, for example, a state Trump likely needs to carry in order to win the election. A similar contrast exists in Pennsylvania, where Clinton has 36 field offices. Trump has just two offices open right now, though the campaign told the NewsHour it plans to open more than 20 in the near future.
Since 2012, Republicans in Florida have registered some 300,000 more voters than Democrats.
Trump needs a large turnout among white, mostly working-class voters in western Pennsylvania to win the state. But Clinton has opened several offices in that part of the state, including nine on one day in mid-August alone, in an effort to make inroads with moderate blue-collar voters who may be hesitant to vote for Trump.
To all that, add a profound and polished data game. The Clinton campaign has been working for nearly two years on a digital package that takes the renowned Obama data model and adds to it, allowing the campaign to tailor messages, volunteer requests and specific ads to individuals. Trump has said that data is “overrated” in presidential campaigns.
Trump Strategy
The Trump strategy, like Clinton’s, targets a range of states.
North Carolina, with 12 offices planned, is the red state with the largest presence expected.
And Trump officials insist they are building up large infrastructure in traditionally blue states like Wisconsin and Michigan, where the campaign says it plans to open 26 and 25 field offices, respectively. And, Trump officials point out, even without the majority of their offices in place, their campaign has begun to close in on Clinton in the polls in a few battleground states.
The Trump team is also counting on something that is harder to measure: voter passion.
In Michigan, Trump state director Scott Hagerstrom said he has never seen the response he has witnessed over the past few weeks. “We are used to having to beg people to volunteer but now we’re seeing huge demand,” he said. Several other Trump state directors echoed the thought and insisted they are running out of yard signs.
But what Team Trump calls passion, others called a campaign still looking for a foothold with 70 days until Election Day.
“Trump doesn’t really have a campaign on the ground,” said Schale, the Democratic strategist. “Every day that goes by that Trump doesn’t have a footprint on the ground is just another missed opportunity.”
“Offices are bricks and mortar,” said Trump Florida strategist Giorno. “That doesn’t make a campaign. What makes a campaign is the people. And we have an army of people we have not deployed yet.”OTTAWA – Conservative parliamentarians and long-time Tory operatives sitting on the sidelines of the leadership contest are anxiously hoping MP Erin O’Toole will jump into the race, believing he’s the best candidate to broaden party support and defeat the Liberals.
Momentum for O’Toole is building as some recent signs suggest longtime cabinet minister Peter MacKay, considered a possible frontrunner, might decide to stay out.
O’Toole, a former cabinet minister in the late stages of the Harper government, is expected to decide in a matter of days, according to a source familiar with his plans.
Party leadership races are far from an exact science, but a growing number of Conservative members of Parliament and organizers says the affable MP for Durham checks most of the boxes the party needs in its next leader.
O’Toole is young (43), from Ontario, married with two young kids. He represents a riding in the Greater Toronto Area, but lives in a small community and has rural sensibilities.
He also served in the military, has strong ties to Atlantic Canada, and business experience in downtown Toronto. He is seen as levelheaded and a good communicator.
Then there’s his good foundation in French (although he would need to brush up on it to be fully bilingual) and the fact he can trumpet his cabinet experience without carrying the baggage of the Harper government.
Above all, perhaps, he would represent a change for the Conservatives.
I think there would be a lot of support for a candidate like Erin and what he would bring to the race
“I think there would be a lot of support for a candidate like Erin and what he would bring to the race,” said Jason MacDonald, Harper’s former director of communications in the Prime Minister’s Office, now with H+K Strategies.
“Erin is someone I believe would hold a lot of appeal for party members. And caucus members respect him, which is a critical factor for anyone considering a leadership run.”
He is a “principled conservative” who satisfies an appetite within the party and general public for generational change, adds MacDonald. He’s also an excellent communicator who can deliver a strong message “with the right tone and with intelligence.”
Last week, MacKay told a Newfoundland radio station “it’s difficult, to say the least, to walk away” from his family obligations and his new job in Toronto with a global law firm.
“It’s doable, but is it desirable? That’s the decision I have to make.”
But even if MacKay decides to run, veteran Conservative operatives believe O’Toole has a lot to offer.
“He’s MacKay-esque in that he has a disposition that is more, by nature, calm and not inclined to get aggravated easily,” said Tim Powers, vice-chairman of Summa Strategies in Ottawa and longtime Conservative strategist.
“He’s a good communicator. He has the true-blue Canadian boy background that Conservatives of different stripes would like.”
As well, O’Toole has “an outward sense of reasonableness” Harper lacked.
“That is going to be important for a number of people in this leadership race – can they be perceived as being reasonable individuals, never mind leaders to the Canadian electorate,” Powers added.
O’Toole was one of eight Conservative MPs to run for interim leadership, but lost out to Rona Ambrose.
Some fellow MPs quietly worry about the optics of O’Toole’s friendship with Jenni Byrne, a longtime Harper loyalist.
Byrne is a brutally effective political campaigner. While she was seen as the mastermind behind the Conservative majority in 2011, she has also taken heaps of blame for the 2015 defeat.
But a source said Byrne, who now lives in Toronto, expects to sit out any leadership campaign.
O’Toole was first elected as an MP in late 2012 in a byelection, after Bev Oda resigned following an expenses scandal.
He was appointed Veterans Affairs minister in January 2015, replacing Julian Fantino, and helped patch up the government’s threadbare relationship with veterans.
O’Toole earned his wings as a tactical navigator on Sea King helicopters. He was born in Montreal and raised in rural Ontario. His father John was a longtime Progressive Conservative member of Ontario’s provincial parliament.
He has a strong network of supporters in Ontario and in Atlantic Canada, having been posted to Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia, then attending Dalhousie Law School, before returning to Ontario to practise corporate law.THE Australia Day Skyworks display has been cancelled after two people died following a plane crash into the Swan River in front of thousands of shocked onlookers.
The incident happened just after 5pm near Heirisson Island, close to where crowds were building in anticipation of the annual fireworks display.
The plane nosedived into the water and broke into separate segments on impact.
The pilot and passenger were confirmed dead a short time later. They were the only people on board.
Play Video
At the South Perth foreshore, families setting up for tonight's Skyworks rushed to the river's edge as the plane crashed into the water.
"I was watching the show and all I saw was the plane just nose dive into the water," witness Natasha Eyles said.
"As it hit the water you could the plane break into two."
Camera Icon The plane crashes into the Swan River. Picture: PerthNow, roda16 / Twitter
Witness Craig Newill was with his family when the plane went down.
"We were so stunned and shocked," he said.
"We could see him stall.
"His wings were pointing to the sky and to the water and we thought 'this is not good' then we saw it break into two pieces."
PerthNow reader Kristijana Dutkovic said: "Saw it do a couple of passes over the water & then it dropped straight into the water.
"Boats were quick to respond though - hope they (are) alright."
The City of Perth issued a statement just after 6pm confirming Skyworks had been cancelled due to the incident.
The display, which attracts massive crowds each year, had been due to start at 8pm.
Camera Icon The aftermath of the crash. Picture: PerthNow, Daniel Wilkins
Lord Mayor of Perth Lisa Scaffidi said the Skyworks had been cancelled "Due to the operational need to conserve the integrity of the site and in respect for those killed and as per operational directives for such occurrences".
People have been urged to cancel their plans to approach the wider city area, with those already around the foreshore asked to leave.
COMMUTER CHAOS EXPECTED IN CITY EXODUSSo yeah the booms were Max testing the shield out with increasingly powerful hits. We’ll see the fate of that new guy in a bit. A few more pages of Q & A, then Sydney gets unleashed on the team at large.
And one more reminder that I’m looking for a guest strip or two, just to make sure I’ve got something to post the week after A-kon. Make sure whatever you submit is legible at 643 pixels wide, but it can be any height. Due by June 3rd at the latest. Contact me via twitter, facebook, or mailing me at daveb-at-grrlpowercomic.com Ok that doesn’t work I don’t think. Try grrlpowercomic-at-gmail.com. Just for submissions though, I probably will only check it periodically after this week.
Update: Ok, fixed the missing “to”, added the 5 o’clock back in and adjusted a wonky looking eye.Tracking down the Namco Galaxian 3 6 Player Theater from Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada and Beyond SaraAB87
Here at Arcade Heroes we like to track down arcade games to find out what happened to them if they are no longer on location, especially if its a game that is rarely seen or a particularly memorable game. After tracking down the Sega R360 from the Skylon Tower, I decided to look into another one of Niagara’s large attractions, the Galaxian 3 theater by Namco.
The Galaxian 3 Theater by Namco is a large theater simulator that was made around 1990 or 1991. This particular instance of a Galaxian 3 that we are taking a look at today was the one located at the Konica Minolta tower located on Fallsview Blvd. in Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada. This location is walk-able from almost anywhere in the Niagara tourist district. Today this building is known as The Tower Hotel (I will refer to it as the Minolta Tower for the rest of this story).
While there were some other versions of Galaxian 3 made including a 16 player version and a 28 player version these versions were only seen in Japan and perhaps some other overseas locations. The more common 6 player stationary theater is what was located at the Minolta Tower and was the only type of Galaxian 3 theater that would be located in North America since it was the only type of Galaxian 3 Theater sold in North America by Namco. The Galaxian 3 Theater can run one of 2 games Galaxian 3: Project Dragoon or Attack of the Zolgear, which is the sequel. If you are playing the original Playstation port on a Playstation home console you will have access to an additional bonus mission, The Rising of Gourb, which was never released in arcades.
Not to be confused with the Skylon Tower, this is The Tower Hotel, formerly known as the Minolta Tower. Yes the locations of both towers are very close to each other, just a few minutes walking distance. From what I understand this actual tower is not open the public anymore, but the building now houses a hotel in the lower levels and is mainly used as a hotel.
The only picture of the area where the Galaxian 3 was that I was able to dig up was this picture of the sign that lists the attractions, the Galaxian 3 included, and the prices of the attractions. This photo was taken in 1995 and is courtesy of the archives at the library in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Unfortunately I was unable to find a photo of the actual game while it was located at the Minolta Tower.
Most of these Galaxian 3 Theaters from what I can tell were purchased directly from Namco and installed by Namco, as was the one at the Minolta Tower. Its also possible to convert a Ridge Racer Full Scale to a Galaxian 3 Theater, so some Galaxian 3 Theaters may have started off as Ridge Racer Full Scale and some may have originally been Ridge Racer Full Scale but converted to Galaxian 3.
There were several other attractions in the Minolta Tower Complex in addition to the Galaxian 3 Theater and the observation deck at the top of the tower. There was an attraction called Search Factory, I do not know what this was. There was also Virtual Reality machines by the company Virtuality with the games Flying Aces in the sit down Virtuality pod and Dactyl Nightmare in the Stand up Virtuality pod.
Then there was the Galaxian 3 Theater. It is also believed the tower had regular arcade machines and pinball as well. All of these large attractions including the Galaxian 3 Theater were installed in 1995 and likely began operation during the summer of 1995. The Galaxian 3 continued to operate at the Minolta Tower until 2001, when the tower was renovated. The renovation included removing all of the arcade type attractions and turning most of the tower into a hotel. There was an additional renovation to finish this project in 2010. The Galaxian 3 theater was unfortunately having some problems and was removed and scrapped during the 2001 renovation of the building. I was able to reach someone heavily involved with this building in the area, and they told me the whole story and what happened to the game.
There was another Galaxian 3 Theater in Canada located at an arcade called The Fun Factor in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. This one was also not purchased from the Minolta Tower. Unfortunately this Galaxian 3 also suffered a horrible fate, the owner attempted to sell the machine, however when it was being transported to the location where it was sold to, it was badly damaged in transportation. The remains of this unit are with someone who is going attempt to restore it.
This is a picture of the Galaxian 3 at The Fun Factor, once again this game is no longer located there.
Now you may be wondering, are there any Galaxian 3 theaters in operation today? There are but there are very few left as one would imagine. If anyone knows of an operational theater other than the ones listed feel free to comment. The first location I know of with one is Fun World located in Nashua, New Hampshire in the USA. I don’t visit this location personally since I do not live near it so I do not know what is going on with their machine, however the last time someone checked on it; it was seen it was seen with a cover on it, so I think its safe to say that one is on location but is currently not operating. I was able to reach this location and I asked them if this was the machine from the Minolta Tower but it was not, and theirs was an original install from Namco. It is also believed the location at the moment is trying to have the game fixed. They have a banner up from Ridge Racer Full Scale (pictured below) so I think this Galaxian 3 Theater was converted from Ridge Racer Full Scale. If you live close to the location feel free to check it out however do not be surprised if its not working (Fun World still advertises the Galaxian 3 on their website though).
You can visit their website here : http://www.funworld |
75 M
Mahony
Marcella
Carrigboy Durrus West Cork 74 F
Shannon
Paul
Clashadoo Durrus West Cork 70 M
Pattison
John
Clashadoo Durrus West Cork 52 M
Pattison
William Edward
Clashadoo Durrus West Cork 20 M
Croston
Sarah
Durrus Village Durrus West Cork 75 F
Deane
Mary
Crottees Durrus West Cork 50 F
Conroy
Hannah
Spy Hill Queenstown Urban Cork 31 F
Shipsy
Eliza
Roaches Terrace Queenstown Urban Cork 48 F
Cummins
May Ellice Thome
Dunkettle Cahereag Cork 10 F
County Age Sex
Cummins
Geraldine Dorothy
Dunkettle Cahereag Cork 17 F
Jones
Charles
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 22 M
Connor
S John
Inchera Cahereag Cork 80 M
Jagoe
Lizzie
Farlehanes Ballingurteen Cork 30 F
Jagoe
Mary
Farlehanes Ballingurteen Cork 28 F
Jagoe
Edward
Farlehanes Ballingurteen Cork 50 M
Unkles
John
Ardea Ballymoney Cork 60 M
Goode
Katie
Kilvurra Ballymoney Cork 38 F
Northridge
John
Ballyvelone West Kinneigh Cork 60 M
Deane
Robert
Gorteenasowna Manch Cork 58 M
Nash
Thomas
Knocks West Argideen Cork 70 M
Buttimer
Mary Anne
Bohona Argideen Cork 50 F
Hurley
Daniel
Derryoreen West Argideen Cork 36 M
Flood
William
Castlemartyr Ightermurragh Cork 68 M
Wolfe
William
Derreen Ballingurteen Cork 87 M
Jagoe
Patrick
Farlehanes Ballingurteen Cork 60 M
Cambridge
Robert
Georges Street Clonakilty Urban Cork 52 M
Webb
George
Gortnameecklagh Manch Cork 71 M
Jennings
George
Ballydwane Kilkerranmore Cork 53 M
Kingston
John
Brewery Lane Dunmanway Cork 73 M
Kingston
Elizabeth
East Green Dunmanway Cork 34 F
Kingston
William
East Green Dunmanway Cork 10 M
Kingston
James
East Green Dunmanway Cork 9 M
Kingston
Samuel
East Green Dunmanway Cork 7 M
Kingston
Thomas
East Green Dunmanway Cork 5 M
Kingston
John
East Green Dunmanway Cork 1 M
Meara
Eliza
Market Square Dunmanway Cork 45 F
Spillane
Catherine
Sackville Street Dunmanway Cork 90 F
Hales
John
Renny Upper Kilcummer Cork 49 M
Hales
Dora
Renny Upper Kilcummer Cork 31 F
Wood
Achilles
Knockane Teerelton Cork 63 M
Wolfe
Francis
Lisbealad West Drinagh Cork 86 F
Kinalan
Ellen Hudson
Aghern West Aghern Cork 20 F
Deacon
Edith F
Main Street Midleton Cork 26 F
Meara
Richard
Market Square Dunmanway Cork 51 M
Hobbes
Benjamin
Monteen Kilmaloda Cork 65 M
Patterson
Thomas
Knocknagopple Aghern Cork 65 M
Kemp
Sarah
Rocksavage Templeomalus Cork 61 F
Payne
William
Curraghprevin Rathcormac Cork 67 M
Unkles
Edward
Currabeg Ovens Cork 52 M
Moore
William
Ballygibbon Blarney Cork 63 M
Fitzgerald
Michael
Haulbowline Island Queenstown Rural No. 2 Cork 49 M
Callaghan
Mary
Dromin Castlecor Cork 79 F
Cross
Anne
Kilcoolishal Cahereag Cork 45 F
Hehir
Mc J
Ballyhooly Road North East Ward Cork 33 M
Hunt
Nicholas
Grattan Hill North East Ward Cork 64 M
Northridge
John
Derrigra Ballymoney Cork 67 M
Wolfe
Marian
Little William Street North East Ward Cork 32 F
Hill
Jane
Kippagh Drinagh Cork 73 F
Deane
Mary
Lettergorman Drinagh Cork 67 F
Gallagher
John
Bridgetown Lower Kilcummer Cork 59 M
Kingston
John
Dromdaleague Bredagh Cork 34 M
Jennings
Jane
Lognagappul Caheragh Cork 64 F
Kingston
James
Dromdaleague Bredagh Cork 59 M
Jennings
William
Toughbawn Drinagh Cork 50 M
Jennings
John
Reavouler Carrigbaun Cork 60 M
Baker
Mary
Rearahinagh Carrigbaun Cork 26 F
Swanton
Benjamin
Moyny Lower Dromdaleague South Cork 45 M
Fuller
Thomas
Curraghalicky Drinagh Cork 59 M
Baker
Jane
Rearahinagh Carrigbaun Cork 28 F
Kingston
George
Kealanine Gurtnascreeny Cork 72 M
Stout
Susan
Coolbane Cloghdowell Cork 67 F
Forde
Thomas
Dromdaleague Dromdaleague South Cork 73 M
Hegarty
Daniel
Lissanoohig Cloghdowell Cork 44 M
Sealy
Thomas
Coarliss Killeenleigh Cork 59 M
Salter
Mary
Old Court Skibbereen Rural Cork 53 F
Levis
George M
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 25 M
Salter
William
Old Court Skibbereen Rural Cork 25 M
Kingston
Richard
Kilnaclasha Woodfort Cork 46 M
Evans
John
Ardraly Aghadown North Cork 75 M
Kingston
James
Kilnaclasha Woodfort Cork 40 M
Baker
Richard
Bunalunn Woodfort Cork 30 M
Evans
Winifred
Ardraly Aghadown North Cork 64 F
Mc Dougall
George
Kilgilky South Roskeen Cork 20 M
Evans
Jane
Market Street Skibbereen Urban Cork 81 F
Sweetnam
John
Rahine Aghadown North Cork 76 M
Kingston
John
Kilnaclasha Woodfort Cork 45 M
Salter
Thomas
Gortadrohid Cape Clear Cork 60 M
Good
Anne
Kilvurra Ballymoney Cork 43 F
Young
John
Farranacoush Cape Clear Cork 80 M
Hawkins
John
Cashel Clonkeen Cork 60 M
French
Bessie
Corran North Clonkeen Cork 60 F
Leaden
Benjamin
Knockastuckane Skagh Cork 64 M
Kingston
Mary
East Green Dunmanway Cork 3 F
Lanner
Thomas
Market Square Dunmanway Cork 55 M
Deane
Elizabeth
West Green Dunmanway Cork 70 F
Mills
Frances
Ballynoe (Village, Portion) Ballynoe Cork 50 F
Paterson
John
Killsaintann’s North Castlelyons Cork 75 M
Baker
Margaret
Rearahinagh Carrigbaun Cork 70 F
Baker
George
Rearahinagh Carrigbaun Cork 24 M
Jennings
William
Paddock Drinagh Cork 35 M
Ross
Michael
Cummeen Dromdaleague North Cork 80 M
Varian
Thomas
Ballinure Blackrock Cork 37 M
Kingston
Anne
Moyny East Dromdaleague South Cork 60 F
Sewell
William
Loughcrot Garranes Cork 97 M
Cogan
Robert
Lismire Barleyhill Cork 70 M
Kingston
Eliza
Kealanine Gurtnascreeny Cork 60 F
Stout
Robert
Coolbane Cloghdowell Cork 60 M
Sealy
Anne
Coarliss Killeenleigh Cork 58 F
Kerr
Eliza
Lissangle Killeenleigh Cork 66 F
Damery
John
Drisheen Skibbereen Rural Cork 60 M
Draper
Richard
Gortnaclohy Skibbereen Rural Cork 62 M
Salter
Frances
Old Court Skibbereen Rural Cork 23 F
Browne
Patricia Mary
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 40 F
Hosford
Anna Nana
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 50 F
Connell
John
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 74 M
Connell
Alice
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 23 F
Symes
Robert
Market Street Skibbereen Urban Cork 51 M
Hingston
Elizabeth
Cunnamore Aghadown South Cork 62 F
Anderson
Matthew
Currarane Coolmain Cork 47 M
Roche
John
Ballyieragh North Cape Clear Cork 56 M
Gash
Susan
Scart Kinsale Rural Cork 40 F
Walker
Hannah
Ballymacus Kinsale Rural Cork 73 F
Ross
William
Baltimore Tullagh Cork 65 M
Goodchild
John
Baltimore Tullagh Cork 52 M
Wilson
Allen
Corran North Clonkeen Cork 57 M
French
Thomas
Corran North Clonkeen Cork 70 M
Morris
John
Corran South Clonkeen Cork 67 M
Kingston
Richard
Curraclogh Warrenscourt Cork 47 M
Jennings
Rose
Milleen Inchigeelagh Cork 59 F
Ahern
George
Mullaghmore Caheragh Cork 46 M
Kingston
Samuel
Carrigbaun West Carrigbaun Cork 70 M
Baker
John
Carrigbaun West Carrigbaun Cork 40 M
Good
John
Bohernabredagh Carrigbaun Cork 59 M
Baker
Richard
Rearahinagh Carrigbaun Cork 70 M
Spillane
Robert
Shandrum Drinagh Cork 71 M
Jagoe
Edward
Toughmacdermody Drinagh Cork 74 M
Forde
Catherine
Toughmacdermody Drinagh Cork 76 F
Forbes
Eliza
Clodagh Garranes Cork 38 F
Kingston
William P
Clodagh Garranes Cork 55 M
Sewell
Kate
Loughcrot Garranes Cork 55 F
Salter
Thomas
Old Court Skibbereen Rural Cork 27 M
Evans
John
Poundlick Skibbereen Rural Cork 60 M
Baker
Anne
Coronea, part of Mardyke Skibbereen Urban Cork 50 F
Tyner
Jonas
Spa Terrace Mallow North Urban Cork 63 M
Sweetnam
Fannie
North Street Skibbereen Urban Cork 55 F
Meredith
Richard
Main Street Mallow South Urban Cork 47 M
Hingston
Anne
Cunnamore Aghadown South Cork 68 F
Barrett
John
Tooreen Monanimy Cork 80 M
Molloy
Anne
Baltimore Tullagh Cork 63 F
Bradfield
Frances
Lettertinclish Castlehaven North Cork 58 F
Wilson
William
Corran North Clonkeen Cork 73 M
Bennett
Maria
Ballyfin Cloyne Cork 50 F
Long
Richd Walton
Main Street Midleton Cork 41 M
Mc Kee
Sarah
Augherinagh Dripsey Cork 21 F
Fitzgibbon
Thomas W
Inishleena Dripsey Cork 50 M
Cummins
Jane Constable
Dunkettle Cahereag Cork 37 F
Good
Hannah
Kilvurra Ballymoney Cork 80 F
Rosley
John
Kippagh Drinagh Cork 55 M
Pomeroy
James
Knockcahill Rathcool Cork 42 M
Kingston
Richard
Carrigbaun West Carrigbaun Cork 32 M
Ross
Jane
Cummeen Dromdaleague North Cork 60 F
Chambers
Sarah
Dromdaleague Dromdaleague South Cork 66 F
Mc Beamish
Thomas
Lahanaght Garranes Cork 57 M
Sewell
William
Loughcrot Garranes Cork 64 M
Shannon
John
Derrygereen Skibbereen Rural Cork 75 M
Salter
James
Old Court Skibbereen Rural Cork 65 M
Salter
John James
Old Court Skibbereen Rural Cork 17 M
Evans
George
Poundlick Skibbereen Rural Cork 63 M
Evans
Thomas
Market Street Skibbereen Urban Cork 70 M
Beamish
Richard
North Street Skibbereen Urban Cork 68 M
Baker
William
Bunalunn Woodfort Cork 38 M
Kelly
William
Ballyieragh North Cape Clear Cork 70 M
Young
Fanny
Farranacoush Cape Clear Cork 82 F
Franklin
Richard Joseph
Harbour Row Queenstown Urban Cork 65 M
Franklin
Thomas Timothy
Harbour Row Queenstown Urban Cork 35 M
Homibrook
Eliza
Kilpatrick Brinny Cork 38 F
Burchill
Samuel
Laragh Kilbrogan Cork 69 M
Buttimer
Kate
Kilcolman Cashel Cork 50 F
Sullivan
Sarah
Knockastoor Boulteen Cork 74 F
Dukelow
James
Dromataniheen Durrus West Cork 65 M
Sullivan
Abigal
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 56 F
Kingston
Elisa
Ahagilla Argideen Cork 64 F
Hawkins
John
Gearagh Argideen Cork 54 M
Hawkins
Frank
Gearagh Argideen Cork 47 M
Kingston
Paul
Knockskeagh Clonakilty Cork 75 M
Fair
William
Templebrien South Clonakilty Cork 60 M
Fair
Rebecca
Templebrien South Clonakilty Cork 55 F
Burchill
Henry
Oliver Street Clonakilty Urban Cork 53 M
Anderson
William
Sovereign Street Clonakilty Urban Cork 45 M
Bateman
Anne
Strand Road Clonakilty Urban Cork 70 F
Buttimer
Ursula
Knocknanuss Kilmoylerane Cork 50 F
Kingston
Margaret
Droumgarriff Kilnagross Cork 60 F
Wolfe
Eliza
Cullinagh Courtmacsherry Cork 50 F
Deane
Robert
Reengarrigeen Kilmalooda Cork 44 M
Hawkes
Devonshire P
Barryshall Timoleague Cork 50 M
Saunders
Michael
Coolatooder Dunderrow Cork 79 M
Beasley
Richard
Carrigaline Middle Carrigaline Cork 56 M
Beasley
Catherine
Carrigaline Middle Carrigaline Cork 54 F
Mintern
Joseph
Main Street, Passage West Monkstown Cork 43 M
Wolfe
James
Little William Street North East Ward Cork 50 M
Green
Jane
Bertridges Square North West Ward Cork 70 F
Morrison
Michael
Industry Place Cork Urban No. 5 Cork 24 M
O’Toole
Eliza
Langford Place Cork Urban No. 5 Cork 44 F
Reynolds
Hannah
Mary Street Cork Urban No. 5 Cork 83 F
Kilbane
Anne
Prosperity Square Cork Urban No. 5 Cork 54 F
Mansfield
Johanah
Knockrea (in 2 separate folders) Blackrock Cork 37 F
Griffen
Michael
Garretstown Laherne Cork 64 M
Good
William
Teerbeg Macloneigh Cork 75 M
Hill
John
Coolaniddane Rahalisk Cork 22 M
County Age Sex
Goode
Eliza Jane
Gortnatubbrid Gortnatubrid Cork 53 F
M
W
Kilknockin Mallow Rural Cork 32 M
Godsell
Richard
Castlerichard Ightermurragh Cork 55 M
Harrington
Mary
Main Street Midleton Cork 51 F
Miller
Elizabeth
The Crescent Queenstown Urban Cork 56 F
Milner
Robert
Edencurra Ballingurteen Cork 57 M
Hornibrook
Lizzie
Cloonkirgeen Ballingurteen Cork 19 F
Patterson
Richard
Buddrimeen Ballymoney Cork 73 M
Goode
John
Kilvurra Ballymoney Cork 39 M
Good
James
Kilvurra Ballymoney Cork 46 M
Barker
Thomas
Dromkeen Teerelton Cork 60 M
Wolfe
Ellen
Cat Lane Dunmanway Cork 50 F
Bryan
Sarah
East Green Dunmanway Cork 50 F
Kingston
Thomas
East Green Dunmanway Cork 38 M
Jennings
John
Lognagappul Caheragh Cork 69 M
Kingston
Anne
Carrigbaun West Carrigbaun Cork 40 F
Jennings
Robert
Toughbawn Drinagh Cork 47 M
Ross
Catherine
Shronacarton Dromdaleague South Cork 70 F
Forbes
Thomas
Clodagh Garranes Cork 50 M
Kingston
Paul
Knockeenbwee Upper Garranes Cork 67 M
Shannon
Robert
Maunvagh Gurtnascreeny Cork 45 M
Kingston
Richard
Coarliss Killeenleigh Cork 45 M
Kingston
Richard
Coarliss Killeenleigh Cork 75 M
Kerr
William
Lissangle Killeenleigh Cork 62 M
Sweetnam
George
Gortnaclohy Skibbereen Rural Cork 63 M
Draper
Elizabeth
Gortnaclohy Skibbereen Rural Cork 58 F
Stout
Mary
Knockataggart Skibbereen Rural Cork 70 F
Evans
Sarah
Poundlick Skibbereen Rural Cork 33 F
Connell
Ellen
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 60 F
Baker
Margaret
Bunalunn Woodfort Cork 26 F
Sweetnan
Matthew
Munnane Aghadown South Cork 85 M
Salter
Jane
Rathmore Tullagh Cork 39 F
Hutchinson
Robert
Rathmore Tullagh Cork 56 M
Goodchild
Sarah
Baltimore Tullagh Cork 53 F
Wilson
Hewitt
Corran North Clonkeen Cork 57 M
Clear
Francis
Kilpatrick Brinny Cork 64 M
Good
Susan
Kilpatrick Brinny Cork 63 F
Frost
Thomas William
Kilpatrick Brinny Cork 60 M
Good
Hannah
Mamore West Kilbrogan Cork 66 F
Phar
John
Skevanish Inishannon Cork 60 M
Harris
John H
Belrose Knockairlla Cork 43 M
Harris
Sarah Ann
Belrose Knockairlla Cork 56 F
Good
William
Cappaknockane Cashel Cork 73 M
Tanner
Jane
Moneens Cashel Cork 45 F
Tyner
John
Kilnameela Boulteen Cork 72 M
Tyner
Margaret
Kilnameela Boulteen Cork 76 F
Sullivan
David
Knockastoor Boulteen Cork 85 M
Sullivan
James
Rooska West Bantry Rural Cork 50 M
Jermyn
Charles D
Marino Terrace Bantry Cork 29 M
Camier
John
Crottees Durrus West Cork 82 M
Leris
William
Mill Big Glengarriff Cork 70 M
Sullivan
Daniel
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 47 M
Sullivan
Patrick
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 68 M
Jones
Thomas
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 70 M
Jones
Mary
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 63 F
Jones
Herbert
Ardgroom Inward Kilcatherine Cork 25 M
Donovan
Eliza
Ballyvoigne Knocks Cork 80 F
Forbes
Thomas
Reengarrigeen Kilmalooda Cork 59 M
Sutton
Nathaniel
Maulmacredmond Templeomalus Cork 59 M
Jennings
David
Maulmacredmond Templeomalus Cork 40 M
Bateman
Lizzie Anne
Rocksavage Templeomalus Cork 31 F
Good
James
Barryshall Timoleague Cork 73 M
Mc Givern
Eliza
Ballinvereensig Inniskenny Cork 60 F
Warren
Josephine
Barnabeg Carrigaline Cork 65 F
Walton
Thomas
Killanally Carrigaline Cork 39 M
Spence
Wilhelmina
Cork Street Passage West Monkstown Cork 19 F
O’Leary
Jane Ann
Evergreen Street (part) Cork Urban No. 5 Cork 44 F
Mitchell
John
Prosperity Square Cork Urban No. 5 Cork 46 M
Draper
May
Artiteige Coolmain Cork 68 F
O’Callaghan
Cornelius
Milleen Inchigeelagh Cork 81 M
Austin
Thomas V
Quartertown Lower Mallow South Urban Cork 57 M
Barrett
Eliza
Tooreen Monanimy Cork 65 F
Croley
Susan
Castlemartyr Village Castlemartyr Cork 60 F
Long
Maria
Main Street Midleton Cork 30 F
Beamish
John
Kilcoolishal Cahereag Cork 50 M
Lee
Catherine
Ballytrasna Cahereag Cork 55 F
Bateman
Mary Anne
Kildee Ballingurteen Cork 68 F
Shorton
Elisabeth
Knockawaddra Ballingurteen Cork 30 F
Stanley
Alice
Curraghcrowly East Ballymoney Cork 32 F
Fuller
James
Cloonareague Kinneigh Cork 52 M
OHara
John
Currabuee Drinagh Cork 68 M
Sloane
Walter
Ballynoe Ballynoe Cork 62 M
Ahern
Frances
Mullaghmore Caheragh Cork 77 F
Jennings
Sarah
Toughbawn Drinagh Cork 43 F
Kingston
John
Moyny Upper Dromdaleague South Cork 50 M
Kingston
John
Shronacarton Dromdaleague South Cork 60 M
Ross
Samuel
Clodagh Garranes Cork 80 M
Kingston
Samuel
Lissangle Killeenleigh Cork 74 M
Northridge
James
Russaugh Skibbereen Rural Cork 45 M
Hosford
Archibald Walker
Coronea, part of Bridge Street Lower Skibbereen Urban Cork 57 M
Kingston
Samuel
Inchinagortagh Woodfort Cork 60 M
Lannin
Natl
Adrigool Woodfort Cork 75 M
Sweetnam
Mary
Rahine Aghadown North Cork 74 F
Stout
John
Ballyally Castlehaven South Cork 40 M
Bradfield
John
Lettertinclish Castlehaven North Cork 65 M
Doolan
Michael
Cashel Clonkeen Cork 45 M
Wilson
Charles
Corran North Clonkeen Cork 44 M
Jennings
John
Gortroe Clonkeen Cork 50 M
Beamish
William
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 54 M
Beamish
Samuel
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 66 M
County Age Sex
Beamish
Esther
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 60 F
Eedy
Mary J
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 46 F
Eady
Margaret
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 29 F
Eedy
John
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 55 M
Eady
Edward
Knockaroher Clonkeen Cork 40 M
Louch
Emily
Rushanes Kilfaughnabeg Cork 80 F
Kingston
John
Ballyroe Knockskagh Cork 40 M
French
James
Ballyroe Knockskagh Cork 53 M
Jennings
Edward
Cullane East Knockskagh Cork 50 M
Jennings
Kate
Cullane East Knockskagh Cork 31 F
Jennings
Richard
Cullane East Knockskagh Cork 40 M
Jennings
William
Cullane East Knockskagh Cork 86 M
Sweetnam
John
Kilinga Knockskagh Cork 67 M
Jennings
Catherine
Cullane East Knockskagh Cork 80 F
Jennings
William
Kilinga Knockskagh Cork 51 M
Kingston
Samuel
Kilinga Knockskagh Cork 46 M
French
Samuel
Kilinga Knockskagh Cork 50 M
Jennings
George
Cappaboha Knockskagh Cork 38 M
Kingston
James
Ballincolla Myross Cork 66 M
Mahony
John R
Cappaboha Knockskagh Cork 70 M
Mahony
Ellen
Cappaboha Knockskagh Cork 68 F
Kingston
James
Ballincolla Myross Cork 40 M
Kingston
Margaret
Ballincolla Myross Cork 73 F
Limrick
William
Ballincolla Myross Cork 50 M
Jennings
George
Carrigeeny Shreelane Cork 58 M
Jennings
Anne
Ballyriree Shreelane Cork 45 F
Jennings
George
Ballyriree Shreelane Cork 72 M
Evanson
Richard
Gortnacarriga Crookhaven Cork 60 M
Roycraft
Elias
Toor Crookhaven Cork 31 M
Hunt
Catherine
Gorttyowen Dunmanus Cork 58 F
Camier
Anne
Balteen Goleen Cork 84 F
Camier
John
Balteen Goleen Cork 58 M
Daley
Richard
Altar Toormore Cork 59 M
Wilbank
James
Goleen Goleen Cork 30 M
Roycroft
Catherine
Balteen Lowertown Cork 75 F
Millar
Thomas
Knock Lowertown Cork 66 M
Millar
Mary
Knock Lowertown Cork 50 F
Levis
Grace
Lowertown Lowertown Cork 82 F
Allen
Ellen
Toormore Toormore Cork 57 F
Allen
Robert
Toormore Toormore Cork 62 M
Allen
Mary
Toormore Toormore Cork 66 F
Pyburn
Eliza
Lowertown Lowertown Cork 82 F
Johnson
Sarah
Ballyrisode Toormore Cork 80 F
Allen
Ellen
Altar Toormore Cork 67 F
Allen
William
Toormore Toormore Cork 77 M
Horigan
Sarah
Toormore Toormore Cork 68 F
Goodwin
Jane
Ballyrisode Toormore Cork 57 F
Allen
George
Toormore Toormore Cork 56 M
Donovan
Michael
Toormore Toormore Cork 70 M
Salter
Robert
Gurteenroe Ballydehob Cork 47 M
M
T
Rathcool Ballydehob Cork 9 M
Shannon
Anne
Cusavinna Coolagh Cork 75 F
Wright
Michael
Cashelfean Dunbeacon Cork 44 M
Wright
Margaret
Cashelfean Dunbeacon Cork 43 F
Levis
Samual
Shantullig North Dunbeacon Cork 70 M
Kelly
Richard
Boleagh Kilcoe Cork 80 M
Unkles
Joseph
Schull Schull Cork 52 M
Jagoe
Samuel
Main Street Schull Cork 81 M
Atteridge
Thomas
Main Street Schull Cork 81 M
Godsell
John
Knocknagappagh Ardagh Cork 50 M
Jennings
Jane
Kilinga Knockskagh Cork 60 F
Kingston
James
Ardagh Myross Cork 63 M
Levis
Anthony
Lowertown Lowertown Cork 72 M
Hegarty
William
Ballyrisode Toormore Cork 72 M
Attridge
William
Glansallagh Ballybane Cork 55 M
Shannon
George
Gurteenakilla Coolagh Cork 66 M
Forde
Margerat
Main Street Schull Cork 50 F
Leonard
Nita
Knockaverry Youghal Urban Cork 34 F
Wilson
Peter
North Main Street Youghal Urban Cork 52 M
Wolfe
John
Coolcraheen Coolcraheen Cork 78 M
Kingston
James
Bohonagh Coolcraheen Cork 68 M
Bateman
Thomas
Tullyneasky East Coolcraheen Cork 60 M
French
Samuel
Derryduff Coolcraheen Cork 60 M
Stanley
David
Ballyneen Town Ballymoney Cork 62 M
Howe
Joseph
Gurteenroe Castletown Cork 78 M
Pattison
Barbara
Inchanadreen Dunmanway Cork 78 F
Forbes
Richard
Kilronane West Dunmanway Cork 50 M
Duggan
Ellen
Georges Street Mitchelstown Cork 40 F
Bustead
Abram
Lisaphooca Ballymodan Cork 50 M
Jennings
John
Cahermore Cahermore Cork 30 M
Fanner
John
Carrigagrenane Cahermore Cork 61 M
Clarke
Margaret
Sarrue Castleventry Cork 61 F
Hill
Elizabeth
Sarrue Castleventry Cork 53 F
Kingston
James
Bohonagh Coolcraheen Cork 48 M
B
M
Ballyhalwick Dunmanway Cork 58 F
Spillane
Edward
Rathard Kilbonane Cork 41 M
Fanner
Eliza
Carrigagrenane Cahermore Cork 60 F
Sullivan
Catherine
Cappaleigh North Adrigole Cork 62 F
Hill
Elizabeth
Sarrue Castleventry Cork 93 F
Elliott
Mary A
Rerrin Bere Cork 57 F
Brandsfield
Thos
Cloughmacsimon Ballymodan Cork 76 M
Gill
Catherine
Clonglascan Killaconenagh Cork 72 F
Gill
Richard
Clonglascan Killaconenagh Cork 39 M
Howe
Nora
Gurteenroe Castletown Cork 68 F
Kingston
Anne
Kilronane West Dunmanway Cork 70 F
Jennings
Martha
Cahermore Cahermore Cork 27 F
Fanner
Joseph
Carrigagrenane Cahermore Cork 60 M
Fanner
Richard
Carrigagrenane Cahermore Cork 28 M
Bateman
Susan
Maulatanvally Cahermore Cork 60 F
Beamish
John
Woodfield Coolcraheen Cork 51 M
County Age Sex
Beamish
Mary Anne
Woodfield Coolcraheen Cork 49 F
Shorten
John
Kilnacronagh West Teadies Cork 73 M
Stanley
Francis
Shanaway Middle Ballymoney Cork 64 M
Duggan
Michael
Georges Street Mitchelstown Cork 45 M
Davidson
Caroline
Grand Parade No. 1 Urban, Centre Ward, Cork City Cork 36 F
Casey
Catherin
South Main Street No. 1 Urban, Centre Ward, Cork City Cork 50 F
White
Michael
Murragh Teadies Cork 70 M
McCarthy
Jeremiah
Woburn Place North East Ward Cork 74 M
Gill
Thomas
Clonglascan Killaconenagh Cork 84 M
Hamilton
James
Sheare’s Street Cork Urban No. 7 Cork 81 M
Pyne
Kate
Thomas Street Cork Urban No. 7 Cork 56 F
Buttimer
Mary
Ballindeasig Ballyfoyle Cork 84 F
Sullivan
Mary
Curryglass Curryglass Cork 69 F
Bird
George
Nohoval Nohaval Cork 55 M
Tyner
Benjamin
Knocksmall Leighmoney Cork 70 M
Sullivan
Daniel
Magdala Terrace North East Ward Cork 46 M
Kingston
Daniel
Knockatoor Kilpatrick Cork 79 M
Sadlier
Thomas
Crosshaven Templebrady Cork 86 M
Nunan
Eliza
Knockanare Kilcullen Cork 71 F
Gilman
Jane
Nadrid Magourney Cork 58 F
Kingston
Thomas
Western Road Cork Urban No. 7 Cork 56 M
Willer
Marian
Creggane Buttevant Cork 27 F
Wiseman
Annie
Garravesoge Ballymartle Cork 50 F
Forde
Henry
Huggardsland Bishopstown Cork 63 M
Locke
Margaret
Huggardsland Bishopstown Cork 61 F
Tyner
Mary Anne
Knocksmall Leighmoney Cork 60 F
McGuire
Catherine
Mount Desert Saint Mary’s Cork 55 F
Kingston
Samuel
Gortigrenane Carrigaline Cork 54 M
Popham
John
Crosshaven Village Templebrady Cork 75 M
Daly
William J
Ardarrig Douglas Cork 53 M
Johnston
Ellie
Western Road Cork Urban No. 7 Cork 43 F
Gash
Dora
Killehagh Kinure Cork 56 F
Anderson
Alice Letitia
Coolkellure Garrown Cork 18 F
Forbes
George
Cullenagh Garrown Cork 58 M
Chambers
Mary
Dromdrastil Garrown Cork 62 F
Chambers
Charles
Dromdrastil Garrown Cork 67 M
Deane
Barnabus
Pookeen Milane Cork 60 M
Pattison
Jane
Sillahertane Milane Cork 54 F
Pattison
Richard
Sillahertane Milane Cork 50 M
Bateman
Charles
Maulatanvally Cahermore Cork 38 M
Hosford
William
Ballea Liscleary Cork 55 M
Popham
Bradshaw
Crosshaven Hill Templebrady Cork 42 M
Roland
Myles
Lackabane Gowlane Cork 29 M
Jones
Walter Alfred
Main Street Doneraile Cork 22 M
Anderson
Millicent
Ardarrig Douglas Cork 15 F
Brooks
Hannah
Horgan’s Buildings Bishopstown Cork 58 F
Roberts
Lucy
Ballyhooly Town Ballyhooly Cork 64 F
Strangman
Lucia
Shanakiel Saint Mary’s Cork 30 F
Chambers
James
Carrigskullihy Garrown Cork 62 M
Chambers
Mary
Carrigskullihy Garrown Cork 60 F
Bevan
|
a string. Pick up the package and the shell fires.
It's harmless, but very loud, and very frightening. It's designed to terrify thieves that have a frustrating habit of targeting his front porch.
“Last two months I’ve had four packages come up missing and I just wanted some way to even the score,” said Barrow. “This is the best way I see fit.”
Surveillance video from earlier this month shows a woman jumping from a car, rushing to the front door to steal a package. A second camera caught her terrified reaction as the shell fired. She dropped the box and ran screaming.
Barrow’s surveillance system caught another theft suspect who fell for the booby trapped box as well. A microphone caught a loud blast and the would-be thief couldn’t run away fast enough.
Barrow says he won't share how he rigged the box because he doesn't want anyone else to try it and hurt themselves. He doesn't want to hurt the thieves either: He just wants them to think twice before grabbing someone else's property.
“You know you’re at work and you’re working hard and you’ve got these people out there that make a daily routine of running around and stealing packages,” he said. “There’s no real way to prevent it so this is my solution.”
© 2019 Cox Media Group.It all started with a piece of plaster. On May 30, 2014, a piece of ceiling fell inside the New York Public Library Rose Reading Room. The stunning landmark space was forced to close for “about two weeks.” That turned into two years.
Now, the Rose Room is finally ready for its reopening. And the results are stunning. “I’ve been to the library for events or just to explore the space prior to the closure of the Rose Main Reading Room, but it’s clear that the heart and the history of the New York Public Library stems from this two-city-block-wide study hall,” says Ryan Fitzgibbon, the founder of Hello Mr. magazine.
Fitzgibbon was one of 18 Instagram users to get an early look at the new space. The group was given a private tour and learned about the 52,000 books on display in the room, as well as the 3.5 million others stocked in a storage room under nearby Bryant Park. (The two are connected by a “book train.”) The 18 Instagram photographers and authors, including influencer Patrick Janelle, were able to take in the Rose Room without the interference of hundreds of tourists and library users.
“The New York Public Library is my favorite architectural site in Manhattan, so to experience it in uninterrupted silence was a rare and cherished opportunity,” Fitzgibbon tells TIME. “The space looks remarkable.”
The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now
Here’s a selection of the best photographs. Check out the #NYPLreadingroom hashtag for more photos.
Follow TIME LightBox on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Over the past several years mass incarceration has become one of the most debated criminal justice issues in American media. As we have realized the error in the model of incarceration used over the last 30 years in the United States, a movement to decrease the number of people imprisoned has gained momentum. Despite this, the reality of the systems truly unfair application, and the resulting fallout has not been fully discussed.
American incarceration is not a problem with consequences that have been levied evenly across gender, and racial lines. Even though they are only 6 percent of the U.S. population a mere 19 million people counting children, African American males make up nearly half of all American prisoners (with a total of around 800,000 people imprisoned). This represents a 500 percent increase in the number of black men behind bars since 1980.
The incarceration rate for young black men ages 20 to 39, is nearly 10,000 per 100,000. To give context, during the racial discrimination of apartheid in South Africa, the prison rate for black male South Africans, rose to 851 per 100,000.
In the piece, "Men Sentenced To Longer Prison Terms Than Women For Same Crimes", the role gender plays in sentencing after conviction is reviewed.
Sonja Starr, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan, found that men are given much higher sentences than women convicted of the same crimes in federal court. The study found that men receive sentences that are 63 percent higher, on average, than their female counterparts.
These disparities aren't explained by genetic, or social variation between the genders and races. The differences are the result of systemic bias in arrest, convictions, and sentencing. African American men are largely incarcerated for poverty crimes such as low-level drug offenses, failure to make child support payments and driving without a license. As stated by Columbia University Professor of Education and African American Studies, Marc Lamont Hill in the MSNBC video segment above.
We want be careful not to suggest mass incarceration is due to some kind of cultural poverty, as if poor people or black people are more prone to go to prison. The fact is black people are targeted to go to prison more. If I went to Harvard University or Princeton University on a Friday night I could arrest a lot of people for simple possession of drugs, for public drunkenness, public urination or disorderly conduct. But, were not looking at Harvard or Princeton. We go to poorer neighborhoods like in New York where 3 counties produce 70 percent of the state's prisoners.
The immense gap in levying of punishment plays a major role in our social decision of who is prone to criminal behavior, even before an act is ever committed. It effects who gets stopped and frisked allowing an officer to find their common possession level drug crime, and who does not. Who is seen as integral to the home as a parent and given probation, and who is not. Who is seen as safe, and who is not. Effectively, who is seen as a valuable part of our society, and who is deemed expendable. Imprisonment inequity is one of the foundational pillars of the American mass incarceration model. In a growing sense, fairness for all seems more illusory than actual.
Part of the issue is our incarceration system is now burdened with quotas built into many private prison agreements with state governments. The piece, "Prison Quotas Push Lawmakers To Fill Beds" shows this:
Far from the exception, Arizona's contractually obligated promise to fill prison beds is a common provision in a majority of America's private prison contracts, according to a public records analysis released today by the advocacy group In the Public Interest. The group reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning quotas for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those analyzed... Private prison corporations emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when crime rates were soaring and states were scrambling to keep up with surging prison populations. Lawmakers needed quick alternatives, and looked to private prisons as an overflow valve to house inmates who were overcrowding the existing state systems. But as state prison populations have started to decline in recent years, advocates point to occupancy guarantees as long-term obligations that raise core questions about who benefits from the service: the state, or the prison contractor?
The problem is as a society we don't commit enough crimes to service the prison population numbers that states agreed upon in these contracts. How did we get to the place we are at now? Where effectively, it has been deemed the lives of young black men are the sacrificial lamb to cover the shortfall in these contractual prison debts that are now due.
The consequence that results socially due to these types of discrepancies in imprisonment also effect arrest, convictions, and sentencing adding another dimension to the problem. For our jury based system to work a reasonable amount of parity in treatment is needed, no matter if you are a 34 year old college educated white mother in North Dakota found with illegal prescription drugs, or a 20 year old high school educated black father in Alabama caught with a small amount of marijuana. Our system relies on an objectivity, that requires a semblance of fairness. From jurors deciding whether a crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt, to officers that apply standards of reasonable suspicion for a stop, or fear of imminent danger to justify the use of deadly force.
The New York Times piece "Key Factor in Police Shootings: 'Reasonable Fear'" explains:
Every step, however, is overshadowed by a single imperative: If an officer believes he or someone else is in imminent danger of grievous injury or death, he is allowed to shoot first, and ask questions later.
Mass incarceration has infected this process with bias that weighs far too heavy on our individual judgement of black males. As proven in Cincinnati where Samuel Dubose was gunned down by an officer during a routine traffic stop in possession of what has been found to be a bottle of air freshener, and in South Carolina where Walter Scott was shot in the back by a police officer under similar circumstance.
It is likely both officers will use fear of imminent danger as the reason for their respective uses of deadly force. Inequity in incarceration allows space for justification of fear or suspicion when detaining certain segments of our society, where there should have been none. Mass incarceration has created a constant state of an officer being able to assert to a grand jury there was the belief of imminent danger when there is interaction with a black man. While the required proof by the officer to justify actions would be higher when dealing with other groups. This is the result we are left with, whether it is in the case of Eric Garner's explanations to police officers falling on deaf ears, or 18-year-old Mike Brown who was described by 6' 4" Officer Darren Wilson as being like "Hulk Hogan". Through mass incarceration we have made young black males the prototype of a criminal suspect that induces fear, and the result has undermined much of our nation's model of due process.
If an officer has been trained in a society with this level of incarceration bias applied to specific groups over others, can he truly evaluate his fear appropriately to judge by the above vague standards? If a jury member is bombarded with this overly incarcerated view of black males as prisoners, can that citizen fairly evaluate a given case individually and truly judge the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt? The fallout of mass incarceration has been as detrimental as the institution, leaving a black cloud we all live under, but few acknowledge exist.
--Image caption The prisoners commandeered a van operated by Prisoner Transportation Services
Eight inmates escaped from a prison van in the US state of Oklahoma when their guards stopped at a hospital and left the keys inside the still-running vehicle, authorities have said.
The inmates were being moved from jails by a private prison company on Tuesday when at least one fell ill.
The prisoners kicked out a partition inside the van and drove away.
Police rounded up six of them soon after the escape and apprehended the remaining two by Tuesday evening.
The eight inmates had been left in a locked compartment inside the van when the guards, employed by Prisoner Transportation Services, stopped at a hospital near the town of Weatherford, an hour west of Oklahoma City, according to local media reports.
They left the keys in the van's ignition while they sought treatment for at least one sick prisoner.
The stolen van was recovered about a mile away.
Six of the inmates were quickly captured.
Authorities summoned dogs and helicopters to search for the two inmates who had fled the scene.
"We're going door-to-door and searching every residence that we can," Louis Flowers, assistant to the Weatherford police chief, told reporters.
Nearby Southwestern Oklahoma State University was locked down for several hours on Tuesday afternoon while police searched for the inmates, but has since reopened.
By Tuesday evening, the remaining two inmates had been recaptured, police said.
Information about the inmates' crimes was unavailable.- A suspected robber picked the wrong target and is in surgery because of it.
Philadelphia police say it started early Tuesday morning at the Gulf gas station at Wynnefield and Bryn Mawr.
That’s when an employee went into his blue van and saw a man inside, holding a gun, telling him to get inside.
The attempted carjacking didn’t happen.
The employee ran back to the shop and the armed man took the van down Bryn Mawr Avenue.
He was about halfway down the block when he approached another man, who’d coincidentally just bought a bag of potato chips at that gas station.
The armed man pointed a black handgun at his intended victim but that intended victim was also armed.
He pulled out his own gun and is believed to have fired three shots, hitting the attempted robber in the abdomen, back and hand.
Witnesses also said they heard about three shots.
That man is believed to have had a license to carry the gun and produced a document.
The victim was taken to the hospital for surgery.
Police say the man who fired is cooperating. He waited for police and turned over his gun. Police also have the other gun, which was not fired.
We don’t yet know if the shooter will face charges.Rahul Gandhi (in white), Congress vice-president and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to file his nomination in Amethi (UP) on April 12. Photo: Reuters
Amethi, the constituency that has elected members of the Gandhi family since 1980 - first Sanjay Gandhi, then brother Rajiv, followed by Rajiv's widow, Sonia, and now son Rahul, the Congress party's vice-president who is seeking re-election - is crumbling, quite literally. There is a decaying stench that overpowers Amethi, with roads leading up to the district dotted with closed factories that were set up during the time of Rajiv Gandhi.
Companies such as Malvika Steel and SAIL invested in the district once upon a time, but what remains today are crumbling structures, scraps of which in the form of iron are sold by the unemployed of Amethi for drugs. Unemployment, lack of basic facilities-there is no government hospital in Amethi- electricity for only a few hours a day, potholed roads, and abysmally poor schools tell a familiar story of 'Bharat' or other parts of rural India. In fact, Amethi would rank lower in development indicators that its counterparts in other states.
Uttar Pradesh lags painfully behind the other large 15 states in the country on a majority of development parameters. But Amethi has been electing the most powerful leaders of India, so what can possibly stop them from developing their constituency?
Rahul Gandhi, in an interview to Headlines Today, said that lack of cooperation from the state government has kept the constituency under-developed. But isn't Samajwadi Party an alliance of the ruling Congress? Yes, it is. The economics of it apart, the travesty is the politics of adulation and hope that the Gandhis have scripted with near precision in this constituency.
What jumps out in this super-star constituency is this overwhelming sense of low self worth among the residents of Amethi and psychological impact of poor development on individuals' aspirations. There are generations of families in Amethi who will vouch their support for the Gandhis. When questioned on their lack of access to basic facilities, they retort with a story or two on a hand pump gifted by the Gandhis back in the day or on a family being able to send their child abroad with the support of the Gandhis. "What will I do with roads? I spend most of my day in the farm," says a frail farmer Ram Prasad. All of 55, Prasad owns less than an acre of land and has voted for Congress nearly all his life. He has two sons, graduates but unemployed. Who will he vote for this time? "Whoever waives my farm loan," says Prasad, who has a farm loan of about Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000.
As the BJP's Smriti Irani and the Aam Aadmi Party's Kumar Vishwas rake up the development agenda in a constituency that has mostly voted for "Rajiv's son and Rajiv's wife", they are also aware that it is the youth they can influence. Anybody over 45 is an ardent Gandhi supporter.
Education and access fuel the mind, and that has been-perhaps strategically-kept off-bounds in Amethi. The Gandhi aura continues to enamor because the residents of Amethi don't want answers. They have never asked questions and because they don't know any better, they have never felt the need to. Yes, the Gandhis have managed to get several big-ticket educational projects sanctioned from the central government including institutes for information technology, hotel management and footwear design. Again, these projects have not yielded the desired results. There is a gaping disconnect between the need of Amethi and proposed investment projects - most of these projects, if implemented, will generate employment for others and not for the residents of Amethi. The projects don't capitalize on the strengths of Amethi and its manpower, the announced projects almost appear as showpiece announcements of the Gandhis to silence the critics.
Arjun Yadav is another Congress supporter. He moved to Lucknow from Amethi for lack of opportunities and access to good education for his children, yet he remains adamant in his support for Gandhi. "You tell me, won't you vote for someone who can help send your children abroad? Tomorrow all of Amethi will be out to welcome its prince with roses (refers to Rahul Gandhi coming to file his nomination). You will not get to see an inch of this broken road - when Rajivji left us, he gave us his son's responsibility."
Another woman from Veerganj village was wary of sharing her name with Business Today as she said "We see him once every five years."
So, what gets the Gandhis the votes? India is feudal at heart and brain, and Amethi residents have been encouraged to remain that way. The'mai-baap', 'raja-praja' politics thrive in the area. Lack of education has kept them away from thinking independently and demand answers, the power brokers of the district are old-time Gandhi loyalists and in rural areas it is the mukhiya, or the village head, who usually dictates who gets the votes.
The discourse is changing in Amethi. Irani and Vishwas are talking jobs and development, but the big question is whether the people of Amethi are ready for a new kind of politics?
Away from the politics of worship and adulation, will they choose a leader who pitches himself as one of them or a leader who speaks about developing the district like Gujarat? But, wait, development means different things to different people. For a voter in America, development could mean a city that's connected through WiFi, for a Bangalore voter development could mean a better garbage disposal system, for a Delhi voter development means better safety for women, but for the voter in Amethi development still is a farm loan waiver.Fort Myers voice talent Meetup proves to be a success
In the age of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a million other ways to connect online, there is still something extra special about face-to-face networking events organized online ie. Meetups! If you can’t even get a few friends together for dinner once a month, much less a group of strangers to talk about voice overs, check out what we had the chance to do recently in Fort Myers, Florida for a Voice123 Meetup.
Alex Torrenegra, co-founder and CEO of Voice123, is a busy guy, so when he told me he would be in my neck of the woods for a conference, I jumped on the opportunity to have a Voice123 Meetup. I also needed to get out and meet people too, as a brand new Customer Relations Ninja here at Voice123.
I reserved a private area at one of Fort Myers’ favorite restaurants, Lush, and sent out invites on Facebook, Meetup.com, LinkedIn. We tweeted and sent an email campaign targeted at Florida voice talents. These were all easy and free marketing efforts. The response was amazing! Everyone was so excited to meet people they only previously knew from profile pics and avatars, that they began inviting their friends. Voila! A successful meetup was born! Now, voice talents from all over want to know when I will host one in their city. Now, wouldn’t that be a dream job traveling the world, throwing parties?! Maybe someday. But, really all that was needed was for someone to say, “Here’s the time and place. Let’s meet.” You can be that person, too!
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
A few tips for hosting a successful meetup:
Set a defined purpose for the event. ex: Alex Torrenegra was visiting and this was a chance for Voice123 voice talent, and those curious about the site, to get some personal time with the CEO. How cool is that?! Invites were sent about a week and a half in advance, allowing some time for not only planning, but building up the event online. Respond to all comments on Facebook, Meetup.com, etc. promptly to ensure confidence “this is for real!”. Don’t go broke planning it! Find a free space to meet. ex: A restaurant works great! Hopefully your end result will be like our Voice123 Meetup!
There was a great crowd on hand, from local actors, opera singers, the voice overs of national TV shows, and ad campaigns, even a harp-maker! The major benefit for everyone was that we got out from behind the keyboard and reminded each other that voice overs is still a ‘people business’, and Voice123 is no different. Like voice talent, we are very passionate about what we do. People met Alex, not as Mr. CEO Entrepreneur, but as a genuinely nice and passionate guy.
Meetups offer the chance to make connections in person, that feel more genuine and everlasting. Anyone can fire off a huge email campaign, but to actually shake hands and smile with good people, means so much more in the digital age. The digital age helps you build your own voice over community. So… “If you build it, they will come.”If a minority candidate leaves his group representation constituency (GRC), a by-election will not be called, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Chan Chun Sing said yesterday.
He was replying to the opposition Workers' Party's Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied GRC), who wanted to know what would happen if a minority member of a GRC stepped down to run for president.
Mr Singh used Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob as an example. Madam Halimah, the minority member of Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC, has been tipped as a potential candidate for the upcoming election, which is reserved for Malays.
What then, Mr Singh asked, would happen to "the very existence of Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC, which by law requires a Malay MP as one of its political representatives in Parliament"?
Mr Chan said a by-election would not be called if a member of a GRC resigns or is incapacitated in any way.
"This is totally unrelated to the Bill today but since it was raised, I will deal with it," he said.
The GRC system has been in place since 1988, and requires each team to include at least one member of a minority race.
Mr Chan said that when Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong explained the GRC system in Parliament decades back, he said its intent was to achieve two purposes.
One, to ensure enough minority members in the House. This, Mr Chan said, had been achieved over the years.
Two, to ensure no political campaign on issues of race and religion, "that we will all, regardless of party lines, campaign on the basis that we are all Singaporeans, that we will not use race, language or religion for political reasons", Mr Chan said.
Elected members are expected to serve all residents, regardless of race, language and religion as well.
These key goals would not be affected if one member of the GRC left, Mr Chan added.
He noted there are 25 minority MPs out of 89, "more than what you'd expect proportionately from adding up the percentage of Malays, Indians and other minorities".
"Even if we have one less, that is 24 out of 89, which is 27 per cent of Parliament," he said.
Near the end of the debate, Mr Chan accidentally called Madam Halimah "Madam President" instead of "Madam Speaker", to loud laughter from the House.
He did it twice, before he corrected himself.This question could be equated to "can technologies secure nations against terrorism?" The most "correct" answer to questions like these is always "there is no silver bullet".
And the canonical answer is "a carefully designed and instrumented information security program, through a combination of people, processes and technology can significantly reduce the risks associated with such incidents"
But I don't want to avoid answering to the spirit of the question: I do believe that technology can secure organizations in a major way against Wikileaks.
Many people here point out to DLP (e.g., Karem), while other people point out to access-control and entitlements-review (e.g., Gyurka, Somak). The former is a technology and the latter is (today) a highly-bureaucratic and tedious process - which BTW is essential in any successful DLP implementation as only when you know what to protect and how do it, you can use DLP.
In my opinion, the technologies that will represent a significant step-change in our ability to control business information going forward are key innovations in the later described process.
I am dreaming up of this scenario: Hillary Clinton (or a senior deputy of hers) opens up a tool, where she can quickly identify/classify the most critical information types her organization handles, get actionable insights on access, security, flows and then apply surgical controls that use their business judgement on balancing sharing and security. All in only a few minutes, with the same ease that Google does information retrieval in such a complex and convoluted world as the web.
For example, for information type "confidential embassy channels", the tool would immediately tell her that this information is accessible by more than 2,000 people, including low-ranked privates - and BTW this data can flow entirely to anyones' USB drive. From there she can apply surgical controls (e.g., remove access to privates, grant access to privates only by request, block flows of this data type to USB etc etc etc.).
I do believe this is not only completely possible, but absolutely necessary to control business information going forward, and will represent a highly impactful technological solution for organizations against Wikileaks.Astronomers have detected a clumpy gas stream flowing quickly outward and blocking 90 percent of the X-rays emitted by the supermassive black hole at the center of the archetypal Seyfert galaxy NGC 5548, located 244.6 million light-years from Earth. This strange and unexpected activity may provide new insights into the interaction of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.
Matter falling onto a black hole gets heated and emits X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. The ultraviolet radiation can launch winds outward. The winds may be so strong that they can blow off gas that otherwise would have fallen onto the black hole. Black hole winds can therefore regulate both the growth of the black hole and its galaxy.
But the winds only come into existence if their starting point is shielded from X-rays.
The gas stream in the galaxy NGC 5548 – one of the best-studied of the type of galaxy know as Type I Seyfert – provides this protection. It appears that the shielding has been going on for at least 3 years.
“There are other galaxies that show gas streams near a black hole, but they haven’t changed as dramatically. This is the first time we’ve seen a stream like this move into the line of sight. We just happened to get lucky. With most objects like this, you don’t normally see this kind of event,” said Dr Gerard Kriss, an astronomer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and a co-author of a paper published in the journal Science (arXiv.org pre-print).
This discovery is the result of an intensive observing campaign using major ESA and NASA space observatories, including Hubble Space Telescope, XMM-Newton, Swift, NuSTAR, Chandra, and INTEGRAL.
“This is a milestone in understanding how supermassive black holes interact with their host galaxies. You don’t normally see this kind of event with objects like this. It tells us more about the powerful ionized winds that allow supermassive black holes in the nuclei of active galaxies to expel large amounts of matter. In larger quasars than NGC 5548, these winds can regulate the growth of both the black hole and its host galaxy,” said first author Dr Jelle Kaastra of the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.
Right after the Hubble Space Telescope had observed NGC 5548 in June 2013, Dr Kaastra, Dr Kriss and their co-authors discovered unexpected features in the data.
“There were dramatic changes since the last observation with Hubble in 2011. I saw signatures of much colder gas than was present before, indicating that the wind had cooled down, due to a strong decrease of ionizing X-ray radiation from the nucleus,” Dr Kriss said.
After combining and analyzing data from the six observatories, the astronomers were able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Supermassive black holes in the nuclei of active galaxies, such as NGC 5548, expel large amounts of matter through powerful winds of ionized gas. For instance, the persistent wind of NGC 5548 reaches velocities exceeding 1000 km/s. But now a new wind has arisen, much stronger and faster than the persistent wind.
“The new wind reaches speeds of up to 5,000 km per second but is much closer to the nucleus than the persistent wind. The new gas outflow blocks 90 percent of the low-energy X-rays that come from very close to the black hole, and it obscures up to a third of the region that emits the ultraviolet radiation at a few light-days distance from the black hole,” Dr Kaastra said.
Because of this shielding, the persistent wind far away from the nucleus receives less radiation and cools down.
“Because of this cooling down, new features arise in the Hubble spectrum of the wind. These features allow us to pinpoint the location of the strongest persistent wind component,” said co-author Dr Nahum Arav of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
Strong X-ray absorption by ionized gas has been seen in several other sources, and it has been attributed for instance to passing clouds.
“However, in our case, thanks to the combined XMM-Newton and Hubble data, we know this is a fast stream of outflowing gas very close to the nucleus. It may originate from the accretion disk,” the astronomers said.
______
J. S. Kaastra et al. A fast and long-lived outflow from the supermassive black hole in NGC 5548. Science, published online June 19, 2014; doi: 10.1126/science.1253787Hugh Grosvenor becomes third wealthiest landowner in Britain and 68th wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes
He is godfather to a future king, and now owns a large chunk of the most exclusive parts of London. At just 25, Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor, who has become the 7th Duke of Westminster after the sudden death of his 64-year-old father on Tuesday, will inherit a family fortune estimated by American business magazine Forbes at about £9bn, and the ancestral seat Eaton Hall in Cheshire.
Though the third of four siblings, the duke, previously known by the honorary title Earl Grosvenor, is the only son of the late Duke of Westminster and his wife, Natalia.
Little is publicly known of the former student of countryside management at Newcastle University. His family guarded his privacy as he was growing up as heir apparent to the vast fortune, which now makes him the third wealthiest landowner in the UK, and, according to Forbes, the 68th wealthiest person in the world.
He has kept largely out of the limelight, though found himself the subject of media attention when he became the youngest and wealthiest of Prince George’s godparents.
The Duke of Westminster obituary Read more
His 21st birthday party at Eaton Hall, which reportedly cost £5m, also made the newspapers. He hosted about 800 guests, including Prince Harry, at the “black tie and neon” bash, where comedian Michael McIntyre and hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks topped the bill.
Guests who wanted to give a gift were asked to contribute to the the young earl’s large wine collection. He told the Chester Chronicle at the time: “The party was simply amazing – a birthday and a party I will never forget. It is the beginning of a new era in my life and I look forward to the challenges that lie ahead.”
Though the 7th Duke of Westminster has two older sisters, he inherits the title and estate, which includes 190 acres in Belgravia and thousands of acres in Scotland and Spain, through the rule of primogeniture, which puts male children ahead of female siblings irrespective of age. The primogeniture law for the British monarchy was abolished in 2013 before the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child, Prince George.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 6th Duke of Westminster and the Queen leaving Chester Cathedral after the wedding of Lady Tamara Grosvenor and Edwin van Cutsem. Photograph: Phil Noble/PA
Described as “baby-faced” and “absurdly rich” by Vanity Fair magazine, the young earl made an appearance on the Tatler List, with the description: “Hughie’s a Newcastle graduate with his own wine collection who goes wild for the girls”, adding that after inheriting his father’s estate he would “own half of London”.
Unlike many of his social contemporaries, the new duke was not educated at boarding school, but attended a state primary before going to a private day school close to home in Cheshire.
He is two years younger than his father was when he took on the fortune aged 27, and currently works as an account manager for Bio-bean, a green technology company that recycles waste coffee grounds into advanced biofuels and biochemicals.
His family has long had close links to the royals. His father was a close friend of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, who were said by Clarence House to be “deeply shocked and greatly saddened” by the death.
Buckingham Palace said the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh had been made aware of the news and a message of condolence was being sent to the family, while Kensington Palace said: “The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were very sad to learn of the Duke of Westminster’s passing yesterday. Their thoughts are very much with his family this morning.”
The 7th Duke of Westminster’s mother, Natalia, Duchess of Westminster, is one of Prince William’s godparents. His sister Lady Tamara is married to Edward Van Cutsem, whose family have long been close to Charles, William and Harry. Another Van Cutsem brother, William, is also a godparent to Prince George.
Another sister, Lady Edwina, is married to the historian and television presenter Dan Snow. His youngest sister, Lady Viola Grosvenor, is a supporter of the children’s charity Kidscape.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 6th Duke and Duchess of Westminster with Earl Grosvenor shortly after his birth. Photograph: Mike Forster/Rex/Shutterstock
Along with his inheritance, the new duke is also likely to take on responsibility for the Westminster Foundation, the charitable body that manages the philanthropic activities of the Grosvenor family. The foundation was set up in the 1970s and has awarded more than £40m in grants.
Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster, was on his Abbeystead estate in the Trough of Bowland, Lancashire, when he became unwell. He was airlifted to Royal Preston hospital, where he died. A spokeswoman for Lancashire constabulary said there were no suspicious circumstances and a file would be passed to the coroner.
The origins of the Grosvenor family fortune date back more than 300 years when an ancestor of the new duke, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, married wealthy heiress Mary Davies, who had inherited a medieval manor in Middlesex and 500 acres of undeveloped land west of London.
Part of that land, which forms part of the Grosvenor’s London estate, was built on by the family in the early 18th century and became known as Mayfair, named after the annual Mayday fair. A second big development by the family 100 years later became Belgravia, named after the village of Belgrave, near the family’s country seat in Cheshire.
After that the family business expanded globally with overseas developments in the Americas, Australia, Asia and Europe.
The 6th Duke of Westminster was credited for his charity work, which included making a £500,000 donation to farmers during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak. He also fought a legal battle against Westminster city council in 1990 to protect a number of social housing flats built on the family’s land in Pimlico, London, which the council wanted to sell.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 6th Duke of Westminster receiving his army wings from the chief of the general staff, General Sir Michael Walker, after executing a perfect helicopter landing into Netheravon airfield, Wiltshire. Photograph: CAB von Roretz/PA
Of his wealth, the duke once said: “Given the choice, I would rather not have been born wealthy, but I never think of giving it up. I can’t sell. It doesn’t belong to me.”
He grew up in an isolated rural community in Northern Ireland believing he was destined to become a beef farmer. He was educated at Harrow, where he gained two O-levels, and Sandhurst, and later went to work on ranches in Australia and Canada. His inheritance meant he was forced to abandon later dreams of a military career, though he did serve with the Territorial Army.
He had a nervous breakdown and depression in 1998, saying the pressures of business and the great number of public appearances he was making had overwhelmed him.
Speaking about his son in 1993, he said: “He’s been born with the longest silver spoon anyone can have, but he can’t go through life sucking on it. He has to put back what he has been given.”Óscar García Junyent was a promising La Masia player who came from Sabadell at the age of 9, and who played for all of Spain's youth teams. Although he was seen as Bakero’s successor at Barcelona, he didn’t get many chances on his first four years with the first team because he could not successfully compete for a place in the Dream Team, the golden generation managed by Johan Cruyff.
Later he was loaned out to Albacete, where he spent the 1994/95 season, and did well enough to return to Barcelona and played a relevant role in Cru |
ad infinitum.)
But you will find very few corresponding stories about heterosexual men's struggle with childlessness. And that is weird, according to researchers at Keele University. Because, as one study found, they are kind of baby crazy, too.
Advertisement:
Researcher Robin Hadley carried out a survey of 81 women and 27 men who did not have children, and asked them if they wanted them. He found that men were almost as likely as women to want children -- 59 percent to 63 percent -- but actually more likely than women to feel depressed, angry and jealous if they didn't have them.
Of the men who wanted children, 50 percent experienced isolation because they did not have them, compared with 27 percent of women; 38 percent experienced depression, compared with 27 percent of women; and 56 percent experienced jealousy of those with children, compared with 47 percent of women.
Of the results, Hadley said: "This challenges the common idea that women are much more likely to want to have children than men, and that they consistently experience a range of negative emotions more deeply than men if they don't have children."
In ongoing research since concluding his study, Hadley has interviewed other so-called involuntary childless men who further confirm that the desire for kids isn't just a female thing -- even if it is often culturally framed that way.
One respondent in his 60s explained his feelings rather bluntly: "If you don't have children or grandchildren then that dimension of your life is missing."A father died after being "hogtied" by Mississippi police inside an ambulance despite telling officers he was struggling to breathe, his family's lawyer told NBC News.
Troy Goode, 30, was taken to the hospital after attending a Widespread Panic concert Saturday night in Memphis, Tennessee. The asthmatic died two hours after being placed face down on a stretcher in an incident captured on video by bystander.
Lawyer Tim Edwards told NBC News Monday Goode was "intoxicated" after he and four friends took something in the parking lot before the concert and "got paranoid" and was "in a field running in circle." He declined to comment on what they may have used.
Cops saw him "running from the area acting strange and not cooperative," Lt. Mark E. Little from the Southaven, Mississippi, Police Dept. said in a statement.
"Officers attempted to detain the subject who began to resist and run from them again," Little added. "On our initial investigation we learned that the subject had allegedly taken some LSD in a parking lot before a concert."We're over 1000 backers and 35%! Great work everyone! Let's all continue our push! Tell everyone you know and anyone you don't know as well! We're going to post our stretch goals later this week to give this campaign an extra push. We think most players will be happy with the goals.
Today we'll talk about the mini-games in My Time at Portia. Being mini-games, they don't really have too much impact on the game progression or the story progression. But to us, they bring the extra details one would expect from this type of life simulation games. Players might not even play them very much, but when they do, they'll bring a little wrinkle to the game experience. The major mini-game in this project is of course the sparring with the townsfolk, we'll leave that for a separate topic by itself. We will take a look at a few others.
Fishing is mainstay in pretty much any game genre nowadays, and we're not really bringing anything new to this as far as gameplay's concerned. We just want it to be fun and consistent. We're planning to have different fish at different locations, using different types of lure. So it's really a collection game layered on top of the fishing game. All the collection can be put into an upgrade-able fish tank to display all the pretty fish.
Another mini-game is roping. This is basically the same game people can play in arcades. Brainless fun. We're debating on what extra gameplay we can add to this game. Maybe tie this in with the milking mini-game, where the player needs to capture the cow of choice first before milking it. Still up for suggestions.
The darts mini-game is, well, darts, nothing too fancy. Same for the cross five mini-game people can play with Issac. We are adding a rock-paper-scissors game that the player can play with all NPCs, that'll be alpha 3.0.
The mini-games mentioned before are already in game or about to be. For future plans, and this will depend on budget, we have several very neat ideas. We want to have snow ball fights during the winter, plane races when the player has a plane in his or her inventory, and vehicle races. But again, these are just ideas, and we need time and money to execute these. But we will have them in the stretch goals, so let's go for it!Democrats on the Federal Elections Commission are directly challenging the First Amendment rights of Infowars, the Drudge Report and Breitbart by threatening to investigate their “editorial decisions.”
mtgdoc_17-28-a-2 by kitdaniels on Scribd
Their gameplay could include subpoenas targeting the day-to-day operations of each outlet.
“It’s pretty easy to see how this quickly becomes an inquisition into conservative media outlets,” an elections laws expert said to the Washington Examiner. “Commissioner Weintraub appears to be laying the groundwork to subpoena people at Breitbart, Drudge, and Infowars – maybe even Matt Drudge and Alex Jones themselves.”
This is a clear attack on the free press protected by the First Amendment, and it stems from the wider witch hunt into “Russian collusion” that CNN’s very own Van Jones admitted was a “nothing burger.”
The FEC plan has two objectives: kill competition to the mainstream, anti-Trump media and provide a convenient – albeit fake – excuse as to why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election that absolves establishment Democrats of blame.
But the reason the Democrats lost the White House is simple: their national party has been drifting away from its voting base to embrace globalism which tramples the livelihoods of working-class Americans.
It’s not surprising then that Donald Trump and his ‘Americans First’ platform won rust belt states which haven’t voted Republican in decades.
“We’re going to be a regional party that fails to get into the majority, and fails to do things on behalf of those working class people that were the backbone of the Democratic Party for so long,” warned Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio).For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam – but NO CHEESE. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the whole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy flavour to everything else there. You can’t tell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is too much odour about cheese.
I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool. Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards. I was in Liverpool at the time, and my friend said that if I didn’t mind he would get me to take them back with me to London, as he should not be coming up for a day or two himself, and he did not think the cheeses ought to be kept much longer.
“Oh, with pleasure, dear boy,” I replied, “with pleasure.”
I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. The wind still blew in his direction, and before we reached the end of the street he was laying himself out at the rate of nearly four miles an hour, leaving the cripples and stout old ladies simply nowhere.
It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at the station; and I do not think they would have done it, even then, had not one of the men had the presence of mind to put a handkerchief over his nose, and to light a bit of brown paper.
I took my ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with my cheeses, the people falling back respectfully on either side. The train was crowded, and I had to get into a carriage where there were already seven other people. One crusty old gentleman objected, but I got in, notwithstanding; and, putting my cheeses upon the rack, squeezed down with a pleasant smile, and said it was a warm day.
A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to fidget.
“Very close in here,” he said.
“Quite oppressive,” said the man next him.
And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. The remaining four passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.
I smiled at the black gentleman, and said I thought we were going to have the carriage to ourselves; and he laughed pleasantly, and said that some people made such a fuss over a little thing. But even he grew strangely depressed after we had started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I asked him to come and have a drink. He accepted, and we forced our way into the buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came, and asked us if we wanted anything.
“What’s yours?” I said, turning to my friend.
“I’ll have half-a-crown’s worth of brandy, neat, if you please, miss,” he responded.
And he went off quietly after he had drunk it and got into another carriage, which I thought mean.
From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the train was crowded. As we drew up at the different stations, the people, seeing my empty carriage, would rush for it. “Here y’ are, Maria; come along, plenty of room.” “All right, Tom; we’ll get in here,” they would shout. And they would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and stagger back into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a sniff, and then droop off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the difference and go first.
From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend’s house. When his wife came into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she said:
“What is it? Tell me the worst.”
I said:
“It’s cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them up with me.”
And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to Tom about it when he came back.
My friend was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected; and, three days later, as he hadn’t returned home, his wife called on me. She said:
“What did Tom say about those cheeses?”
I replied that he had directed they were to be kept in a moist place, and that nobody was to touch them.
She said:
“Nobody’s likely to touch them. Had he smelt them?”
I thought he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached to them.
“You think he would be upset,” she queried, “if I gave a man a sovereign to take them away and bury them?”
I answered that I thought he would never smile again.
An idea struck her. She said:
“Do you mind keeping them for him? Let me send them round to you.”
“Madam,” I replied, “for myself I like the smell of cheese, and the journey the other day with them from Liverpool I shall ever look back upon as a happy ending to a pleasant holiday. But, in this world, we must consider others. The lady under whose roof I have the honour of residing is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphan too. She has a strong, I may say an eloquent, objection to being what she terms `put upon.’ The presence of your husband’s cheeses in her house she would, I instinctively feel, regard as a `put upon’; and it shall never be said that I put upon the widow and the orphan.”
“Very well, then,” said my friend’s wife, rising, “all I have to say is, that I shall take the children and go to an hotel until those cheeses are eaten. I decline to live any longer in the same house with them.”
She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of the charwoman, who, when asked if she could stand the smell, replied, “What smell?” and who, when taken close to the cheeses and told to sniff hard, said she could detect a faint odour of melons. It was argued from this that little injury could result to the woman from the atmosphere, and she was left.
The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas; and my friend, after reckoning everything up, found that the cheeses had cost him eight-and-sixpence a pound. He said he dearly loved a bit of cheese, but it was beyond his means; so he determined to get rid of them. He threw them into the canal; but had to fish them out again, as the bargemen complained. They said it made them feel quite faint. And, after that, he took them one dark night and left them in the parish mortuary. But the coroner discovered them, and made a fearful fuss.
He said it was a plot to deprive him of his living by waking up the corpses.
My friend got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to a sea-side town, and burying them on the beach. It gained the place quite a reputation. Visitors said they had never noticed before how strong the air was, and weak-chested and consumptive people used to throng there for years afterwards.The author of legislation designed to block forthcoming rules on power plant emissions accused President Obama Monday of ignoring coal country workers who would be hurt by the regulations.
During remarks at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Rep. Mike Kelly said Obama has sought to avoid any discussion of the potential economic consequences of regulations.
“You’d think it was kryptonite, and he’s Superman,” the Pennsylvania Republican said.
Kelly’s speech comes as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to hold a series of public hearings on a rule designed to cut carbon pollution by 30 percent over the next 16 years.
Earlier Monday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Regina (Gina) McCarthyOvernight Energy: Joshua Tree National Park lost M in fees due to shutdown | Dem senator, AGs back case against oil giants | Trump officials secretly shipped plutonium to Nevada Overnight Energy: Ethics panel clears Grijalva over settlement with staffer | DC aims to run on 100 percent clean energy by 2032 | Judges skeptical of challenge to Obama smog rule Judges skeptical of case against Obama smog rule MORE defended the proposal in a conference call previewing the hearings in Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.
Opponents of the plan say it would put coalmines out of business, decimating an industry that provides 40 percent of the nation’s electricity.
Kelly went a bit further, likening the regulatory strategy to terrorism.
“You talk about terrorism, you can do it in a lot of different ways,” he said. “But you terrorize the people who supply everything this country needs to be great — and you keep them on the sidelines — my goodness, what have we become?”
Pressed on the fiery language, Kelly appeared to walk back the remarks, saying that the regulatory action has the effect of smothering economic activity.
“When a government can level on you taxes and regulations that makes it impossible for you to compete, then you’re going to stay on the sidelines,” he said.
Kelly's bill, the Coal Country Protection Act, would bar the EPA from moving forward with power plant regulations that would raise electricity rates, cost jobs, adversely affect gross domestic product or interrupt service.Team mate Lewis Hamilton recovered from a nightmare start to finish second, while Sebastian Vettel – who led into Turn 1 and looked very much in charge prior to the red flags – had to settle for third after 57 laps of Albert Park.
Local hero Daniel Ricciardo took a popular fourth place for Red Bull, well clear of the Williams of Felipe Massa, while Romain Grosjean gave the all-new Haas team points on their debut with sixth.
Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg, Williams’ Valtteri Bottas, and the Toro Rosso duo of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen completed the top ten, with Renault’s Jolyon Palmer narrowly missing out on a point in his maiden Grand Prix.
McLaren's Alonso and Haas's Esteban Gutierrez meanwhile were thankfully able to walk away from a huge crash at Turn 3 which caused the red flags to fly on lap 19.
Up until that moment it was Ferrari who held the cards, Vettel and Raikkonen having burst between the two Silver Arrows to snatch a one-two away from the start.
Hamilton got the worst of it, his slow start compounded by losing further ground and positions - and possibly some front wing endplate - in the opening turns, with Verstappen and Massa both able to pick him off and push him from pole to seventh.
That dynamic would all change. Following a 20-minute break to clear the debris from Alonso and Gutierrez's crash, the race restarted with Ferrari still on an aggressive two-stop strategy of using supersoft tyres. Mercedes though had gone conservative and selected the mediums, meaning Ferrari would need to pit again and Mercedes wouldn't. Game on.
It was soon clear that Vettel was not going to open up the 24s gap that he needed for a final stop, and when that came - from supersofts to softs - on the 35th lap, Rosberg, Hamilton and a feisty Ricciardo overtook the Ferrari. Hamilton closed in on the Red Bull and overtook for second place on the 42nd lap, but couldn't make serious inroads into Rosberg's 10s lead.
The Briton's attention instead went on protecting his position as Vettel closed in. With seven laps to run the pair were split by just half a second - but try as he might Vettel could not engineer a move, with his challenge failing two laps from the end when he ran deep and onto the grass at the penultimate turn.
Like Vettel, Ricciardo also bolted on fresh tyres - in his case the supersofts - and flew late on, the Australian setting the fastest lap and rising up to fourth, just missing out on becoming the first Australian to claim a Grand Prix podium on home soil.
Massa was an uneventful fifth, while behind Grosjean sprang a sensation in sixth, giving Haas points in their debut race.
Toro Rosso provided plenty of drama as Sainz and Verstappen quarrelled with each other, and with a host of other cars. It was not always a happy affair, with Verstappen angered by the team's decision to pit Sainz first, and then to not instruct him to move aside. The pair even made very light contact in Turn 15 a few laps from the end, with Verstappen spinning as a result. He caught back up to Sainz by the chequered flag, although neither was able to find a way past Bottas or Hulkenberg.
Palmer's very convincing debut for Renault saw him finish 11th, ahead of team mate Kevin Magnussen who lost time with a puncture on the opening lap but made it up when the race was red flagged and restarted.
Sergio Perez was 13th for Force India, while Jenson Button looked good early on but faded to 14th for McLaren. Felipe Nasr could not repeat 2015's fifth place for Sauber and finished 15th as team mate Marcus Ericsson retired with transmission problems, while rookie Pascal Wehrlein - who made a sensational start to run 15th for a while - was the last of the classified runners in 16th.
There were several retirements - besides Alonso and Gutierrez, Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat hit problems and retired even before getting to the grid, while Manor's Rio Haryanto went out with driveline problems and Raikkonen retired soon after the restart with suspected turbo failure which led to a spectacular fire in his Ferrari's airbox.
WATCH: Race highlights from AustraliaDaniel Boffo is an easygoing 33-year-old with a degree in economics. He is the son of Italian immigrants from a small town in Italy, whose father settled in Burnaby and started a landscape and construction business in 1963. His dad Tarcisio is close friends with another Vancouver developer, Nat Bosa, who was best man at his wedding.
Tarcisio has put his son Daniel and daughter Flavia in charge of the day-to-day Boffo business, which has mostly built projects in the suburbs.
Last summer, the Boffos purchased an empty lot at 555 Cordova, a street where prostitutes hang out, down the street from a soup kitchen. It's on the fringes of Strathcona, and between the growing Hastings Corridor and downtown. It will be central and affordable enough to attract the young urban crowd.
Story continues below advertisement
"We are targeting the cheapest price per square foot in Vancouver, around $385," says Mr. Boffo. "We're excited, because it will be a different model, a small, repeatable project that is putting non market and market on the same site."
It's also within the heart of the downtown eastside, known as the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer district (DEOD), where there's a dense low-income population, between Hastings to the south, Alexander to the north, and along Cordova to the east. In that particular patch, there is special zoning that has long required new residential housing to include 20 per cent non-market housing. The 20 per cent rule, as well as the fact it's skid row, has long turned off developers.
As far back as a decade ago, it was a worry by city planners that as surrounding property values increased, that 20 per cent requirement may no longer deter development of market housing. That day arrived when the Pantages Theatre on Hastings, in the heart of Oppenheimer, was demolished last year to make way for 79 units of market condos, as well as the required 18 non-market units, rental units, and artist studio space.
The outcry from the community was intense. The DTES Not for Developers coalition formed in response and held loud, angry protests. They also briefly occupied the Salient Group's nearby Paris Annex construction site. That protest was mostly against Salient's 21 Doors project located on the fringes of Oppenheimer. Close enough, they said.
The Pantages project, Sequel 138, was approved, and it was seen as opening the door into Oppenheimer.
Mr. Boffo's comparatively small, 29-unit residence is next. It's currently in the development permit approvals stage, and in order to build it, Mr. Boffo has partnered with non-profit housing provider, Community Builders Group, who will purchase and manage the five non-market units. Based on square footage, Mr. Boffo was only required to include three units, but trying to be sensitive to the issue, he increased it to five.
Community Builders is an international non-profit group that has the formidable task of scraping together financing to purchase low cost housing. They already own 250 low-income units in the area, and with the help of new market development, they have plans to double that number this year. That puts them squarely in the middle, between private development and community activism.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Mr. Boffo is selling the units to the group at cost, says Community Builders spokesman Gordon Wiebe. They will rent all five of them out at the welfare rate of $375 a month, which is also below the requirement. As is, some of the units could be rented for $870 and still be considered below market rate. Most would agree, however, that $870 is hardly affordable if you're on welfare.
Enter Dave Diewert. Mr. Diewert is the spokesperson for the DTES Not For Developers Coalition, whose name says it all. He helped organize the Pantages protest, as well as a protest against Salient Group, whose 21 Doors project is on the fringe of the Oppenheimer area.
The coalition demands that new downtown eastside developments be entirely dedicated to non-market housing.
Mr. Boffo and Mr. Wiebe both insisted that I speak with Mr. Diewert to present his case, and I'm happy they did. Mr. Diewert knows the details of every new development in the downtown eastside. We met for coffee and he explained to me why he's opposed to any new market development. He has also made his views about the Boffo project clear to his acquaintance, the housing provider, Mr. Wiebe, who lives in an SRO.
"I said, 'this is not good for the very people you are trying to serve. You are going to offer five units for a few people. But what's the effect of the 24 condos on the surrounding neighbourhood? How is that going to affect the low income housing around there? While you decide to work with this fellow for these five units, the ripple effect of gentrification may displace dozens.'
"Housing providers are complicit in that they agree to work on these projects," he added. "Our fundamental stance is that the project as a whole is a problem, because when you bring condos into a low income area, you raise property values and that has a ripple effect to everything around it."
Story continues below advertisement
He also condemns the much-lauded example of mixed market and social housing that is the Woodward's Building. He says the building contributed 125 units of social housing, but he estimates another 440 nearby units that changed use or raised rents due to gentrification were lost.
"The social mix in Woodward's is kind of a joke. I know people who live there, and they say,'my self-contained suite is beautiful. But as soon as I step outside, I am told to move along.' And people in the condos, they take the elevator from their car up to their suite. They're not living with us. They have a separate entrance. We call the social housing part, 'Woodward's East.'"
In a phone interview later, Mr. Wiebe sounded sympathetic, but a touch exasperated.
"If there is 100 per cent social housing, who is going to pay for it?
"We need social housing. Canada has a good history of it. But we also need private options."
Mr. Wiebe put it well in an open letter: "Wealth is coming to the DTES, like it or not. It's time to adapt, not to entrench. A social housing desert is a bad option and will never be supported in Vancouver, nor should it."
Story continues below advertisement
New development has already revitalized areas of the downtown eastside that were former ghetto ghost streets. Those streets now have home décor stores and coffee shops. They're happy streets again. But at what cost to guys like Mr. Diewert and his friends? They've formed a tight knit community, and they'd like to stay in their neighbourhood. As property prices go up, the cost of social housing in that area will too.
At the other end of it, Mr. Wiebe is trying to find decent new homes for people living in lousy 10 by 10 rooms. Mr. Boffo is a guy from Burnaby running a family business. He wants to build a small project on an empty lot on a street that could seriously use revitalizing. And he's trying to be sensitive to existing residents. In comparison to living in an SRO, his 600 sq. ft. non-market units would be a major step-up.
"No one developer, no one city staff member, councilor, architect or community resident will know all the solutions, but if you can all come together you could add to the fabric, not rip it apart," he says. Keep integrating, adding to it. Diversity is what attracts everybody.
"We are a young city. How do we set roots, to grow something good? I think we're getting there. We are just going through growing pains."
Editor's note: Due to an editing error, one of the subjects was incorrectly identified in the third to last paragraph of the original print and online versions of this story. It is Mr. Boffo who is, "a guy from Burnaby running a family business, " not Mr. Wiebe. This version has been corrected.Share. Company will continue to sell other R-rated DVDs and games. Company will continue to sell other R-rated DVDs and games.
Update: Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of GTA V publisher Take-Two Interactive, provided IGN with the following statement:
“We are disappointed that an Australian retailer has chosen no longer to sell Grand Theft Auto V -- a title that has won extraordinary critical acclaim and has been enjoyed by tens of millions of consumers around the world. Grand Theft Auto V explores mature themes and content similar to those found in many other popular and groundbreaking entertainment properties. Interactive entertainment is today's most compelling art form and shares the same creative freedom as books, television, and movies. I stand behind our products, the people who create them, and the consumers who play them.”
Original Story: Target Australia has announced it will be removing Grand Theft Auto V from its shelves and will no longer sell the game.
The company claims the decision was made following "feedback from customers about the game's depictions of violence against women."
Exit Theatre Mode
Target Australia's general manager of corporate affairs Jim Cooper said the call was made because of "community and customer concern" about Rockstar's open-world crime game.
"We've been speaking to many customers over recent days about the game, and there is a significant level of concern about the game's content," said Cooper.
"We've also had customer feedback in support of us selling the game, and we respect their perspective on the issue. However, we feel the decision to stop selling GTA V is in line with the majority view of our customers."
Cooper explained that Target will continue to sell other R-rated DVDs and video games.
"While these products often contain imagery that some customers find offensive, in the vast majority of cases, we believe they are appropriate products for us to sell to adult customers. However, in the case of GTA V, we have listened to the strong feedback from customers that this is not a product they want us to sell."
A few days ago a petition on Change.org was launched by female survivors of violence in the hopes of having GTA V pulled from the shelves of Target Australia. As of writing, the campaign has gained over 40,000 supporters.
"Please Target," the campaign reads, "we appeal to you as women survivors of violence, including women who experienced violence in the sex industry, to immediately withdraw Grand Theft Auto V from sale."
IGN Australia will contact Target Australia and Rockstar for comment on the matter as soon as possible.
Wesley Copeland is a freelance news writer, but you probably already guessed that. For more obvious statements, you should probably follow him on Twitter.Image: Flickr / Kevin Utting
Right now we're being watched. It might not be literal watching: it might be that a computer somewhere, owned by a government or a corporation, is collecting or mining the crumbs of data we all left around the world today. You probably know all this. But apart from the targeted ads, it's often difficult to grasp just what that watching means, now and down the road.
That's at least one reason we need to start scrambling our tracks. "Our data will be shared, bought, sold, analyzed and applied, all of which will have consequences for our lives," Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum write in Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest. "Will you get a loan, or an apartment, for which you applied? How much of an insurance risk or a credit risk are you? What guides the advertising you receive? How do so many companies and services know that you're pregnant, or struggling with an addiction, or planning to change jobs? Why do different cohorts, different populations and different neighborhoods receive different allocations of resources? Are you going to be, as the sinister phrase of our current moment of data-driven antiterrorism has it, 'on a list'?"
When it comes to maintaining their digital privacy, many people probably think about software like encrypted messaging apps and Tor browsers. But as Brunton and Nissenbaum detail in Obfuscation, there are many other ways to hide one's digital trail. Obfuscation, the first book-length look at the topic, contains a wealth of ideas for prankish disobedience, analysis-frustrating techniques, and other methods of collective protest. The aim, as Brunton tells Motherboard, was to create an approach that could be adopted by people without access or training to the best tools, or in situations where they can't get away with using strong crypto, for instance.
Signal Downloads Spiked After Election Results
The project has its roots in the days before Edward Snowden's revelations. In 2011, Brunton and Nissenbaum, who are both professors at NYU focused on technology and privacy, struck up a conversation about Nissenbaum's TrackMeNot project, a lightweight Firefox browser extension that periodically makes false web queries to confuse online tracking technologies. Brunton mentioned his interest in decades-old techniques for concealing one's position from radar detection, and particularly in chaff, the material used by military planes to confuse enemy radar signals.
Chaff are strips of black paper backed with aluminum foil, cut to half the target's wavelength. When released by the pound from an invading airplane, the material can fill a radar screen with more signals than a human operator can handle—a "perfect and intuitive example" of signal obfuscation, says Brunton.
You figure out what you need—time—and what your adversary is looking for—radar pings—and you give them an overload of precisely that
"For those situations when you can't escape observation—you can't decide not to fly, you can't choose to fly in a radar-transparent plane—you figure out what you need—time—and what your adversary is looking for—radar pings—and you give them an overload of precisely that," he says. "Fake signals that conceal the real one, buying you the minutes you need in a cloud of 'false echoes'.
"In the course of trading ideas back and forth, we suddenly realized there was a shared shape to these two problems," he recalls.
But in an environment made of data, a world of laptops, desktops and mobile devices, different strategies are required. Each piece of technology may require a variety of tactics at once. "One of the pertinent issues about obfuscation is its increasing utility for our mobile environment where more and more of our data and activity are offloaded to the cloud, where tools for generating a proliferation of ambiguous, confusing, and misleading data are especially useful," Brunton says. "That's one of the most promising areas for future research."
Brunton and Nissenbaum also see a social purpose in obfuscation, born out of a responsibility that those who have "nothing to hide" owe to those who might: "to conceal, muddle, and obfuscate our activities precisely to confuse the construction of normalcy that can be used to identify the abnormal and secretive." Uploading or appearing to upload non-sensitive material to a whistleblowing website, for instance, could help bury the identity of a leaker in noise, which "helps protect the one who really needs it."
Finn Brunton
Ruin Your Google Search History With One Click Using This Website
Excessive documentation is a similar tactic. If a user is obliged to provide documents and materials, rather than turning over specific documents, they might hand over a massive ream. It is both a delaying tactic, and a way of burying whatever information could be of use to the adversary. Think of sending pallets of documents in a court case to frustrate prosecutors, a tactic that can be used by good and bad actors, from dissidents to misbehaving governments.
A multi-use name can also be used for privacy purposes. The hacktivist group Anonymous is a recent example, but collective name projects go back centuries to include the British Luddite's "Captain Swing" and "Poor Conrad," the name used by secret peasants groups in rebellion against the Duke of Württemberg in 16th century Germany. Brunton deems this a good approach to concealing the actions of any one individual within the actions of many. Anonymous, Brunton writes, refuses "the culture of celebrity, publicity, and reputation for any one person."
Still, many of us are easily named and tracked by a system that a pseudonym alone can't foil. "Everyday internet users are trivially identified through things like cookies and browser fingerprinting," he writes. "Collective names—unless handled with the deliberate care and opsec that characterizes the best Anonymous operations—are more of a gesture than protection and should be treated as such." While Tor and strong encryption can foil spies, governments still rely on a wide array of legal and technical tools to unmask internet users and break through passwords. In the U.S. those tools are aimed at terrorists and criminals that officials warn are "going dark"; in countries with poorer human rights records, those tools can be aimed at dissidents and journalists.
For Brunton and Nissenbaum, one exemplary instance of hiding in plain sight was Operation Vula. This covert action in apartheid South Africa was remarkable for its time: a secret communication |
Pubmed Full Text
Presson, P. K., and Benassi, V. A. (1996). Locus of control orientation and depressive symptomatology: a meta-analysis. J. Soc. Behav. Pers. 11, 201–212.
Privette, G. (1983). Peak experience, peak performance and flow: a comparative analysis of positive human experiences. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 45, 1361–1368. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.45.6.1361 CrossRef Full Text
Privette, G., and Bundrick, C. M. (1991). Peak experience, peak performance, and flow. J. Soc. Behav. Pers. 6, 169–188. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.45.6.1361 CrossRef Full Text
Robinson, J. (2005). Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 39, 1161–1178. doi: 10.1037/h0077714 CrossRef Full Text
Salovey, P., Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D., and Yoo, S. H. (2009). “The positive psychology of emotional intelligence,” in The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, eds S. J. Lopez and C. R. Snyder (New York: Oxford University Press), 237–248.
Sawyer, R. K. (2006). Group creativity: musical performance and collaboration. Psychol. Music 34, 148–165. doi: 10.1177/0305735606061850 CrossRef Full Text
Seger, J., and Potts, R. (2012). Personality correlates of psychological flow states in videogame play. Curr. Psychol. 31, 103–121. doi: 10.1007/s12144-012-9134-5 CrossRef Full Text
Sinnamon, S., Moran, A., and O'Connell, M. (2012). Flow among musicians: measuring peak experiences of student performers. J. Res. Music Educ. 60, 6–25. doi: 10.1177/0022429411434931 CrossRef Full Text
Sloboda, J. A., Davidson, J. W., Howe, M. J. A., and Moore, D. M. (1996). The role of practice in the development of expert musical performance. Br. J. Psycho.87, 287–309. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.tb02591.x CrossRef Full Text
Swann, C. Keegan, R. J. Piggott, D., and Crust, L. (2012). A systematic review of the experience, occurrence, and controllability of flow states in elite sport. Psych. Sport Exerc. 13, 807–819. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2012.05.006 CrossRef Full Text
Tan, F. B., and Chou, J. P. C. (2010). Dimensions of autotelic personality and their effects on perceived playfulness in the context of mobile information and entertainment services. Australas. J. Info. Syst. 17, 5–22.
Teng, C. (2011). Who are likely to experience flow? Impact of temperament and character on flow. Pers. Individ. Differ. 50, 863–868. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.012 CrossRef Full Text
Thomson, P., and Jaque, V. (2011). “Psychophysiological study: ambulatory measures of the ANS in performing artists,” in Proceedings of International Symposium on Performance Science, eds A. Williamon, D. Edwards, and L. Bartel (Utrecht: European Association of Conservatoires (AEC)), 149–154.
Ullen, F., de Manzano, Ö, Almeida, R., Magnusson, P. K. E., Pedersen, N. L., Nakamura, J., et al. (2012). Proneness for psychological flow in everyday life: associations with personality and intelligence. Pers. Individ. Differ. 52, 167–172. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.10.003 CrossRef Full Text
Vuust, P., Gebauer, L., Hansen, N. C., Jorgensen, S. R., Moller, A., and Linnet, J. (2010). Personality influences career choice: sensation seeking in professional musicians. Music Educ. Res. 12, 219–230. doi: 10.1080/14613801003746584 CrossRef Full Text
Watanabe, D., Savion-Lemieux, T., and Penhune, V. B. (2007). The effect of early musical training on adult motor performance: evidence for a sensitive period in motor learning. Exp. Brain Res. 176, 332–340. doi: 10.1007/s00221-006-0619-z Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full TextPhones running Android have been gathering data about a user's location and sending it back to Google when connected to the internet, with Quartz first revealing the practice has been occurring since January 2017.
According to the report, Android phones and tablets have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers and sending the encrypted data back, even when the location tracking function is disabled by the user.
A Google spokesperson told ZDNet that modern Android phones use a network sync system that requires the use of mobile country codes and mobile network codes, to ensure messages and notifications are received quickly.
The cell tower addresses were then sent to the system Google uses for push notifications and messaging on Android devices, with the spokesperson saying that the practice further improves the speed and performance of message delivery.
"In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery," the statement continued.
"However, we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID."
The spokesperson also said that mobile country codes and mobile network codes provide "necessary network information" for message and notification delivery, but highlighted that they are separate from location services, which is why a user's information was still being gathered, despite disabling the function locally.
Google does not make this explicitly clear in its Privacy Policy, which means Android users that have disabled location tracking were still being tracked by the search engine giant.
"When you use Google services, we may collect and process information about your actual location. We use various technologies to determine location, including IP address, GPS, and other sensors that may, for example, provide Google with information on nearby devices, Wi-Fi access points, and cell towers," the policy reads.
Explaining how Maps finds the current location of a user, however, Google touts that a connection to a cellular network can be accurate up to a few thousand metres.
PREVIOUS AND RELATED COVERAGE
Google: We'll track your offline credit card use to show that online ads work
Google wants to know more about when and why you spend money, in order to help advertisers improve their online ads.
Location tracking Android spyware found in Google Play store
Fake 'System Update' app downloaded by over a million users since first appearing in 2014.
Google ignores country domain and delivers search results on detected location
The days of changing the country code in the Google domain to see another country's results are over.
Hundreds of privacy-invading apps are using ultrasonic sounds to track you
Apps are using ad-tracking audio signals that your phone can hear, but you can't.
The 10 best ways to secure your Android phone
Malware makers, phishers, they really are all out to get you. Here's how to stop them in their tracks.The TTC is trying to root out internal fraud and theft through the launch of a new whistleblower program that will allow its 13,000 employees to anonymously report unethical or illegal behaviour by co-workers or TTC contractors. Transit workers will be notified Monday of the new $33,000 “Integrity” program whereby they can write, phone or email their suspicions of wrongdoing to ClearView Strategic Partners, a Toronto consultant group, to trigger an investigation. “The $33,000 cost is a justified expense if it means preventing or detecting fraud and theft, as well as rooting out the few bad apples that do real and serious harm to our reputation and reputation of all public servants,” wrote CEO Andy Byford in a memo to TTC board members. The Integrity initiative takes place as the TTC is strengthening its other whistleblower and fraud/theft policies, he said. Spokesman Brad Ross denied the impetus for the new program was the January firing of eight transit enforcement officers. Five of them were arrested for allegedly writing fake tickets to homeless people to make it appear they were working when they weren’t really on the job.
Article Continued Below
But, he said, “We’ve had occasion where employees have breached codes of conduct, doing things with contractors that they ought not to do. There have been instances where we catch these and the system works but we think there may be more and we want to get to them more quickly, get better information so investigations can be wrapped up more quickly.” In June, 2011, a TTC manager, his wife and son as well as the owner of IPAC Paving were charged in connection with an alleged fake invoice and paving scheme at TTC bus stations. Other incidents have involved fare theft by a bus driver and subway collector. The Integrity program is similar to the Toronto auditor-general’s Fraud and Waste hotline that allows employees and the public to report misuse of city resources. The difference, said Ross, is that the TTC is using a third party to act as a reporting agent.
“We are entrusted with $1.5 billion every year so we have a responsibility and a duty to protect the taxpayers’ money,” he said. The Integrity initiative is not designed for public use. The TTC’s public complaints process, its internal grievance procedures and human rights processes remain unchanged according to Byford’s memo. Both he and Ross said they expect the program will boost TTC employee morale. “When these news stories go public, that hurts everybody’s reputation. It paints everybody with the same brush,” said Ross. “If we can get to the cases more quickly and nip them in the bud and have employees bring these cases to light, it improves the organization’s reputation.”
Article Continued Below
Under its contract with ClearView, the TTC is prohibited from knowing the identity of employees who report their suspicions. The employee simply goes on the website, logs in with a password and makes a report. They can also write or call a tip line. The advantage of the email system is that investigators can follow up with specific questions, said Ross. TTC workers’ union president Bob Kinnear could not be reached on Sunday. Transit board member, Councillor Maria Augimeri (Ward 9 York Centre), who opposed the TTC’s contracting out of bus-cleaning jobs, said she “very cautiously” supports the policy — on paper. “I’ve heard stories of people who have made use of a whistle blower policy and lived to regret it,” she said, adding that 99 per cent of TTC workers are “top-notch” employees.Japanese officials have formally asked the South Korean government to remove a statue erected by activists in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, according to the Korea Times.
The statue depicts a young Korean girl, symbolic of the thousands of Korean so-called “comfort women” forced to sexually service Japanese troops during the war. The issue continues to cause tension between the two countries, with many Koreans feeling that Japan has not adequately compensated the women for their ordeal, and Tokyo responding that such matters were settled under a bilateral treaty of 1965.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also reportedly brought up the statue with South Korean President Park Geun-hye during recent talks aimed at resolving the tensions once and for all.
Seoul says it is up to the activists to take down the statue. “Whether to remove the statue or not is not up to the Korean government,” a South Korean official told the Times on condition of anonymity. “That cannot be settled in governmental talks.”
Less than 50 onetime comfort women remain alive.
[Korea Times]
Write to Rishi Iyengar at rishi.iyengar@timeasia.com.Real Office fan-site runner Jennie Tan (with John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer), playing an Office fan-site runner. Photo: Andy Buckley/officetally.com
The Office finale didn’t just bring back past regulars Michael Scott, Kelly, and Ryan. The 75-minute closer also paraded out classic bygone bit players (Mose! Devon!) and characters we’d only heard about until last night (Erin’s birth parents … awww). But the show was also packed with many Office regulars who you might not have recognized: Behind-the-scenes folks popped in for small parts, from writers and producers to key crew members (and, in some cases, their loved ones) and one very dedicated Office fan, all of whom kept Dunder Mifflin chugging away for nine seasons. (There were also a couple of very familiar actors who showed up as new characters, which felt like they were setting things up for some kind of Scrubs-like continuation with a new cast.) Here’s the complete list of returning players, backstage castings, and surprise cameos, alphabetically by character.* (UPDATE: Thanks to the help of Office director/editor/producer David Rogers, we were able to identify even more players, added in below.)
After-party guests in group picture: Executive producers Greg Daniels and Howard Klein, editor/directors David Rogers and Claire Scanlon, script supervisor Veda Semarne, first A.D. Rusty Mahmood, prop master Phil Shea
Angela’s sister: Rachael Harris (Frequent TV guest star: New Girl, Modern Family, many others)
Dakota, Kevin’s replacement: Dakota Johnson, from the canceled Ben and Kate
Devon, re-hired employee: Devon Abner, whose character was fired by Michael in season two’s Halloween episode, and then smashed a pumpkin on Michael’s windshield
Documentary crew voice that speaks to Dwight in his car in the cold open: Director of Photography/director/camera operator Matt Sohn
Elizabeth the stripper: Jackie Dubatin. Elizabeth previously danced at Bob Vance’s bachelor party. She also presented the big check in “Fun Run.”
Erin’s biological mom: Joan Cusack
Erin’s biological dad: Ed Begley, Jr.
Frat boy who mocks Andy in the steak house: Greg Daniels’ former driver/assistant, Jonah Platt
Gabor, a wedding guest: Tim and Eric’s Eric Wareheim, who first appeared this season in “Junior Salesman,” as Dwight’s friend from X-Men School
Guest at Kevin’s bar in Mose’s group: James Urbaniak as Rolf
Jakey, the stripper at Angela’s bachelorette party (and Meredith’s son): Spencer Daniels, first seen in season two’s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”
Kelly’s boyfriend, Ravi: Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes)
Minister at the wedding: Michael ‘Tuba” Heatherton, husband of script supervisor Veda Semarne; he also appeared in this season’s episode, “The Farm”
Mose: Mike Schur, former Office writer and Parks and Recreation showrunner
PBS panel audience member who asks about Jim’s teapot letter: Office writer Dan Sterling
PBS panel audience member who asks how they all feel about their lives playing out on TV: Office writer Brent Forrester
PBS panel audience member who asks if life feels pointless after the cameras leave: Office writer Steve Hely
PBS panel audience member who asks if Pam has a Jim-sized surprise for him: Office writer Amelie Gillette
PBS panel audience member who asks if they were portrayed accurately: Office wardrobe department’s Courteney Andresen
PBS panel audience member who lusts after Jim: Office writer Allison Silverman
PBS panel audience member who runs a fan website, and presses Pam on how she could ever doubt Jim: Jennie Tan, who runs the Office fan site OfficeTally
PBS panel moderator: Susanne Daniels, wife of Greg Daniels and president of entertainment at MTV
People who bought Jim and Pam’s house: Jay Falk, Office script coordinator, and his wife
Real-estate agent Carol: Nancy Carell, Steve’s wife. Carol dated Michael Scott in season three, and returned briefly in season seven so Michael could ask her if she gave him herpes
Saturday Night Live Andy mockers: Bill Hader and Seth Meyers
Stanley’s replacement: Malcolm Barrett (Better Off Ted)
Wedding guest and part of Mose’s group at Kevin’s bar: Office producer/director Jen Celotta
Wedding guest and part of Mose’s group at Kevin’s bar: Office producer/writer Graham Wagner
Woman at warehouse party who tells Phyllis the mugs are for PBS Execs only: Casting director Allison Jones
Zeke, Dwight’s cousin: Matt L. Jones (Breaking Bad), seen this season in “The Farm” and “Junior Salesman”
And all of the extras in the final warehouse scene are cast and crew of The Office including PAs, editors, script supervisors, etc. Even the photographer, Chris Haston, is an NBC photographer.
* This post has been corrected: Spencer Daniels (who plays Meredith’s stripper son) is not Greg Daniels’ son. We also added Brent Forrester, Elizabeth the Stripper, the SNL team, and Eric Wareheim.Year Published: 2015
Publisher: Gamelyn Games
Designer: Scott Almes
Players: 1-5
Playtime: 45 minutes – 1 1/2 hours
One Sentence Synopsis: Intergalactic bumper-cars, where sharing is not caring.
For a review of the finished product’s components and the mini expansion, click here. This article, although done with a preview copy, can now be taken as our review of the final game’s mechanics.
Gamelyn Games’s Tiny Epic Kingdoms was one of the first games I backed on Kickstarter earlier this year. The fantasy theme really caught my eye, and the concept that a small, portable game could capture even a bit of the essence of a euro-style worker placement and resource management game was intriguing. Michael Coe did an excellent job running the Kickstarter campaign, so-much-so that I backed the game’s cooperative sequel, Tiny Epic Defenders, before Tiny Epic Kingdoms even arrived and before my group even had a chance to table TED’s print and play version(preview here). Neither game disappointed, with both offering great, light board game experiences that are easy enough for newcomers to pick up quickly, but with enough depth that more avid gamers will find plenty of interesting strategies and combinations to dissect. The fact that both games came in at around $20 was even more of a bonus.
Fast-forward to the 2014 Holiday season and we have the next installment of the Tiny Epic series on our radar for its January 8th Kickstarter debut. Designed once again by Scott Almes, Tiny Epic Galaxies combines resource management and worker placement mechanics with dice-rolling as players compete to amass the most points through upgrading their home worlds and the acquisition of new planets. While I think Tiny Epic Solar Systems might describe the feel of the game more appropriately, it certainly doesn’t sound nearly as sexy. COG Gaming was lucky enough to snag a prototype copy of TEG, so rather than preview a print and play version of this one around the time the Kickstarter will launch, we’re pleased to be able to provide this early preview of Gamelyn Games’s newest title!
Before getting into the review itself, I do want to make it clear that this is a preview for a prototype version of the game. The components don’t look anything like the finished product(which looks pretty amazing, if the photos from BGGcon are any indication), and the rules are in no way finalized or even fully completed and may not be exactly the same as other prototype reviews you read. In fact, one of the small quibbles my group had looks like it has already been addressed if some playtester notes I recently read are any indication, so I’ve notated that in the appropriate section. Things are bound to change before the game even hits Kickstarter, and I’d venture a very safe guess that what is included in the game will expand during the campaign, and we may even see the expansion of the number of players. With that said, while some reviewers shy away from providing direct commentary on rules for prototypes, I intend to provide critical commentary on the rules so people reading know exactly what my group enjoyed about the game, and which aspects we enjoyed less. That way, come January, readers can make their own comparison between the game as it stands now, the final product, and whether concerns discussed in this preview and others were addressed in the interim.
Like the previous titles in the Tiny Epic series of games, Tiny Epic Galaxies is very easy to pick up and play. In fact, I’d say that in comparison to Tiny Epic Kingdoms that TEG is actually easier to learn. Setup takes all but a couple of minutes, and consists of divvying out a Homeworld card to each player, along with their set of resource trackers and colonizing ships that will see their tiny denizens to the surface of new planets. A number of cards is dealt to the center of the table representing the initial selection of planets available for exploitation or colonization, and with that you’re off and playing! We tried the game a number of times with anywhere from 2-4 players, but even with experienced players I think the advertised 30 minutes playtime is probably only achievable on a consistent basis from a 2 player game. Our 3-4 player games took anywhere from 45 minutes to a little over an hour. I’d say an hour is a safe bet for your 3-4 player games.
Although the home world cards have different artwork, they all share the same functionality. Each includes a numbered track in order to record how much energy and culture that player has, along with an upgrade track that shows how much the player’s home planet is currently worth in Victory Points(max of 8), along with how many ships and dice that player gets to use based on that upgrade level. Players start the game with 2 ships, and the use of 4 dice on their turn.
At the start of their turn each player rolls the number of dice available to them, and then in a dice-rolling mechanic similar to King of Tokyo gets to choose any number of those dice to keep, and then re-roll the others one time. The results of these dice dictate what each player is allowed to do on their turn, and whether they’ll actually be able to pull off the moves they had strategized for. Each side of the dice depicts a different action the player is allowed to take(unless they choose not to), and each result may be taken in any order the player wants. This can actually result in some pretty impressive action combinations if players adapt their strategies well on-the-fly, and it’s truly satisfying to pull off a perfect 7-dice combo towards the end of the game where every action just falls into place perfectly.
From top-to-bottom:
Movement: A player can move a ship from its current planet to another planet. The player may choose to land the ship on the planet’s colonizing track, which puts them in contention for that planet’s victory points and eventual control over its special ability, or they can land on the planet’s surface and immediately use the planet’s special ability. In either case, the ship also allows the player to gain whichever resource is available on that planet(the symbol in the top right).
Investment: Activating an Investment die allows the player to move one of their ships one space up the colonizing track on a planet with the Investment symbol.
Diplomacy: Activating a Diplomacy die allows the player to move one of their ships one space up the colonizing track on a planet with the Diplomacy symbol.
Energy: Activating an Energy die allows the player to gain 1 energy for each ship they have on a planet with the energy symbol. Energy is used to upgrade your home world, or can be spent for additional re-rolls.
Culture: Activating a Culture die allows the player to gain 1 culture for each ship they have on a planet with the culture symbol. Culture is used to upgrade your home world, or can be spent to use the result of another player’s activated dice during their turn.
Colony Action: Activating a die with this symbol allows the player to take one action from any colony they’ve successfully colonized, including the ‘upgrade’ action on their home world.
Players use these actions to amass resources, upgrade their home world, and colonize planets by being the first to reach the end of that planet’s tracker in an effort to end the game with the most number of points. When a player takes control of a planet, all ships that were on the planet are returned to their home worlds, and the winning player puts the planet card under their home world card to symbolize that its victory points are theirs, and that they now have sole-rights to use that planet’s special ability. Once one player reaches 21 points, each other player gets one more turn and then the final points are tallied and an overall winner is determined.
Rather than the meat of the game coming from the complexity of the rules system, Tiny Epic Galaxies really shines because of its player interaction. At first glance I’ll admit I actually couldn’t see exactly how this was much more than a race for points, but once we got a couple of turns in and the interactive elements started to reveal how they all worked together it became apparent the game was both highly strategic, and very interactive. Players can expect to have to juggle colonization races on multiple planets with multiple players, which if lost are essentially wasted actions. At the same time they must weigh the risk/rewards of those races with whether to try and give themselves more long-term advantages by burning dice and resources to upgrade their home worlds, acquiring the resources to do, or possibly saving those resources for future dice re-rolls or trying to piggyback on other players’ actions using culture. It all makes for some very tense moments where the success or failure of strategies, races, or even the game, hinge on a couple of dice.
Adaptation is also extremely important, as even the most well-laid plan can be countered by someone else’s perfect use of their resource and actions. New planet cards will reveal themselves throughout the course of the game as others are colonized, and players may decide midway through the game that a new card is a must-have combo for their plans, or that circumstances have necessitated a change in strategy. What’s great is that decisions like that are actually possible- you can start the game with one strategy and finish with another; you’ll rarely find yourself in a situation were you’re so incredibly disadvantaged that there’s no coming back from it. Culture also helps in this regard, as its effective use takes some randomness out of a game that relies on dice-rolls for actions, and allows players the occasional extra action or two(essentially of their choice) to catch back up as long as other players are actually activating the dice they want to use.
Now, I will mention that I think culture is currently a mixed bag. On the one hand, its current functionality has the aforementioned effect of alleviating some randomness, and adding an even deeper layer of strategy as players concern themselves with whether someone else is going to use their own dice against them. On the other, amassing culture in order to use other people’s dice on a regular basis is an extremely powerful strategy, and it’s really not all that difficult to do. Energy is the same way, though to a lesser extent of usefulness, in allowing players to re-roll non-activated dice as many times as they have energy. In one instance someone was basically able to re-roll dice on their final turn until they got exactly what they needed to eek out a win. While this isn’t so much an issue with either resource early on as people spend the resources to upgrade their home worlds, later in the game it’s fairly easy to keep high numbers of both resources on-deck.
Although being able to come back from a deficit is certainly one of the positives for the game, my group also still had a few instances where players were frustrated by some of the huge swings in momentum that people can accomplish through epic dice combos, and subsequent use of culture. Some players were able to set themselves up on multiple planets during their own turn in a way that essentially precluded anyone else from using any of their colonizing actions without that previous player being able to take the planets they were in contention for. While that person obviously found a good strategy, the consensus around the table was it seemed a little unfair that one person could set themselves up for such total control over a round(and guarantee their success on the following turn even if everyone chose not to activate dice). Specifically, people took issue with other players being able to spend culture to use the effect of someone else’s dice immediately after that player had made use of the action. It was suggested players using culture have to wait to do so until after the current player has activated all of their dice, though we haven’t had a chance to try that tweak out yet.
Also, at least with how we read the rules and played, it seems like players are potentially at a disadvantage the farther from the starting player they are in the turn order. Since each player gets to take a final turn after someone reaches 21, it means that if the last player in the order is the first person to 21, all the other players end up getting 1 total turn more than that person. If the first player in the turn order reaches 21 first, everyone else just takes their normal turn and then the game ends. I’m not sure what the best course of action is to address this though because I do like having a final opportunity to try and come back and counter someone and surpass their score in the final turn. Since receiving our rules I’ve read some information that looks like a bonus may have been introduced to address this, but since it wasn’t included in our version I can’t speak directly to that.
Even with the few issues my group had with certain elements of the game, everyone enjoyed playing it. It hits a nice playtime where we could play it as a filler, or as a lighter game that still allows for the strategy and planning of a worker placement/resource management game, but without the complexity in setup and rules. What’s really impressive is that even though it uses some similar underlying mechanics as Tiny Epic Kingdoms, Tiny Epic Galaxies manages to feel completely different. I think I’d hesitate to add a 5th player to the game if the option is ever made available down the road, as it would potentially edge up on the 1 1/2 hour mark, and if I’m looking for a game with that kind of a time commitment there are others I’d opt for first. For that 30 min-1 hr mark though this is a really great option, and I’m looking forward to the Kickstarter campaign on January 8 to see what the final product looks like, and what kind of added value Gamelyn Games has up its sleeves for stretch goals.
READ OUR EXTENDED COMPONENT REVIEW AND EXPANSION REVIEW HERE.
Visit the Official Tiny Epic Galaxies page
Support Tiny Epic Galaxies on BGG by liking the game and some of their images!
Have you played other entries in the series? If so, what did you think? Excited for TEG?
AdvertisementsHoneybees grab the headlines, but wild bee populations are also struggling to survive–maybe even more, since they don’t have beekeepers working to protect them. They also play a critical role in pollinating food. In a new project, an artist is giving wild bees some new attention by bringing people and bees together at a park.
The Buzzbench, a public sculpture made of cane and bamboo stalks sandwiched between curving boards arranged like a giant flower, is designed to attract both bees and humans. For the bees, the tiny crevices in the sculpture will provide a much-needed place to nest.
“Wild bees spend a large part of their lifespan looking for a suitable place to lay their eggs–providing a nesting opportunity really helps them,” says AnneMarie van Splunter, the Netherlands-based artist who designed the sculpture and is currently raising money to build it in an Amsterdam park.
For people wandering through the park, the bench will be a place to sit and get close to insects they might not otherwise notice–or that they might even try to avoid. “We tend to keep our distance from bees because we are afraid to get stung,” van Splunter says. “But actually, the chances you get attacked by wild bees are nil.”
Van Splunter knew little about the bees herself until beginning the project and working with scientists to design a structure to support them. “I never knew, for example, that there were bees only three millimeters long, that look like flies and do not sting,” she says. “It’s really quite interesting to see them at work, especially when you understand what they are actually doing. It makes one pay more attention to ones surroundings, makes you experience it in a different way.”
After building the bench, Van Splunter plans to take care of it for the next 10 years, swapping out the bamboo and cane inside as needed. “It’s important to maintain it to make it work,” she says. “I would like it to be a place that many people feel involved with, for example as an educational tool, or as a place of research for experts, or just as a place for park visitors to rest.”gamers Flickr/Taylor McBride Hackers have hauled in millions over the years, mostly in bitcoins, with a blackmail scheme called ransomware, experts say.
You visit a hacked website or download an evil file, and it encrypts files on your computer and won't give them back until you pay money to designated account.
Those who visit porn sites have been victims of this type of thing for years. Even police stations have been forced to pay up.
Now two security researchers have found a new type of ransomware that slips in through Flash files or through an old hole in Internet Explorer on a Windows PC and specifically targets video games, writes security researcher Vadim Kotov from Bromium Labs.
Want your game back? Want all your high scores and other game-related data back? Pay up.
"We haven't seen gamers being targeted by ransomware until now," writes in a blog post about the ransomware.
Bromium And if you're not a gamer? It can lock down other files on the computer as well, including your iTunes, your Office documents, and your finance software.
The new form of malware, called TeslaCrypt, was discovered by Fabian Wosar of Emsisoft in late February, according to a post on Bleeping Computer.
It holds for ransom about 40 video games including popular single-player games like these:
Call of Duty
Star Craft 2
Diablo
Fallout 3
Minecraft
Half-Life 2
Dragon Age: Origins
The Elder Scrolls and specifically Skyrim related files
Star Wars: The Knights Of The Old Republic
WarCraft 3
F.E.A.R
Saint Rows 2
Assassin's Creed
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Resident Evil 4WASHINGTON -- California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said Sunday the federal government should respect states' rights to decide how to regulate marijuana use, in light of votes Tuesday to approve legal use of the drug in Colorado and Washington.
"It's time for the Justice Department to recognize the sovereignty of the states," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."
His state has legalized medical marijuana use, which is illegal under federal law. Colorado and Washington went even further by making marijuana legal even for recreational use.
Brown said he's not predicting another push to legalize marijuana for recreational use in California, calling drug use "dangerous."
"We already have a fair amount of marijuana use in the guise of medical marijuana," he said. "There's abuses in that field."
Still, he said Colorado and Washington should be allowed to do what they believe is right on marijuana law, adding there was adequate debate within the states on whether it was the correct move.In 2004 you made the switch from Wimbledon to join the Gunners' academy. Did you find there was an ‘Arsenal way’ of doing things upon your arrival?
There was a vast difference in the intensity of training and the standard of facilities. Obviously when you move to a Premier League club, you notice that they strive to be the best in everything they do. It's down to the little things, from the way you're treated, right down to the training kit. It’s a class above.
You started your career in midfield before settling at left-back. How do you explain this career evolution? Do you sometimes feel like a frustrated winger?
I used to when I was first given the role, but that was only because I thought it was temporary as both Gael [Clichy] and Armand [Traore] were injured. I was 17 when I made my debut and I'd never played at left-back before in my life, but after that game the manager told me that he wanted me to play there and he’s helped me develop ever since. I'm only 23 so I'm still learning my trade, but the more I play, the more experience I get – and so I feel more at home there.
Was there anyone besides Arsene Wenger who helped you cope with the psychological pressures of professional football?
When I was younger I did a lot of work on dealing with the transition from the reserves to the first team. We have a guy here and he wanted to speak to me before I made my first-team debut. He’s obviously spoken to a lot of people before and has a good idea of what’s going on in your head, so it’s always good to get his help. We can also talk to him about matters off the pitch because life’s not just about football and I have other things going on, so it can help you learn to concentrate when you need to?
Has it been difficult shifting in and out of the team after several injuries in recent years?
I've had a lot of support from experienced players that have suffered similar injuries. Players like Tomas Rosicky don’t just help me when I'm injured, but also when I'm fit because it’s easy when you’re playing to ignore the things you have to do to remain healthy. Instead of going home early, these players will stay with you and work on the things that help with injury prevention.
Stretchered off against Partizan Belgrade
The club has been criticised for the influx of foreign players in the squad. Is this a problem or do you share Wenger’s view that " |
therapies recommended for PMS include diuretics, tranquilizers, pain medications such as Motrin, anti-depressants, birth control pills and progesterone.
While any of these medications may provide temporary relief, none of them address fundamental causes. Some of these medications, such as birth control pills and diuretics may cause additional problems later. It is well documented that the birth control pill results in a depletion of zinc, vitamin B-6, folic acid and other essential nutrients. The use of diuretics can deplete potassium, zinc and magnesium, leading to greater sensitivity to stress.
The most effective and least harmful of the medical treatments is the use of natural progesterone, which does provide relief to some women. However, if body chemistry is corrected, the estrogen-progesterone balance will naturally reestablish itself.
Nutritional Therapy
Many nutrients are intimately involved in premenstrual syndrome, due to their relationship to copper metabolism, adrenal glandular activity and cellular energy production.
Magnesium
Research indicates that women suffering from PMS have lower magnesium levels than women without PMS. A magnesium deficiency may contribute to a number of symptoms associated with PMS, particularly mood swings, abdominal bloating, breast tenderness and nervous tension.
A craving for chocolate is frequently found to be a sign of magnesium deficiency. Though rich in magnesium, chocolate is not recommended, due to its high caffeine and copper content.
Best Sources of Magnesium
almonds green vegetables desiccated liver soybeans eggs wheat germ
Potassium
Although potassium has many important functions, it plays a vital role in alleviating many of the symptoms of PMS, particularly those relating to water retention.
Many symptoms, including weight gain and bloating, may be due to low potassium levels relative to sodium. Sodium levels are frequently elevated above normal values due to excessive estrogen levels that occur premenstrually.
Women suffering from weight gain and abdominal bloating frequently resort to the use of diuretics. This can only result in a worsening of their symptoms, due to increased excretion of potassium and magnesium.
Best Sources of Potassium
apples melons bananas oranges berries peaches carrots potatoes grapefruit tangerines
Zinc
The importance of zinc in the treatment of PMS cannot be overestimated. Zinc is of significant value in lowering the usually elevated copper levels associated with increased levels of estrogen during the premenstrual phase. Zinc is a natural antagonist to copper.
Although zinc is vitally important in certain cases, caution must be exercised where copper or ceruloplasmin levels are low. An excessive intake of zinc will cause a decrease in the ceruloplasmin levels in the blood,(1) resulting in a copper deficiency.
According to Van Campen, difficulties do not arise because of too much zinc or too little copper, but rather because of an imbalance between the two. He states, for example, that an animal getting what might be called a normal amount of copper may not be able to bind and utilize it if it has excessive zinc in its diet. The result will be the same as a tissue copper deficiency, while the blood will contain excess levels of unbound copper.
According to Van Campen; mineral imbal ance... "becomes serious when an animal is receiving just barely enough of an essential mineral. Some animals receiving a low copper diet are affected by as little as 50 to 100 parts per million of zinc. Animals getting adequate copper can take 25 to 50 times as much zinc without apparent effects."(2)
Zinc is of special importance if the PMS sufferer is using a copper intra-uterine device for birth control. A zinc deficiency can be caused by the absorption of copper from the copper IUD device. One should take special note that a reduction in zinc frequently results in a rise of sodium (salt) levels. This is a highly undesirable state responsible for many of the symptoms associated with PMS, especially edema.
Another important fact to consider is that diuretics are known to decrease zinc as well as magnesium in the body. By decreasing zinc, diuretics decrease one's ability to combat the effects of stress, further worsening the zinc deficiency.
One of the common manifestations of a zinc deficiency is a loss of appetite. It has been noted that one of the first symptoms associated with PMS is loss of appetite.
The Importance Of Vitamins
The B-Complex Vitamins
The B-complex vitamins have been known for many years to be effective in reducing many of the symptoms of PMS such as mood swings, anxieties, nervous tension and irritability. Only recently has the mechanism of action been understood.
One of the principal causes of PMS, as we have stated earlier, is an excess of estrogen over progesterone. One of the principal causes of this imbalance is unquestionably a vitamin B-complex deficiency. This may be the result of an excessive dietary intake of sugars. It is a well-known fact that a deficiency of B-complex vitamins may result in a failure to convert estrogens into estriol, which is a less potent form of estrogen. Any diminished ability of the liver to convert estrogen to estriol will result in an increased ratio of estrogen to progesterone, with resulting PMS symptoms.
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) has been found to be extremely helpful in the treatment of PMS, particularly in relieving mental depression. Vitamin B6 is lost from the tissues whenever tissue copper levels rise in the body. This is exactly the case premenstrually. It is principally a copper excess, real or relative, which results in mental depression.
If sufficient or adequate amounts of B6 are present, the depressing effect of excess tissue copper is minimized or negated.
Along with relieving mental depression associated with PMS, vitamin B6 has proved to be effective in reducing water retention, nervous tension and headaches associated with PMS.
It is obvious from the above that vitamin B6 plays a vital role in regulating estrogen levels. Zinc is often combined with vitamin B6, as their effects are synergistic.
Vitamin B1
We believe that B1 plays a major role in PMS by increasing the rate of metabolism. The metabolic rate is abnormally low in the great majority of PMS sufferers, due, at least in part, to the effect of copper toxicity.
Copper, in excess, has a depressing effect upon the activity of the thyroid gland which plays a major role in maintaining a normal rate of metabolism.
Vitamin B3 (Niacin)
Vitamin B3, or niacin has been found to be effective in reducing mood swings and mental depression. Again, it has been noted that niacin is antagonistic to copper.
Niacin is also essential for energy production in all body cells and tends to enhance energy production.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) has also been recognized as being very important in reducing the symptoms associated with premenstrual tension. There is strong evidence that vitamin C plays a vital role in the reduction of copper toxicity. Vitamin C is also necessary for optimal adrenal gland activity.
Many factors contribute to the depletion of vitamin C reserves including stress, environmental pollution, toxic metal poisoning, the use of birth control pills, copper IUD's, water from copper water pipes and even foods relatively high in copper. These include lobster, shrimp, clams, organ meats, soy beans, avocadoes, etc.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E deficiency results in increased fluid retention, a problem common to PMS sufferers. In addition, a vitamin E deficiency is commonly associated with muscle cramps and breast tenderness, symptoms common to PMS sufferers.
Symptomatic Regimens For PMS
There are two approaches to nutritional therapy. The first and more common is symptomatic nutritional therapy.
The most commonly recommended nutrients for PMS are vitamin B-6, zinc, magnesium, herbs such as dong quai and black cohosh, evening primrose oil and B-complex vitamins.
We have found that PMS can be divided into high and low estrogen types.
For the high estrogen (high copper) type, a typical nutritional regimen includes:
vitamin B6 - 200 mg 1-1-1 zinc - 22.5 mg 2-2-2 magnesium - 133 mg 2-2-2 potassium - 99 mg 2-2-2
For the low estrogen (bio-unavailable copper) type, we recommend:
vitamin C - 1000 mg 1-1-1 copper - 3 mg 1-1-1 vitamin E - 200 IU 2-2-2
Determining if a woman is a high or low estrogen type is not always easy. Symptoms may be used as a rough guide:
High Estrogen
Irritability depression Water retention Breast tenderness
Low Estrogen
Depression Fatigue, extreme Infections
It is recommended that one regimen be tried for 3 to 4 days. If no improvement takes place, try the other regimen.
Many women are helped by this therapy. However, these few nutrients are oftentimes insufficient to correct the primary causes of PMS, as outlined above.
Use Of Hair Analysis To Guide Nutritional Therapy
The second approach to premenstrual syndrome, in which we have specialized, is to correct the underlying causes of the problem through individualized scientific nutrition programs.
Due to the multiplicity of imbalances contributing to PMS, where does one begin? There is an optimal physiological balance which must be attained for each individual. Each and every individual is as biochemically unique as a fingerprint.
Our research indicates that hair mineral analysis is invaluable as a screening tool to determine not only which hormonal imbalances exist, but also provide insight into which nutrients are deficient or excessive.
Using hair analysis as a screening tool, one may specifically select those nutrients which are most likely needed for that individual's specific biochemistry.
On the basis of this test and symptoms, we have learned to design individual nutritional programs that address the biochemical imbalances present. With this method, over a period of several months to a year, often the symptoms associated with PMS can be significantly reduced or eliminated permanently.
The PMS Diet
Often, PMS sufferers have poor eating habits, due in part to a copper-induced zinc deficiency. Common manifestations of a zinc deficiency are craving for chocolate, loss of appetite, anorexia and sometimes bulimia. It must be recognized that, to a great extent, the disturbed body chemistry of the PMS sufferer dictates her dietary habits.
Correction of the underlying deviant body chemistry, especially a zinc and vitamin B-6 deficiency, frequently encourages improved eating habits.
The following are some nutritional guidelines which will go a long way towards easing the miseries associated with PMS.
Should You Increase Your Intake Of Complex Carbohydrates?
Women with PMS are often advised to increase their intake of complex carbohydrate type foods and to eat six times a day. Our research indicates that this is poor advice for the great majority of PMS sufferers. A large increase in one's carbohydrate intake will serve to limit one's protein intake to perhaps no more than 20 percent (approximately 3 ounces of meat).
Warning: Too great an intake of carbohydrates will result in water retention and depletion of zinc and magnesium reserves.
Research indicates that a high carbohydrate diet is a major cause of both a zinc and magnesium deficiency. The result of both a zinc and magnesium deficiency is a rise in sodium (salt) levels and a decrease in insulin secretion. This results in a decreased ability to effectively metabolize carbohydrates.
Limitation Of Fat Intake
Fat intake should be limited to about 20% for the slow oxidizer and to 30% for the fast oxidizer. Fats should consist mainly of polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Dietary fat has a tendency to slow down the rate of metabolism.
Dairy products should be limited to two servings per day; inasmuch as the high calcium content not only blocks absorption of magnesium, it also increases the urinary excretion of magnesium. It is also important to consume twice as much vegetable fat as animal fat, inasmuch as "...animal fats cause hyperestrogenemia and suppress ovarian secretion of progesterone."(3)
Increased Intake Of Vegetables
For slow oxidizers, (individuals with a low metabolic rate) it is recommended to increase the intake of whole grains, green leafy vegetables, cereals and legumes. Fast oxidizers, on the other hand, are advised to follow this recommendation, with an emphasis on vegetables.
Foods To Avoid
Refined Sugar and Starches:
Sugar intake should be reduced to an absolute minimum. Foods to be avoided include; chocolate, candies, pies, cakes, ice cream and foods and beverages sweetened with sugar.
Refined carbohydrates such as sugar and white bread are mineral-robbers. As noted previously, a deficiency of various minerals such as magnesium, potassium and zinc play a vital role in many discomforting symptoms associated with PMS.
Salt:
A substantial reduction in salt intake is of vital importance to the majority of PMS sufferers. We are not only talking about salt-shaker salt. Foods and beverages with a high salt content include salted soda crackers, pretzels, ham, club sodas, tonics and even diet drinks which contain large amounts of salt in the form of sodium benzoate.
Caffeine-Containing Beverages:
All caffeine-containing beverages should be drastically reduced or eliminated. These include coffee, tea, chocolate and cola drinks. Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant.
Alcohol:
Alcoholic beverages should be eliminated if best results are to be achieved. Alcohol causes a loss of two very important minerals, magnesium and zinc.
Chocolate:
"...Addiction on the part of some women to certain foods and drugs may, in part, be due to temporary relief of PMS symptoms by these sub-stances..."(4) Chocolate craving is common in PMS sufferers. However, it is best to limit chocolate, if possible, because of its high sugar content.
Cigarettes:
"Because cigarette smoking increases aldosterone levels,"(5) cigarette smoking should be discouraged.
Lifestyle
Stress Reduction
Lifestyle can play an important role in modulating PMS symptoms. A healthful lifestyle reduces stress on the adrenal glands and helps avoid the excessive accumulation of copper in various organs (brain and liver). Stress depletes zinc and magnesium, thus increasing the tendency for premenstrual syndrome.
Daily Exercise
Regular daily exercise is of the utmost importance to combat and ease the problems associated with PMS.
It is thought that exercise is beneficial because it may raise levels of progesterone and beta-endorphins (euphoria-producing hormones produced by the brain). However, we feel that exercise is also beneficial by raising the rate of metabolism, which in turn results in a reduction of excessive tissue copper levels.
It is to be remembered that elevated estrogen levels are associated with elevated copper levels. A reduction in copper levels will result in a diminished estrogen level, certainly good news for those who suffer from the PMS.
In this manner, exercise can reduce the symptoms of fatigue, depression, anxiety, irritability and headaches so commonly associated with the PMS. Exercise is particularly effective in mild cases of PMS.
Adequate Rest and Sleep
The adrenal glands require sufficient rest and the regeneration of these glands occurs mainly during sleep. Therefore, eight or more hours of sleep should be obtained daily to correct the primary underlying causes of premenstrual syndrome.
Emotional Control
Lack of control of emotions also places additional stress on the adrenal glands and tends to raise tissue copper levels. Control of emotions and mental disciplines, such as meditation, may therefore also be helpful in reducing PMS.
Implications And Conclusions
Quite apart from the serious physical and emotional strain, PMS often causes embarrassment and shame. This has an impact on families and on all of society.
PMS leads girls in school to mischief and pranks and is responsible for a disproportionate amount of avoidable domestic crime. In addition, employee absenteeism, due to PMS, is estimated to cost employers billions of dollars each year.
For all these reasons, we hope that the understanding of premenstrual syndrome, which has come from hair analysis research; will be applied as widely as possible to reduce the devastating effects of this common health condition.
References
Complete Book of Minerals For Health, J. I. Rodale and Staff, Rodale Books, Inc., Emmaus, Pa. 1972 pp 743.
, J. I. Rodale and Staff, Rodale Books, Inc., Emmaus, Pa. 1972 pp 743. A Year in Nutritional Medicine, J. Bland, ed., Keats Publishing, Inc., New Canaan, Ct. 1986, "Management of the Premenstrual Tension Syndromes", pp 147.
Copyright © 1988 - Analytical Research Laboratories, Inc.* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In Liberia, a corruption scandal is developing – and it came about after a Thomson Reuters Foundation journalism trainee used her new skills to report on suspicious practices at the Liberian Embassy in Brussels.
In Liberia, a corruption scandal is developing – and it came about after a Thomson Reuters Foundation journalism trainee used her new skills to report on suspicious practices at the Liberian Embassy in Brussels.
In December 2013 Wade Williams, who works for the newspaper FrontPageAfrica in Liberia, took part in a Governance Reporting training course in London, together with journalists from 12 other countries including Bhutan, East Timor, Myanmar, Tunisia and Mexico.
The course developed the skills of journalists in carrying out corruption investigations, mainly through practical exercises that focused on the fictional country of Manchukistan. It covered issues including sourcing, interview techniques, and the legal dangers that journalists can face when covering sensitive stories.
Wade’s story looked at the Liberian Ambassador to Belgium and the rental payments he was making on his residence. Working with the Belgian news organisation VTM NIEUWS, she found that the Ambassador was claiming more than the actual rent on the property.
Wade told us that the story has sparked a major scandal, with the entire staff of the embassy being recalled, and a government investigation being launched. “The story has made headways and every other media outlet here is quoting it now,” she said.
Wade also told us how she went about the investigation.
“I did the investigation after the course with Thomson Reuters Foundation using what I learned in London,” she explained. “I got a tip off about these fake leases at the Liberian foreign mission in Brussels but did not know what to do with it. I then approached the government for copies of the lease agreement and after several weeks they did provide it.
“I then contacted the ambassador for his side of the story which he provided, and I also talked to experts in the sector. After all that I put the story together and then fact checked to make sure it was correct on details.
“I also tried to link this to how the money taken in corruption could have helped national endeavours like schools, hospital and roads.
“I was shocked that the government swiftly moved to recall the ambassador and the entire embassy staff and launch an investigation across all its embassies.
“I am very grateful for the course.”
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.Ever since we announced Backward Compatibility was coming to Xbox One the number one question I get asked is, “What games are going to be available?” That question has finally been answered.
Today Mike Ybarra, Director of Program Management for Xbox, announced the first 104 titles coming to Xbox One Backward Compatibility when the feature launches as part of the New Xbox One Experience on 12 Nov.
At Xbox, we believe that gaming is universal and should be enjoyed by everyone, everywhere. Our philosophy since launching Xbox One two years ago has been to put gamers at the center of everything we do and create the best, most seamless gaming experience possible. We’re taking a major step forward in that journey on November 12 when we start rolling out the New Xbox One Experience with Xbox One Backward Compatibility.
Today, I’m happy to unveil to you the first 104 Xbox One Backward Compatibly games. Some of my favorites are included, like the complete Gears of War catalog, Assassin’s Creed II, Fallout 3, Borderlands, and Castle Crashers. The full list of the first 104 games is below and can be found at the Backward Compatibility page at Xbox.com. And, as I said at gamescom, going forward, all Xbox 360 games available through Games With Gold after Nov. 12 will be playable on Xbox One.
Our launch of 104 titles on Nov. 12 is just the beginning. You can expect new Xbox One Backward Compatible games to be announced on a regular basis, starting in December. More titles are on the way, including fan favorites like Halo Reach, Halo Wars, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite and Skate 3. Stay tuned because this just the beginning of a long list of Xbox 360 games that will run on Xbox One.
Read the full announcement over at Xbox Wire. And for more information about Xbox One Backward Compatibility check out this video where FLitz from Smosh Games asks me questions about the feature, and this post where I discuss what you need to know in preparation for Backward Compatibility.
If you don’t see your favorite Xbox 360 title on the list and you want to try and get it added, visit the Xbox Feedback website and vote on the existing nominations or submit your own.
I’m also providing a handy list of Xbox One Backward Compatibly titles for your reference:
Xbox One Backward Compatibility ListPreviously on Supernatural:
Castiel took over some family man named Jimmy Novak and ruined his vocal cords forever. Unable to share much screen time with Dean some years later, Castiel decided to look into having his own storyline and popped back into Jimmy’s daughter’s life.
Currently on Supernatural:
Amelia, who is Jimmy’s widow even if his body is sort of still alive, has a dream about her husband coming back home to her. She totally remembers his hair wrong, though.
Then again, she was hit so hard by loss that she literally became a different person, so I guess it’s to be expected her memories are different, too.
The dream comes to an end when Amelia notices gooey blood appearing on her arm. She recognizes something is wrong, having been through this scenario many times. When she wakes up in the real world, she’s been tied down to a filthy cot. A man cuts into her arm with a scalpel and releases a bit of bluish light. He inhales it like it’s steam off a pot of delicious soup.
He puts her back to sleep with a touch of his hand, sending her back to her dream about Jimmy’s dorky hair.
********
Claire heads into Susie’s Bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hey, Dean just killed a bunch of vamps in Tulsa! What a popular town. Also, that’s two Suzies/Susies in a row. If this one weren’t a bar, it’d probably end up dead, too.
She tips the bartender $50 to point her to a guy named Ronnie Cartwright. I would have tried getting the info for free first, but whatever. I guess I’m not a homeless teenager with unlimited disposable income.
Her mother’s diary said she was meeting with this Ronnie guy right before she disappeared, and that he was supposed to introduce her to a “miracle worker.” She shows him a picture but he says he’s never seen her.
Ronnie leaves the bar and Claire follows him into the alleyway because of course she does. “I don’t know no Amelia Novak,” he says. “I never told you her last name,” Claire points out. She grabs his arm and he shoves her away, right into a dumpster, knocking her out. He’s not a total asshole, though, and calls 911 for help before fleeing the scene.
********
Castiel gets to the hospital, but waits for the Winchesters to arrive before going up to see his not-daughter. Then they just waltz into her room without even knocking, which is just rude. “What are you doing here?” she asks Castiel, then sees Dean. “And why the hell did you bring him?!”
On an unrelated note, what is going on with your hair this week, Sam?
Claire eventually confesses that she’s looking for her mother, so she can “tell her off” for ruining her life. She explains all the stuff from the first scene to catch them up.
The guys head into the hall for a confab. Castiel feels responsible. He did, after all, tell Jimmy he would watch out for his family. He must have heard Amelia’s prayers, right? In between the assorted times he died. “She did disappear trying to hunt down an angel,” Dean muses. “Might be a case.” Sam shrugs: “Yeah, but we don’t know that.”
They agree to help out and go back into the hospital room to tell Claire. She’s managed to escape through the window because she wants to do this on her own instead of letting a literal angel and two guys who are extremely good at finding people help her.
Dean and Castiel drive off for the bar to look for her. There’s that permanent rain cloud again. Also, how far away is the bar? It was bright daylight at the hospital and now it’s night.
Dean thinks it’s nice of Castiel to help Claire, but where does it end? He thinks Claire is better off on her own, stronger.
As soon as Ronnie sees them in the bar, he tries to make a break for it. Dean corners him back into his seat. “Headin’ out to beat down another teenager?” Dean asks. “That bitch attacked me,” Ronnie protests. Dean, not taking kindly to Ronnie’s choice of words, bashes his head into the table. He does it one more time when Ronnie doesn’t immediately give up Amelia’s whereabouts. Ronnie finally agrees to talk.
He confesses that he worked for a faith healer named Peter Holloway who cured him of his blindness. Holloway wanted him to recruit the kind of people nobody would miss. “Some people he healed, but others…” He describes Holloway tying up and cutting into some of those people. After he saw that, he quit. Holloway doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would let someone just quit.
As soon as Castiel and Dean hit the road again, Ronnie calls Holloway with a heads up.
Meanwhile, Sam has intercepted Claire at her motel room. He says he’s impressed with how much she’s managed to do on her own, but that he and the others just want to help.
The topic eventually gets around to moms. Sam says his mom died when he was a baby. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Oh, no, it’s okay, I go to know her later in life,” he says. He explains that death doesn’t always mean goodbye.
Sam volunteers to teach Claire how to hack into her mom’s credit card records and set up her own fake credit cards. Best tutor ever!
********
Holloway pays Ronnie a visit in the alley behind Susie’s. It’s convenient how these alleys are always deserted except for the people who are about to be killed and the people who are about to kill them.
First Holloway takes Ronnie’s sight away from him, then he stabs him with a sword.
That just seems like overkill.
********
Dean and Castiel show up at the motel.
Also, they stopped off to do buy a gift for Claire’s birthday. “I got it at the Hot Topical,” Castiel proudly says of the Grumpy Cat stuffed toy. Dean’s face looks like he’s seen things… too many things.
Sam learns that cops just found Ronnie’s body. Claire assumes Dean killed him, but he defends his innocence. “What happened at the bar?” Sam asks when he has a moment alone with Castiel. “Dean snapped,” Castiel says glumly, “he’s getting worse.”
Okay, a few things here. If you’re going to have Dean getting worse, then you *show* him getting worse. The others have done violent things without any kind of demonic influence this season. The dude’s nose wasn’t even bleeding after his face met the table. It was like a Three Stooges routine with better haircuts. And finally, what is Sam picturing happened? “Dean snapped” is super vague.
******
In the alley, the away team gets a look at Ronnie’s wound. It looks like it was made by angel blade, but with three extra little puncture marks. “Best birthday ever,” Claire grumps. Ronnie’s ghost should pop up at that point and shout, “Your day’s going better than mine is kid!”
Luckily, Sam has found that Holloway owns a farmhouse purchased under his own name outside of town. Stupid villains are so considerate.
Sam and Castiel head out to the farm and leave Dean to stay with Claire, because they’re trying to “keep the Mark in check.”
********
Sam and Castiel take the Impala and that little rain cloud. They decide to use all this sittin’ time to chat. Sam’s advice is the opposite of Dean’s. “Going it alone is no way to live,” he says, advising him to stay in Claire’s life.
Big, bad, getting-worse Dean takes Claire mini-golfing. They proceed to try to out-putt each other and quote golf movies. Dear God, the Mark of Cain has its grips in him deeper than ever!
I like how Dean grunts with effort when he squats down to tee up his ball, but has no difficulty in slaying half a dozen vampires.
They talk about the hunting life. “We help people,” Dean says. “Oh, like Castiel ‘helped’ my dad?” Claire asks.
He says because of Jimmy’s sacrifice, Castiel was able to save the world. “Your father’s a hero,” Dean says. He’s safe up in Heaven now with his terrible hair. “He did not die in vain.”
Nor was this golfing trip in vain, because Claire dropping her putter into the last hole somehow makes Dean realize that the marks on Ronnie’s back were caused by the hilt of an angel sword. They head back to the motel to do some research.
Claire comes upon a picture of the archangel Michael. It’s the same picture that Dean once thought looked like Cate Blanchett, remember?
Instead of Dean being, like, “Hey, I was almost that guy and then my part of the story was abruptly dropped!” he now recognizes the picture as a super-ancient “Grigori” angel. You could have at least used a different angel picture, Show.
When he can’t get Sam or Castiel on their phones, he decides to pack up and head out to the farm. He even gives Claire a gun so she can come with.
********
Meanwhile at the farm, Sam and Castiel have split up. Castiel finds Amelia in the farm, while Holloway finds Sam in the house. Instead of just stabbing Sam in the back like he did Ronnie, he whacks him over the head with a pipe and knocks him out. What is this, Clue?
Castiel discovers he can’t heal her wounds for some reason.
Amelia can tell he’s no longer her husband. His voice is way too gravelly, for starters. Castiel assures her that Jimmy is in Heaven. He apologizes for not looking out for her family, but the plot didn’t require it until this season.
Sam wakes up some time later to find he’s been cuffed to a very tiny chair. His legs look like when a giraffe goes for a drink of water.
Holloway introduces himself, saying his real name is Tamiel. “I’m a Grigori,” he says, “a watcher angel.” He feeds on human souls a little bit at a time. He talks long enough for Sam to pick a nail out of his chair and start picking the lock on his handcuffs.
He talks long enough for Claire and Dean show up, too! Claire and Amelia have their tearful reunion. They’re so happy to see each other, you know it’s going to end in tragedy.
Castiel and Dean head to the house and find Sam’s chair empty and broken. Sam jumps out at them with the same pipe that knocked him out. What a weird-ass transition. Did Tamiel just wander off in the middle of opining? Wouldn’t Sam have followed him, or gone to the barn to look for Castiel?
Indeed, Tamiel has gone to the barn to gloat that Amelia can’t be fixed. Claire shoots him to no effect. When Tamiel moves to stab her, Amelia jumps between them and gets a belly full of angel sword.
Castiel tackles him to the ground. Sam and Dean join in, with fisticuffs ensuing! It’s a pretty standard fistfight, considering the parties involved. For some reason, Dean comes at Tamiel with an angel blade like this:
Just when it looks like Tamiel is going to smite Castiel, Claire pops up behind him and kills Tamiel with his own sword. Then she goes back to cradle her dead mother. It’s actually very sad, if you overlook all the vague plot reasons why it happened.
But, on a happier note, Amelia reunites with Jimmy in Heaven, where his hair isn’t quite as terrible as she remembered it.
********
In the end, the guys decide to send Claire off to Jody’s. In a cab. They couldn’t drive her themselves? They leave her with assorted parting gifts, like a Caddyshack DVD, a credit card, and a book about Enochian myths. Dean advises her about becoming a hunter. “It’s not a long life,” he says.
She apologizes for trying to have him killed and all, and asks him to keep an eye on Castiel. “He’s been through enough.” It’d be easier if they had more screen time together, but I’m sure he’ll try. She surprises Castiel with a big ol’ hug before she gets into her cab. He stares after her like a puppy abandoned on the road.
I give this episode 3 Hellhounds
and a hot topical rub for all your aches:
And now a limerick for animikean, for backing my Kickstarter recap campaign:
Death’s not a goodbye or an always
On a show where rebirth’s a mainstay.
Unless you’re a Harvelle
Or an Adam in hell,
Croaking’s just kind of a holiday.
– Tippi BlevinsNeel Sethi in ‘The Jungle Book’ (Disney)
By Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter
The beguilingly credible CGI rendering of real-life animals takes its biggest leap forward since Life of Pi in Disney’s new telling of The Jungle Book.Exceptionally beautiful to behold and bolstered by a stellar vocal cast, this umpteenth film rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s tales of young Mowgli’s adventures amongst the creatures of the Indian jungle proves entirely engaging, even if it’s ultimately lacking in subtext and thematic heft. Most Jungle Book big-screen adaptations have done very well at the box office — the 1967 version, the last animated film Walt Disney personally supervised, was the second-biggest grosser of its year, behind only The Graduate — and this one will be no exception upon its April 15 release as it takes the baton from the studio’s fresher, more original smash Zootopia.
Nor will this be the last we hear of Mowgli, Shere Khan, Kaa and the others for a while. Warner Bros.’ live-action Jungle Book: Origins, directed by Andy Serkis and featuring the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch and Serkis himself as Baloo the bear, started shooting a year ago and is set for release in October 2017.
Related: ‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’: Film Review
From the embracing opening image (extra effective in 3D), which smoothly backtracks from the Cinderella castle logo right into the jungle setting, director Jon Favreau makes his new film instantly welcoming with its wonderfully detailed wilderness environment anyone would swear is real. It also provides clear dramatic orientation through the imposing voice of narrator Ben Kingsley in the guise of the black panther Bagheera, who watches over orphaned Indian boy Mowgli (Neel Sethi, who’s limber, energetic and a tad emphatic at times). The latter has been raised by wolves but can scamper through the trees with the assurance of a monkey and is able to survive partly by virtue of a truce that allows all animals to gather around a watering hole without fear of becoming lunch for their natural predators.
Justin Marks’ script may veer rather too far from reality in depicting its jungle creatures as fundamentally peaceable, apart from the menacing tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba, oozing malignant nuance) and Kaa, an enormous tree-dwelling serpent given hypnotically seductive voice by Scarlett Johansson. To be sure, Disney has not dropped the genre’s sure-fire comic-relief staples (a baby elephant, a cutesy little porcupine), but the exceptional photographic realism lends the work a real-world gravity that sets it leagues apart from the strenuously ingratiating kid-pic conventions in the likes of the Madagascar or Ice Age series, for example, and will help invest even adult audiences in the incident-packed adventure. Not only in their appearances are the creatures here quite far from being traditional cartoon critters; they talk (predominantly in distinguished British-tinged English) among themselves and with Mowgli, who possesses a conspicuously American accent.
Related: ‘Pandemic’: Film Review
The action pivots on Bagheera’s decision that it’s finally time for Mowgli to leave his jungle home and join his own species. Protesting that he doesn’t have a clue what humans are like, Mowgli is finally convinced when the wise panther promises to see him to his destination, resulting in a treacherous trek that leads them across increasingly inhospitable landscapes and into contact with all manner of animals. It’s like a Heart of Darkness for kids.
The tone significantly shifts with the arrival of Baloo (Bill Murray), a genial rascal of a bear whose addiction to honey instantly stamps him as a grown-up Winnie the Pooh. Strenuous effort has been expended to inject every line of Baloo’s ever-flowing commentary with snappy comedy, a challenge met with success perhaps half the time. It also falls to Murray to resurrect Terry Gilkyson’s song “The Bare Necessities” from the 1967 film.
But while the simple Baloo is content with the massive honeycombs Mowgli is able to procure for him, a more formidable figure awaits in a spectacular abandoned ancient city. Kidnapped by no-nonsense monkeys, Mowgli is put at the mercy of the Godfather of the jungle, a grossly overgrown orangutan named King Louie (Christopher Walken) who talks with an old New Yawk accent and insists that Mowgli “summon the red flower,” the animals’ term for the one thing humans seem to possess and control that animals can’t: fire. For his part, sometime song-and-dance man Walk |
the ball has the right to keep it, but must have a new one made in its place for the next game. The price of a new ball is said to be around £1000, depending on the price of silver at the time. The current inscription on the St Columb ball is "Town and Country, Do your best", which derives from the motto: "Town and Country - do your best - for in this parish - I must rest".
Size and weight [ edit ]
The ball weighs just over a pound but there is no definitive size or weight, as the ball is handmade, but generally the weight is about 19 to 21 ounces (~ 570 grams) and is equal in size to a cricket ball (i.e. a sphere about 9 inches or 23 cm in circumference).[3]
Hurling balls on public display [ edit ]
Hurling balls in Truro Museum
Hurling ball used at Truro
There are examples of hurling balls on public display at Truro Museum, Lanhydrock House, St Ives Museum, St Agnes Museum and St. Columb Major Town Hall. Many are also held in private hands. One held at Penzance Museum is thought to be very old and bears the following inscription in the Cornish language: Paul Tuz whek Gwaro Tek heb ate buz Henwis. 1704 The first two words signify "Men of Paul", i.e., the owners of the ball. The last seven words may be translated literally (retaining the word order of the engraving) into English as "sweet play fair without hate to be called", which may be roughly translated as: "Fair play is good play."[4]
History [ edit ]
Little is recorded of the sport until about the 16th century when contests were generally between groups of men from two parishes.[5] At this point there were two forms of the game, according to Carew's Survey of Cornwall (1602). "Hurling to goals" was played on a pitch similar to that of modern-day association football, and had many strict rules, similar to those of football and rugby; this was common in the east of the county. "Hurling to country", however, was often played over large areas of countryside and despite its name also involved goals; this was common in the west of the county. This had few rules and was more similar to the St Columb game of modern times (see below).[6] Inter-parish matches died out towards the end of the 18th century but matches between different sections of the same township continued. At St Ives those named Tom, Will and John formed a team to play against those with other names on the Monday after Quadragesima. At Truro a team of married men played against a team of bachelors, and at Helston the men of two particular streets played against the men of the others. The field of the St Ives game has been changed twice, first to the beach, and in 1939 to the public park.[5]
Hurling is very similar to the game of cnapan; a form of medieval football played until the nineteenth century in the southwestern counties of Wales, especially Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire.[7][8] George Owen of Henllys (1552–1613) believed cnapan was played by the Celtic Britons.[9] There is circumstantial evidence to support this claim. The Cornish, Welsh and Bretons of Brittany are historically descended from Romano-Britons who inhabited the Roman province of Britannia before the Anglo-Saxons incursions from the 5th century.[10]
In Brittany, Normandy and Picardy a comparable game is known as la soule or choule. The earliest recorded game of Soule comes from Cornwall. Court records from 1283 show an entry in the plea rolls (No. 111) providing details of legal action taken when a man called Roger was accused of killing a fellow Soule player with a stone. (Medieval Cornwall by Leonard Elliott Elliott-Binns).[11] Considering the clear similarities between Hyrlîan, Cnapan and La Soule, the common Brittonic languages, shared culture and ancestry it is likely these three sports evolved from the same game. The Romans are known to have played a ball game containing physical aspects of these sports called Harpastum. There is no hard evidence Harpastum continued to be played in Europe after the Western Roman Empire fell into decline although an alternative form was revived as Calcio Fiorentino during the renaissance in 16th century Tuscany. The Orkney 'Ba' Game', which has been played on Christmas Eve and Hogmanay every year since the mid-19th century, has some similarity to Cornish Hurling.[12]
Terminology [ edit ]
Terminology (as used primarily in St Columb Major) includes: Deal – to pass the ball. Call up – takes place before the game starts when the previous winner holds up the ball, declaring victory for his side. The ball is 'called up' for a second time at 8:00 p.m. by the new winner. Throw up – is the start of the game. A man chosen by the previous winner mounts a step-ladder and throws the ball into the crowd. Winner of the Ball – is the hurler that goals the ball for his side (or carries it over the parish boundary in the St Columb game). Silver Beer – is beer served after the game, from gallon jugs with the ball in the jug. Stand – to tackle. Shuffle the ball – to hide the ball. (Generally frowned upon – unless done in jest.)
(as used primarily in St Columb Major) includes:
Modern survival of the game [ edit ]
Up until the 19th century the game was still relatively common, with many Cornish towns and villages holding a match on feast and fair days, and games between St Columb Major and Newquay survived into the early 1900s.[13] The town of Helston used to hold a hurl following the 'beating of the bounds', but the tradition there died out in the early 20th century.[5]
The matches at St Columb and St Ives, and the game played as part of the beating the bounds ceremony at Bodmin[14] are the only instances of the sport today.
St. Columb Major (twice yearly) [ edit ]
The traditional St. Columb hurling matches take place on Shrove Tuesday and the second Saturday following. The usually rough game is played on the streets and in the surrounding countryside, between the Townsmen and Countrymen of the parish, with the shops in the town barricading their windows and doors to protect from accidental damage, which sometimes occurs. The aim of the game is to place the ball in respective goals that are set about two miles (3 km) apart, or take it across the Parish boundary. The objective is to control possession by running with the ball, passing, throwing, snatching and tackling.
The game starts with the throw-up in Market Square at 4:30 pm: a person chosen by the previous 'winner of the ball' climbs a stepladder and throws the ball to the crowd, usually followed by a large scrum.
Game play in the town normally lasts no longer than one hour; this period is non-competitive and the two teams are largely irrelevant: townsmen 'deal' the ball to countrymen and vice versa, whilst the tackles and scrums that occur are generally for amusement only. Play often stops for spectators to touch the ball, said to bring luck or fertility, or slows to allow younger players to participate.
At some point, usually after 45–60 minutes, a hurler or group of team-mates make a 'break' towards their goal or part of the parish boundary. The ball might go anywhere in the parish: sometimes play keeps to roads, though often hurlers go through fields, rivers, woods and farmyards, scrambling over hedges and ditches. In this latter stage of the match the two sides strive for possession, and the actual "Town against Country" hurling takes place. Sometimes hurls are won by a team effort, but occasionally a single hurler may attain the ball in the town and manage to run all the way to the goal or boundary without being caught by any of the opposition.
The 'winner of the ball' (the hurler that goals the ball or carries it over the boundary) is carried on the shoulders of two team-mates back to Market Square, while the victorious side sing the traditional hurling song. Here he declares "Town Ball" or "Country Ball".
At 8:00 pm, the winner returns to Market Square to call up the ball again. This is followed by a visit to each of the public houses of the town, where the ball is immersed in gallon jugs filled with beer. Each gallon will be called up and the'silver beer' (as it is known), is shared amongst all those present.
Gameplay [ edit ]
Field of play. The game takes place mainly in streets still open to traffic (although police advise motorists not to drive through). The game can also extend onto private property including gardens and fields and sometimes through houses or pubs. The game can stop at any time so that members of the watching crowd can handle the ball. Touching the ball is said to be lucky and can bring good health and fertility. [15] The parish of St Columb Major is the world's largest pitch for any ball game, with an area of about 20 square miles (52 km 2 ).
The parish of St Columb Major is the world's largest pitch for any ball game, with an area of about 20 square miles (52 km ). Goals and winning. There are two goals but no goal-keepers. The goals are made of granite. The Town Goal is the base of an old Celtic cross and the Country Goal is a shallow stone trough. To win, the team must carry the ball to its own goal, or carry the ball out of the parish, which can be up to 3 miles (4.8 km). As soon as the ball is goaled or carried out of the parish, the game finishes.
is the base of an old Celtic cross and the is a shallow stone trough. To win, the team must carry the ball to its own goal, or carry the ball out of the parish, which can be up to 3 miles (4.8 km). As soon as the ball is goaled or carried out of the parish, the game finishes. Rules. There is no referee, no official written rules and no organizing committee. The two teams have unequal numbers. The Town team has the larger team since the town has grown larger in size. Before the 1940s the Countrymen were stronger in numbers due to the number of people who were employed in agriculture.
St. Ives (annually) [ edit ]
The annual St. Ives hurling match happens on Feast Monday each February (the feast is on the Sunday nearest to 3 February). The game starts at 10.30am when the silver ball is thrown from the wall of the Parish Church by the Mayor to the crowd below on the beach. The ball is passed from one to another on the beach and then up into the streets of St. Ives. The person in possession of the ball when the clock strikes noon takes it to the Mayor at the Guildhall and receives the traditional reward of five shillings. At one time the game was played by the men of the village. These days it is played by the children.
Bodmin (roughly every 5 years) [ edit ]
Hurling survives as a traditional as part of Beating the bounds at Bodmin, commencing at the close of the 'Beat'. The game is organised by the Rotary Club of Bodmin. The game is started by the Mayor of Bodmin throwing a silver ball into a body of water known as the "Salting Pool". There are no teams and the hurl follows a set route. The aim is to carry the ball from the "Salting Pool" via the old A30, along Callywith Road, then through Castle Street, Church Square and Honey Street, to finish at the Turret Clock in Fore Street. The participant carrying the ball when it reaches the turret clock receives a £10 reward from the Mayor.[16] The last Bodmin Hurl took place in March, 2015 following the beating the bounds, and is unlikely to take place again until 2020.
The Hurlers stone circles [ edit ]
On Craddock Moor, near Minions, are "The Hurlers". These consist of three separate Bronze Age stone circles with thirteen, seventeen and nine surviving stones. Local tradition maintains that they are men turned to stone for profaning the Lords Day by taking part in a hurling match. The arrangement of the stones led to the name and was recorded as far back as 1584 by John Norden.[17]
Early written evidence of hurling in Cornwall [ edit ]
c.1584, topographer, John Norden who visited Cornwall writes:
The Cornish-men they are stronge, hardye and nymble, so are their exercises violent, two especially, Wrastling and Hurling, sharpe and seuere actiuties; and in neither of theis doth any Countrye exceede or equall them. The firste is violent, but the seconde is daungerous: The firste is acted in two sortes, by Holdster (as they called it) and by the Coller; the seconde likewise two ways, as Hurling to goales, and Hurling to the Countrye.
c.1590, poet, Michael Drayton in his work Poly-Olbion writes on Cornish hurling...
According to the law, or when the ball to throw;
And drive it to the gole, in squadrons forth they goe;
And to avoid the troupes (their forces that forlay);
Through dykes and rivers make, in the rubustious play;[18]
1595 Mention of a'sylver ball gylt' in the St Columb Green Book
Mention of a'sylver ball gylt' in the St Columb Green Book 1602, in his survey of Cornwall historian Richard Carew writes about Cornish hurling. The rule about no forward passing only applied to one of the two historic forms of hurling, and still applies to the modern sport of rugby[19]
That the hurler must deal no foreball, or throw it to any partner standing nearer the goal than himself. In dealing the ball, if any of the adverse party can catch it flying... the property of it is thereby transferred to the catching party; and so assailants become defendants, and defendant assailants.
1648, at Penryn: following a Royalist uprising to support the King, the victorious Parliamentarians passed through the town in a triumphant manner with three soldiers, bearing on the points of three swords (carried upright), three silver balls used in hurling. [20]
, at Penryn: following a Royalist uprising to support the King, the victorious Parliamentarians passed through the town in a triumphant manner with three soldiers, bearing on the points of three swords (carried upright), three silver balls used in hurling. 1654, at Hyde Park, London: The Lord Protector, (Oliver Cromwell) however, was present on that May-day, and appeared keenly to enjoy the sports, as we learn from another source. In company with many of his Privy Council he watched a great hurling match by fifty Cornish gentlemen against fifty others. 'The ball they played withal was silver, and designed for that party which did win the goal.' Report in the Moderate Intell. 26 Apr.-4 May 1654[21]
1707, the Cornish saying "hyrlîan yw gen gwaré nyi" ("Hurling is our sport") appears in print for the first time in Archaeologia Britannica, by Edward Lhuyd.
References [ edit ]A Bitcoin Whitepaper Braille Version has Finally Been Made Available
Bitcoin is a digital currency designed for everyone. It was designed for people all around the world to use it freely with no restraints. In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the whitepaper ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash system.’ Soon after its release, the whitepaper was translated into numerous languages and is available for free online; now there is an effort underway to produce the documents in tactile form.
Bitcoin always had its inclusive side, and since its inception, it saw no differences between users. Then the community became concerned about the topic of accessibility. Three years ago an appeal for a response was made in a popular forum by Michael Staffen, a Bitcoin enthusiast who was suffering cancer. The disease had left him functionally blind. So he was appealing to the community to do something about the lack of accessibility to people who were visually handicapped.
Staffen wrote:
“This is making me very annoyed as I am a Bitcoin supporter and I have acquired my own bitcoin I just can’t goddamn use them without getting help from someone else. Multibit Is a java based wallet and as such, could have easily been made accessible if the Java accessibility JDK were included from the start. If we want Bitcoin to truly be successful, this has to be dealt with.”
Now, after Michael Staffen’s request, and thanks to the generous support of the Bitcoin community, a Braille version of the original whitepaper is now available. A few months ago, Adam Newbold, a community member, started a crowdfunding project with the intent to bring forth a Braille version of the Satoshi Nakamoto Whitepaper.
Adam Newbold stated, “Bitcoin is about openness and equality. Everyone should have equal access to the technology and all information related to it, regardless of disability.”
Even though Adam is not visually impaired, he became passionate about the project and invested a lot of efforts in bringing attention to Mr. Staffen’s concerns. The project more than doubled its original fundraising goal and soon brought in over 0.22 BTC, or approximately $4,000, at the current price.
Newbold detailed:
“Think about the issues of someone with very little vision or none at all. Relying on audio interface is not feasible. Between homophones, for instance, the word ‘nose,’ someone might capture that as ‘knows.’ It’s really important for the software to account for every possible facet of the blind experience.”
The entrepreneur is also behind IcyWallet, a user-friendly bitcoin wallet for the visually impaired. On IcyWallet, Newbold said via email, “I found out that some blind people are storing coins on exchanges, or using web-based wallets. Then it hit me: the popular hardware wallets on the market today just aren’t accessible. There’s no audio output, and no screen reader support for seed generation or transaction confirmations. I decided to start working on IcyWallet to bring at least one cold storage option to the table, and while an air gapped Raspberry Pi isn’t as slick as a Trezor or Ledger, it’s a step in the right direction for people who want to add a layer of true security to their coin storage. And I’m really excited about being able to design this from the ground up with blindness in mind.”
Adam contracted the American Printing House (APH) for the Blind to do the transcription, which you can pre-order now for free. The raw files by the APH are planned to be released, which can be used in conjunction with Braille translation software such as Duxbury. Back in November, the American Printing House completed the transcription and tactile drawing work, and the whitepaper was sent to the production floor. Newbold then signed a final authorization to produce the first 50 ordered copies. Newbold also made a copy of the transcription on the project’s repository
The first copies of the Braille Bitcoin whitepaper are now finished, and physical copies are now in hand. The project creator is currently in the process of gathering shipping supplies, and everyone who ordered a copy should soon receive it. You can obtain a free copy of the Bitcoin Whitepaper, complete with tactile diagrams, from the project’s GitHub repo.At least 60 million Indians – a number greater than the population of South Africa – suffer from mental disorders, even as the country lags the world in medical professionals and spending on mental-health issues.
Nearly 10 million-20 million Indians (1%-2% of the population) suffered from severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and nearly 50 million (5% of the population) suffered from common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety at the end of 2005, Health and Family Welfare Minister JP Nadda informed the Lok Sabha in May 2016, quoting data from the National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, 2005, the last report available.
India spends 0.06% of its health budget on mental healthcare. This is less than Bangladesh (0.44%). Most developed nations spend above 4% of their budgets on mental-health research, infrastructure, frameworks and talent pool, according to this 2011 World Health Organisation report.
While the Central government does not maintain any data set on mental patients since health is a state subject, it does have data on patients in three Central institutions:
Source: Lok Sabha
Another data set that captures the level of mental illness is the suicides that result.
Source: National Crime Records Bureau 2014
While suicides caused by insanity declined from 7% in 2010 to 5.4% in 2014, more than 7,000 people killed themselves as a result of mental disorders.
The government has commissioned a national mental health survey through the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bengaluru, to estimate the number of mental patients and utilisation patterns of mental health services.
Started on June 1, 2015, the study interviewed 27,000 respondents by April 5, 2016, according to a reply in the Lok Sabha from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
India is short of health professionals to address mental issues, particularly at the district and sub-district level.
There are 3,800 psychiatrists, 898 clinical psychologists, 850 psychiatric social workers and 1,500 psychiatric nurses nationwide, according to a reply by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in the Lok Sabha in December 2015.
This means there were three psychiatrists per million people, according to data from the WHO, 18 times fewer than the Commonwealth norm of 5.6 psychiatrists per 100,000 people.
By this estimate, India is short of 66,200 psychiatrists.
Similarly, based on the global average of 21.7 psychiatric nurses per 100,000 people, India needs 269,750 nurses.
The Mental Health Care Bill, 2013, which provides for the protection and promotion of the rights of persons with mental illness during the delivery of healthcare in institutions and in the community, was passed unanimously by a voice vote in the Rajya Sabha on August 8, 2016.
Source: Rajya Sabha
The new Bill has increased funding to centres of excellence in mental health, from Rs 30 crore to Rs 33.70 crore per centre.
As many as 15 centres of excellence in mental health and 35 post-graduate training departments in mental health specialties have been funded to address the shortage of mental health professionals nationwide.
This article first appeared on Indiaspend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.January 30th, 2015
---- 2 ±±±± 1 ±±±± 0 ±±±± 1 ±±±± 2 ++++
When Joliette Ward 4 councillor Danielle Landreville announces her bid for the NDP nomination in the north shore riding of Joliette, QC Friday morning, it will be the third NDP riding in Québec to see a challenger announce a nomination bid before the sitting MP could do so.
The sitting Member of Parliament in Joliette is long-time NDP activist Francine Raynault, who finally ran in 2011, taking her turn after supporting earlier runs by her husband in the same seat. Mme Raynault will be turning 70 years old in March – not to suggest that our elders don't belong in Parliament, but most people had assumed back in 2011 that it would be the younger NDP Québec MPs who would face nomination challenges this time around.
Same goes for Marc-André Morin, who was beaten out of the gate by a young doctor from Ste-Agathe-des-Monts. Simon-Paul Landry announced his bid for the NDP nomination in Laurentides-Labelle, QC last week with a video, released a day before Morin's nomination Facebook page went live. Morin will be turning 64 four days after Raynault's birthday.
Meanwhile, nearly all the younger MPs have been acclaimed already.
The third NDP Québec incumbent having to compete for his nomination so far is Jeanne-Le Ber, QC MP Tyrone Benskin, whose riding was split in two in the redistribution. LaSalle-Émard MP Hélène Leblanc has already been acclaimed in the new riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC leaving Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC for Mr. Benskin, where he's now facing two challengers, international human rights lawyer Allison Turner and former riding activist, digital policy analyst Vincent Héritier.
Two other members of the NDP's Québec caucus already faced challenges: (i) MP Jean-François Larose in Repentigny wound up leaving the party rather than lose to the previous NDP candidate in his riding, economist Réjean Bellemare, who intended to challenge him for the nomination and has since been acclaimed, and (ii) former leadership candidate Pierre Ducasse launched an abortive bid to win the nomination in his former riding of Manicouagan, QC against the sitting aboriginal member Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, but unfortunately timing his launch for the day the NDP caucus used some parliamentary maneuvers to win a debate on the issue of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, and soon thereafter concluded that it was not wise to continue, allowing Genest-Jourdain to be acclaimed in November.
But people in the party hint we haven't seen the last of the challenges yet. Still unrenominated in Québec ridings are NDP MPs: Réjean Genest, Pierre Jacob, François Lapointe, Alexandrine Latendresse, José Nunez-Melo, Marc-André Morin, Francine Raynault, and Romeo Saganash, though Saganash for one has said he's running again, and so I believe has Lapointe.
Challenging first-time MPs for their nominations is not unheard of in Québec. Bloc Québécois MPs were frequently challenged, and indeed 11 of the 54 MPs in the first Bloc caucus elected in 1993 were not on the ballot again in 1997.
Challenging sitting MPs isn't the rawest form of open nominations, either – that distinction goes to the case of sitting MPs running against each other for a nomination, something we haven't seen at all in this round of redistribution, but in the last post-redistribution election of 2004 12 MPs lost their nominations to either outsiders or caucus colleagues.
Bloc Québécois Manicouagan, QC MP Ghislain Fournier lost his nomination to fellow caucus member Gérard Asselin
Bloc Québécois Laval Centre, QC MP Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral lost her nomination to Serge Ménard
Liberal Pontiac – Gatineau – Labelle, QC MP Robert Bertrand lost his nomination to David Smith
Liberal Ottawa – Orléans, ON MP Eugène Bellemare lost his nomination to Marc Godbout
Liberal Oshawa, ON MP Ivan Grose lost his nomination to Louise Parkes
Liberal Davenport, ON MP Charles Caccia resigned from the nomination rather than lose it to Mario Silva
Liberal Mississauga West, ON MP Steve Mahoney lost his nomination to fellow caucus member Carolyn Parrish
Liberal Hamilton East, ON MP Sheila Copps lost her nomination to fellow caucus member Tony Valeri
Liberal Niagara Centre, ON MP Tony Tirabassi lost his nomination to fellow caucus member John Maloney
Cdn Alliance-turned-Liberal Richmond, BC MP Joe Peschisolido lost his nomination to former MP Raymond Chan
Reform-turned-Conservative South Surrey – White Rock – Langley, BC MP Val Meredith lost her nomination to Russ Hiebert
Reform-turned-Conservative Surrey North, BC MP Chuck Cadman lost his nomination to Jasbir Singh Cheema
Other MPs successfully beat off challenges in 2004 (Conservative MP Dick Harris in Cariboo-Prince George, BC for one).
Meanwhile – and contrary to what Lysiane Gagnon wrote last weekend – between the nomination challenges to some incumbents, the 3 new Quebec seats, some retirements and a few defections, the NDP will have a decent number of new faces on its Quebec ticket, including EI rights advocate and lawyer Hans Marotte in Saint-Jean (where Tarik Brahmi is retiring), Lac Simon municipal councillor Chantel Crête in the new riding of Argenteuil-Le Petit Nation, economist Réjean Bellemare in Repentigny (where Jean-François Larose left the caucus), psychologist Marie-Josée Lemieux in the new riding of Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, posties local president Karine Trudel in Jonquière (where Claude Patry left the caucus), former Bloc MP Maria Mourani in her riding of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, apparently as many as 8 nomination contestants in Pierre Boucher-Les Patriotes-Verchères (where Sana Hassainia left the caucus), and so forth.
——————–
The next chunk of new functionality at Pundits' Guide is nearly, nearly done, but I keep finding new things to improve, fix up and/or test. If you're a regular user of the old database, and want to test a beta-link of the new database results browser, tweet me @punditsguide on Twitter, and I'll flip you the link in return for any constructive feedback.A new report from NYU’s Women of Color Policy Network, “At Rope’s End,” offers a definitive examination of wealth in families headed by single mothers. The findings are not surprising: women of color, who bear the compounding and accumulating weight of racial and gender inequities in the economy, are most likely to be left with no wealth. Wealth, as opposed to income, is the balance between all assets and debt; it’s what provides a cushion in hard times and a step up for children.
With recent cuts to the social safety net pushed through Congress by obstructionist Republicans and defecting Democrats, these inequities are set to grow. “At Ropes End” offers a set of proposals to prevent this and begin to create a more equitable economy.
Among the report’s many findings:
• Single mothers possess only 4 percent of the wealth of single fathers: $100 compared to $25,300.
• Race and ethnicity are significant factors. Black and Latino single mothers have a median wealth of zero, whereas white women report a median wealth of $6,000.
• In 2009, 23 percent of white women who were heads of households with children lived in poverty, compared to 40 percent of African-American and Latino female-headed households.
• Younger single mothers experience the greatest disadvantage in terms of wealth and assets. Over half of single mothers under the age of 40 have zero or negative wealth.
• More than three-quarters of single women mothers have debt of some kind. The most common debt for single mothers is credit card debt followed by installment debt.
In the recession, single women mothers are most likely to be unemployed and as a result, their kids are more likely bare the full weight of the economic downturn.
But moms with jobs are also more likely to have bad ones. The report finds that the labor market is marred by segregation, with women of color disproportionately relegated to the lowest wage jobs that provide the fewest benefits.
“At Rope’s End” contribution, however, is less in the data in presents than its reiteration of the broader point: Almost everything about our economy compounds to keep single moms, particularly those of color, stuck in poverty.
The current Congress hasn’t done much to help matters. Lawmakers have been busy chopping away at food stamps and other safety net programs in the name of reducing the deficit. Meanwhile, Republicans refuse to support anything that might actually move the deficit downward.
And the Obama administration seems to be struggling to pass even the most pared down economic stimulus initiatives.
The report points to legislative solutions that include an increase in child care subsidies and passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would require race and gender wage equity and bolster tax credits for low-wage single mothers. But it also also offers solutions that bypass Congress altogether–things like better enforcement of existing racial and gender bias protections; larger programs to help low-income women and women of color enter higher education and more “culturally competent” financial literacy.
These ideas are by no means comprehensive. But in times when even Social Security and food stamps–once considered the worthy poverty programs–are getting chopped at, these may be ambitious enough.Cracking down on ‘bogus colleges’ made for good headlines but limitations of migration estimates have been well known for years
“Students, yes; overstayers, no.” That was the blunt message from Theresa May, then home secretary, to Conservative party members at their conference two years ago.
“Let me be clear about students – we welcome students coming to study,” she said. “But the fact is, too many of them are not returning home as soon as their visa runs out. If they have a graduate job, that is fine. If not, they must return home. So I don’t care what the university lobbyists say, the rules must be enforced.
“Students, yes; over-stayers, no. And the universities must make this happen.”
Limiting immigration was a Conservative manifesto pledge and, her cabinet colleagues say, a personal crusade for May. Vince Cable, now the Liberal Democrat leader, who sat in cabinet alongside May in the 2010-15 coalition government, has described her as being “obsessed” with it.
And while voters appeared to be more concerned about cut-price EU workers rather than students, cracking down on “bogus colleges” made for good headlines. To justify tough action, May repeatedly used estimates from the Office for National Statistics that around 100,000 students a year overstayed their visa rather than getting a job or going back home.
Except, we now know, the figure was wildly out of kilter with reality. The ONS’s latest estimate, published on Thursday and based on new exit checks at Britain’s borders, is that fewer than 5,000 students, or 3% of the total, overstay.
Policy experts and some of May’s former cabinet colleagues, including Cable, argue that this shouldn’t be a surprise. The limitations of immigration data have been well known by policymakers for years. In particular, the lack of any exit checks when people leave the UK has made it difficult to ascertain with any certainty how many of those who come here on visas allowing them to remain for a limited period end up staying much longer.
In 2006 the then governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, told a House of Lords committee that the government’s reliance on the International Passenger Survey, based on interviews carried out at ports and airports, meant it was impossible to judge how many people were in the UK.
“We need to know both those coming in and going out. This is in no way a criticism of the ONS but we simply don’t have the ability to measure accurately at the moment the size of the UK population.”
Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at Kings College London, said the Home Office had had better data available but continued to rely on the IPS. “This issue was well known,” he said. “[May] knew at the time that this was a stupid policy based on bad data.”
In his book Coalition, the former Lib Dem minister David Laws describes the Home Office’s reluctance to establish working entry and exit checks, and recalls being told by a senior civil servant in 2013: “Theresa May is saying that entry and exit checks would be expensive and embarrassing and would distract attention from tackling serious criminals and terrorism.”
It is these exit checks that have now provided the ONS with the extra data it needed to make a much better estimate of the proportion of students who overstay.
As well as raising questions about the Home Office’s focus on battling against student overstayers, the new data also eliminates one of the key arguments against removing students from the net immigration figures – something a series of senior Conservatives including Philip Hammond and Liam Fox have argued for in the past. In 2015 when he was foreign secretary, Hammond said driving away students was causing “immense damage” to Britain’s reputation.
Since this year’s general election, which wiped out the Tories’ majority – taking much of May’s authority with it, the party’s Scottish leader, Ruth Davidson – as well as the former chancellor George Osborne, have questioned the wisdom of the net immigration pledge and in particular the inclusion of foreign students in the target.
The home secretary Amber Rudd’s decision to commission a formal study of the economic benefits of foreign students appears to be aimed at building up an evidence base for a shift of emphasis away from cracking down on overstayers.
The ONS estimate will intensify the pressure on May to abandon her long-held insistence that foreign students must be counted as migrants. Otherwise she will risk appearing to put hunch, anecdote and the preoccupations of the rightwing press before hard evidence.Arsene Wenger convinced Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil love playing for Arsenal BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Arsene Wenger believes Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil proved their commitment to the cause after they inspired Arsenal to a 2-0 victory over Tottenham. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/arsene-wenger-convinced-alexis-sanchez-and-mesut-ozil-love-playing-for-arsenal-36331977.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/article36331976.ece/74929/AUTOCROP/h342/PANews%20BT_P-d9cc7c13-3273-41a1-bc4f-4c1b0c319eb6_I1.jpg
Email
Arsene Wenger believes Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil proved their commitment to the cause after they inspired Arsenal to a 2-0 victory over Tottenham.
Arsenal defied their doubters with a breathless performance at the Emirates Stadium as controversial goals from Shkodran Mustafi and Sanchez sealed a derby success.
Sanchez could have added more to his tally while Ozil was influential throughout as his bending cross set up Mustafi's bullet header.
Arsenal's star duo have not extended their contracts beyond next summer but |
a car hit him as he was walking across a street in the Montrose area. A pedestrian died early Friday morning in a hit-and-run collision when a car hit him as he was walking across a street in the Montrose area. Photo: Metro Video Screen Shot Photo: Metro Video Screen Shot Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Pedestrian dies in hit-and-run crash in Montrose 1 / 13 Back to Gallery
A pedestrian died early Friday morning in a hit-and-run collision when a car hit him as he was walking across a street in the Montrose area.
The incident happened about 12:30 a.m. in the 400 block of Westheimer near Taft, said Sgt. James Roque of the Houston Police Department.
Roque said witnesses told investigators a dark-colored four-door car was traveling eastbound on Westheimer at a high rate of speed, ran a red light and hit the man, who was walking in a crosswalk and had a a green light.
Roque said the driver did not stop. The victim, whose name has not been released, died at the scene.
Roque said the car likely will have damage on the driver's front end. No description of the driver was available.The latest Snowden-supplied bombshell shook the technology world to its core on Thursday: The NSA can crack many of the encryption technologies in place today, using a mixture of backdoors baked into software at the government’s behest, a $250 million per year budget to encourage commercial software vendors to make its security “exploitable,” and sheer computer-cracking technological prowess.
To some extent, it’s not surprising to hear that the U.S. spy agency is doing spy agency stuff but, given the recent surveillance revelations and the fact that other countries likely have similar capabilities, the news is certainly worrying. To make matters worse, it came just a day after Pew reported that 90 percent of Internet users have taken steps to avoid surveillance in some way.
All is not lost, however. While the stunning reports failed to name exactly which companies and encryption technologies have been compromised by the NSA, you can minimize the chances that your encrypted communications will be cracked by the government—or anyone else. Read on.
Embrace open source
Now that we know that corporations—or at least individuals in corporations—have worked with the NSA to build backdoors into encryption technology, privacy buffs should give commercial encryption technology (such as Microsoft’s BitLocker) the hairy eye.
NSA headquarters.
You’re better off using tools that employ open-source or public-domain encryption methods, as they need to work with every vendor’s software and, in the case of open-source encryption, can be scrutinized for potential security flaws.
With that in mind, here are some tools worth checking out:
Proprietary encryption tools created overseas may—may—also be less likely to have installed NSA-friendly backdoors into their software. This morning, I received an email from Boxcryptor, the superb (and Germany-based) cloud-storage encryption tool, reassuring me that there is no way for the company to snoop on its customers, as it encrypts files using private RSA security keys stored only on users’ private PCs, then transmits the already-encrypted files using HTTPs.
Going further
Beyond encryption, most of the advice in PCWorld’s How to protect your PC from Prism surveillance still applies. Note, however, that the New York Times report on the NSA’s crypto-cracking abilities suggest that VPN technology and the ever-popular SSL web protocol have been two encryption methods particularly targeted by the government. (Schneier suggests using TLS and IPsec whenever possible on the web-communication front.)
Even so, using the tips in that article will make your browsing much more secure in general, not just the NSA or foreign governments.
Also check out PCWorld’s guide to encrypting (almost) everything, which is chock full of handy-dandy encryption tips, though many rely on proprietary—not open-source—technology. While closed-source solutions may not protect against The Man and his super-encryption-cracking eyes, they’ll help keep everyone else out of your business.Motorcyclists arrive in Washington, D.C., during the annual Memorial Day Rolling Thunder Rally, May 30, 2004. Thousands of bikers are expected in D.C. Wednesday for a 9/11 commemoration ride. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
The nation's capital has relatively relaxed rules concerning the exercise of First Amendment rights. Because of this, the "2 million bikers" en route to commemorate the victims of 9/11 won't be bothered while snarling city traffic Wednesday.
"It is not a crime to parade" through the city without a permit, Ted Gest, a spokesman for the D.C. attorney general's office, told U.S. News. That office prosecutes violations of D.C. law.
But, Gest cautioned, "I don't think we can speculate on what penalties the motorcycle riders might be subjected to for traffic or other offenses because we don't know what they're going to do."
The "2 Million Bikers to D.C." demonstration was announced in August and its last-minute request for a National Park Service event permit was denied.
Organizers had sought the temporary closure of some city roads and intersections to allow an efficient inflow and outflow of riders from the National Mall area, but park service spokesperson Carol Johnson told The Blaze "it would cause a severe service disruption of traffic... We couldn't provide adequate park police services and park police escorts and it would require a lot of road closures so it was denied."
In a Friday post on Facebook, the organizers apologized to city residents for what will likely be gridlock as the patriotic bikers rev their engines in remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the U.S. soldiers who shipped off to fight al-Qaida in Afghanistan 12 years ago.
"What could have been a one or two hour ride through will now likely be an all day event," the organizers said. The plan is to meet up outside D.C. and cross into the city sometime after 11 a.m. The exact route isn't being made public, they said, because of "security purposes."
Although bikers are being instructed to obey all relevant traffic laws – such as yielding to pedestrians and stopping at red lights – a spokesman for Washington's Metropolitan Police Department told U.S. News on Monday that police will move in "if there is a crime committed." Possible crimes, the spokesman said, include doing anything that requires a permit.
That's where D.C.'s demonstration-friendly free speech policies come in. Unlike in other American cities, where an impromptu parade – or one conducted after a permit is denied - can land participants zip-tied around the wrists in the back of a paddy wagon, D.C. allows them.
Gest pointed to the relevant city code, which says, "It shall not be an offense to assemble or parade on a District street, sidewalk, or other public way, or in a District park, without having provided notice or obtained an approved assembly plan."
However, the code also insists that organizers "shall give notice and apply for approval of an assembly plan" from the city, except for planned demonstrations with under 50 people, demonstrations that only use sidewalks and crosswalks or ones that are spontaneous reactions to major events.
The biker parade will likely be attended by hundreds or thousands of people and it meets none of the three exceptions. However, as Gest's confirmation and the city code itself make clear, proceeding without a permit is not a punishable violation of the law.
Bikers from across the country are making their way to D.C. Twitter and local press reports document groups travelling through Arizona, Florida, Maine, Tennessee, Texas and other states. Massive gatherings are documented in tweeted photos by enthusiastic bikers.
Although there will likely be fewer than 2 million participants, the event's name is a reflection of its impetus: wall-to-wall news coverage of another D.C. event on the 9/11 anniversary, the now-renamed "Million Muslim March." Amid the buzzing of bikes, participants of that demonstration, retitled "the Million American March Against Fear" in February, will rally on the National Mall – where they were granted a NPS permit – against government surveillance and alleged post-9/11 authoritarianism.
More News:New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) shrugged off the suggestion that he's not conservative enough to win the Republican presidential nomination on Sunday and stood by his belief that gun control can be a necessary part of violence prevention.
"If you look at what we've done in New Jersey, we want to control violence," Christie told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. "And some of that may involve firearms, but a lot of it doesn't."
Christie stressed that his focus in New Jersey is the mental health care system, because most of the perpetrators of mass shootings are "deeply disturbed." But the 2016 presidential hopeful has a mixed record on gun control. He signed 10 gun control measures into law in April, and then refused to sign a trio of stronger measures in May, including a ban on.50 sniper caliber rifles.
Christie insisted that he was for comprehensive "violence control," rather than gun control, but he conceded that gun control measures can be a crucial part of the package. He said he would veto gun measures that he considers to be "overreaching and not consistent with Second Amendment rights."
"What it is is looking at these things case by case to see, does it make common sense? Does it control violence?" he said. "We need to not pander on this issue. We need to have adults in the room who make decisions based upon controlling violence in this country."Inside Stanford University
When railroad magnate and U.S. senator Leland Stanford and his wife Jane founded Stanford University in 1891, little did they know they had created what would become one of the most prestigious universities in the world. The first class consisted of 555 men and women on what was once the Stanfords’ country estate.
Despite “Is Stanford Ivy League?” being a common Google search phrase, Stanford has never needed the esteemed designation to make an impression. Many of Stanford’s offerings are the best of the best, including A+ academics, which secured the No. 3 position in Niche’s Best Academics ranking. But because the college demonstrates superiority across the spectrum—in areas like Campus Quality, Diversity, and Technology, just to name a few—Stanford is also Niche’s No. 1 Best Overall College of 2015.
Stanford University Fast Facts
Statistic Value Location Stanford, CA Founding Year 1891 Acceptance Rate 7% Average Net Price $19,109 Size 7,003 undergrads Male-Female Ratio 52% to 48% Famous Alumni John Elway, Herbert Hoover, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sally Ride, Sigourney Weaver, Tiger Woods
What Makes Stanford a Highly Ranked College?
Aside from brains, Stanford also has good looks going for it. It’s Niche’s No. 3 college for Campus Quality—just another reason why its freshman retention rate hovers around 98 and 99 percent year after year.
What Stanford Students Do & Where They Go
While students generally can’t go wrong with any major at Stanford, the most popular fields of study at this Silicon Valley college include business (4 percent), computer science (3 percent), electrical and electronics engineering (3 percent), and engineering/industrial management (3 percent).
Guarded with a degree from one of the most notable institutions in the United States and smack-dab in an epicenter of technology, Stanford alumni frequently go on to work for innovative companies that Stanford alumni helped found, like Google and Yahoo.
Where Stanford Excels & Lacks
Where It Excels... Where It Lacks... Academics Difficult to get into Affordable price for lower-income students Expensive area Beautiful location Nightlife dictated by Greek life Near many big companies in Silicon Valley Spotty parking situation Great for business, computer science, and engineering majors Strenuous workloads
10 Facts You May Not Have Known about Stanford
Stanford University was named in honor of Leland Stanford Jr., who passed away from typhoid fever at age 15. His parents, founders Leland Sr. and Jane, wanted to use their wealth to help “other people’s” children. Because it is located on the Stanfords’ country estate, the University has often been dubbed “The Farm,” a term students still use to this day. An estimated 13,000 bikes are on the Stanford campus every day. The Stanford campus includes a network of underground steam tunnels, and even though they have been locked shut, students often cut these locks and explore the tunnels for themselves in what is referred to as “steam tunneling.” “Die Luft der Freiheit weht” is the unofficial motto of the university, translated to “The wind of freedom blows.” Since it’s a German phrase, the university disavowed the motto during World War I, when anything German was speculative. Stanford does not award honorary degrees. It gives Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman distinctions instead. Every year, Stanford throws the Mausoleum Party at the Stanford Mausoleum, which holds the remains of Leland Stanford Jr. (the university’s namesake) and his parents (founders Leland Sr. and Jane). The 1906 San Francisco earthquake killed two people on campus and caused financial and structural problems. At Stanford graduation, the first few minutes of procession include the Wacky Walk, when students march into Stanford Stadium dressed in costume. Stanford has unique sports traditions. The Stanford Tree is the unofficial mascot of the university, and college teams are referred to as the “Cardinal”—the color, not the bird.Donald Trump allegedly liked to watch prostitutes pee on each other, according to unverified reports published by the New York Times, CNN and BuzzFeed News Tuesday night. The sex act is known as a golden shower and, if the reports are true, it means that Trump, who has been married three times to models and is known for rating women based on their looks, has a taste for kinky bedroom antics, something most of the nation probably had little interest in knowing about before this week.
Trump allegedly has particular tastes in the sheets. He once paid prostitutes to pee on a bed that President Barack Obama and his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, had previously slept in at a luxury Moscow hotel, according to a 35-page document "prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent," Buzzfeed News reported.
Mic debated Tuesday whether just watching could really be considered playing an active role in the sexual fetish: "Simply watching some people pee on a bed? That would seem to be a form of what could be called piss voyeurism — a cross-over sub-genre of two different fetishes. That, though, isn't the end of this: If the sex workers purportedly hired by Trump were on the bed and peeing on each other while Trump watched, that could indeed be considered a ''golden showers' (urination) show,'" the site wrote.
Cosmopolitan interviewed men and women who enjoyed the act and they suggested you be more open minded about letting you partner pee on you. Yes, this is a thing.
"We both drink lots of water so that our bladders are full. Whether it happens before, during, or after sex depends on how full our bladders are. I also enjoy it when my partner urinates herself as I love seeing her clothing or panties get wet," one man told the site.
Trump perhaps isn't alone when it comes to powerful, famous men who like it extra wet. There was a whole "Sex in the City" plot line around golden showers in Season 3. And R&B crooner R. Kelly was once accused of having sex with a teenage girl and urinating in her mouth.
Sex columnist Dan Savage has also suggested that golden showers are not as repugnant as you might think, so, hey, maybe Trump is really just trying to make America great again, after all.
"Yes, yes, being into golden showers, or getting off on being pissed on, is pretty kinky, as kinks go. But after a few beers, piss is just so much hot water. I'm not saying you should've gone there for your ex, if pissing on him was something you absolutely, positively couldn't bring yourself to do. All I'm saying is that most people who give piss a chance quickly realize that golden showers aren't nearly as gross and disgusting—or even golden—as they were led to believe by people who lump piss in with shit when discussing and/or freaking out about other people's kinks," Savage wrote.@jeremiahdobruck
A shooting at the Fantasy Castle strip club in Signal Hill left two people with minor wounds early Tuesday morning, and a third person was hit by a fleeing car, according to authorities.
It’s unclear what lead up to the violence, but police said the shots were fired shortly before 2 a.m. outside the club in the 2800 block of Walnut Avenue.
“It was right about closing time,” Signal Hill Police Department Lt. Ron Sagmit said.
Police couldn’t immediately say whether the victims were patrons or otherwise associated with the strip club.
One of the victims struck by the gunfire refused medical treatment, police said. The other two victims were taken to a local hospital, but their wounds were not considered life-threatening.
Police have not arrested anyone in connection with the shooting and do not have a suspect at this point.
“We do have some leads, but I’m going to reserve those for now,” Sagmit said.
Ron Buth, who runs a business near Fantasy Castle, said this is the first time he’s seen an incident like this in his 25 years in the area.
Occasionally, Buth said, he’s heard patrons at the club get loud or rowdy, and some mornings he will have to clean away broken bottles and bodily fluids from the sidewalk, but he said the violence surprised him.
“What can we say, it’s a strip club,” Buth said.
Police asked anyone with information to call detectives at 562-989-7214.[Note: Forgive the anachronisms, but since this page is still the landing-spot for a lot of new readers, I’ve added some links to the subsequent articles into this post. There is also a much more comprehensive outline of the series, complete with a table of relevant points and a selection of charts and graphs available in The Case for Dennis Rodman: Guide.]
If you’ve ever talked to me about sports, you probably know that one of my pet issues (or “causes” as my wife calls them), is proving the greatness of Dennis Rodman. I admit that since I first saw Rodman play — and compete, and rebound, and win championships — I have been fascinated. Until recently, however, I thought of him as the ultimate outlier: someone who seemed to have unprecedented abilities in some areas, and unprecedented lack of interest in others. He won, for sure, but he also played for the best teams in the league. His game was so unique — yet so enigmatic — that despite the general feeling that there was something remarkable going on there, opinions about his ultimate worth as a basketball player varied immensely — as they continue to today. In this four-part series, I will attempt to end the argument.
While there may be room for reasonable disagreement about his character, his sportsmanship, or how and whether to honor his accomplishments, my research and analysis has led me to believe — beyond a reasonable doubt — that Rodman is one of the most undervalued players in NBA history. From an analytical perspective, leaving him off of the Hall of Fame nominee list this past year was truly a crime against reason. But what makes this issue particularly interesting to me is that it cuts “across party lines”: the conventional wisdom and the unconventional wisdom both get it very wrong. Thus, by examining the case of Dennis Rodman, not only will I attempt to solve a long-standing sports mystery, but I will attempt to illustrate a few flaws with the modern basketball-analytics movement.
In this post I will outline the major prongs of my argument. But first, I would like to list the frequently-heard arguments I will *not* be addressing:
“Rodman won 5 NBA titles! Anyone who is a starter on 5 NBA champions deserves to be in the Hall of Fame!” [As an intrinsic matter, I really don’t care that he won 5 NBA championships, except inasmuch as I’d like to know how much he actually contributed. I.e., is he more like Robert Horry, or more like Tim Duncan?]
“Rodman led the league in rebounding *7 times*: Anyone who leads the league in a major statistical category that many times deserves to be in the Hall of Fame!” [This is completely arbitrary. Rodman’s rebounding prowess is indeed an important factor in this inquiry, but “leading the league” in some statistical category has no intrinsic value, except inasmuch as it actually contributed to winning games.]
“Rodman was a great defender! He could effectively defend Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal in their primes! Who else could do that?” [Actually, I love this argument as a rhetorical matter, but unfortunately I think defensive skill is still too subjective to be quantified directly. Of course all of his skills — or lack thereof — are relevant to the bottom line.]
“Rodman was such an amazing rebounder, despite being only 6 foot 7!” [Who cares how tall he was, seriously?]
Rather, in the subsequent parts in this series, these are the arguments I will be making:
Stay tuned….Our universe is about 13 billion years old, and for roughly 3.5 billion of those years, life has been wriggling all over our planet. But what was going on in the universe before that time? It’s possible that there was a period shortly after the Big Bang when the entire universe was teeming with life. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb calls this period the “habitable epoch,” and he believes that its existence changes how humans should understand our place in the cosmos.
We have one snapshot of life in the early universe, taken about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. This image is known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and it’s what astronomers see when they aim their telescopes at the farthest edges of space, capturing light that has been traveling through the universe for billions of years—and from billions of years ago. Remember, light takes a while to reach Earth (it travels at only 186,000 miles per second), so the starlight you see in the sky at night is often thousands of years old. The CMB is a lot older than that. It’s from the time when the universe hadn’t yet developed stars.
Image of the infant universe created from nine years of WMAP data. The image reveals 13.77 billion year old temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) that correspond to the seeds that grew to become the galaxies. Photo courtesy NASA/WMAP Science Team
If the CMB looks to you like a lot of glowing blobs, that’s because it is. Radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won a Nobel Prize for discovering that these blobs were actually relics of warm gas spreading outward shortly after the Big Bang. Some regions of the gas appear denser than others, and these areas eventually formed stars and galaxies as the universe aged and cooled. But for millions of years, the universe was in a kind of interim state between lumpy gas and the cool, galaxy-studded darkness of today. That’s where Loeb’s habitable epoch comes in.
It was a time when the very first solid objects were forming in the universe, about 10 to 20 million years after the Big Bang. “The first objects were very small,” Loeb told me by phone from his office at Harvard. By small, he meant they didn’t approach the mass of even a moderately sized galaxy like our own Milky Way. In fact, there were no galaxies at that time—only large stars, probably embedded in dark matter. “We can do simulations of these early stars, and what people find is that they were tens to hundreds of times more massive than the Sun.” These giant stars, floating alone, easily could have had rocky worlds like Earth in orbit around them.
And that’s when things get interesting. These days when astronomers discover a planet, the news is usually accompanied by the disappointing report that it’s not in a “habitable zone,” which is to say the exact orbit required to keep water in a liquid state. If the planet is too close to its star, all the water has boiled away; if the planet is too distant, the water is frozen solid. Given that life as we know it requires water, most astronomers assume that life could only develop on a planet in its solar system’s habitable zone.
But in the early universe, as Loeb speculates in a paper published in Astrobiology late last year, everything would have been a habitable zone. 10 to 20 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was still bathed in that warm gas we saw in the CMB, but it had cooled down to a temperature that would keep water liquid no matter where it was relative to its star. The ambient temperature of the universe would provide enough heat to turn an ice giant like Neptune into a water giant. That’s why Loeb has dubbed this era the “habitable epoch.”
It would have been a weird time for life to evolve, though. Many of the building blocks of life on Earth, like carbon and metals, exist only because of the massive stellar explosions called supernovas which signal the deaths of stars. In a universe where so few stars had been born, even fewer would have died. This was a period when solid matter was an anomaly, before most of the elements on the periodic table existed.
Stars would have been few and far between. “Life might have been more isolated than it is today,” Loeb said. “Now we are members of a galaxy, with tens of billions of stars not far away.” Still, Loeb said, the rare stars and planets would form hotter, more energetic regions in the sea of warm gas. There would be energy to kick-start life forms and liquid water would slosh across the surface of planets with atmosphere. Also, the relative isolation of these worlds would have protected them from threats like cosmic radiation and asteroid bombardment—two dangers that have nearly extinguished life on Earth more than once.
Would this life have been intelligent? “No,” Loeb said. “I’m talking about very simple organisms like algae.” Because the universe was changing so quickly, species would only have about a million years to evolve on a planet before the warm gas clouds around it cooled enough to change the environment radically. Still, a million years is enough time for a single-celled creature to evolve. And another simple species, more adapted to the colder world, could evolve to take its place. But could a humanlike civilization arise in one of those evolutionary windows? The odds are slim—consider that it took roughly 65 million years for the small, fluffy mammals of the Tertiary period to evolve into modern humans.
The habitable epoch might have been a lonely, strange time to be alive. But if Loeb is right—and other physicists, such as Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, believe he is—then life may be a lot less rare than we ever imagined. “It’s almost like a Copernican Revolution in our thinking about life,” Loeb said. “Once we believed Earth was the center of the universe. Then Copernicus and others said, hey, it’s actually the Earth that’s moving around the Sun.” Suddenly, Earth wasn’t so special; we weren’t at the center of all things. Loeb is suggesting that maybe life on Earth isn’t so special, either.
“For a long time, we’ve had this preconception that life is here on Earth, but the universe is dead,” Loeb said. “But maybe we should be thinking of this as a living universe. We may be relative latecomers to the game.” If life becomes an important ingredient in the development of the cosmos, it unseats humans as the all-important observers of our universe. It suggests that many other eyes watched the skies before our sun was even lit.
For Loeb, the habitable epoch is part of a fuller understanding of our universe as a place where life might well be common. The problem is that even if life were common, it would be very hard to detect on other planets. “Suppose there’s a nuclear war elsewhere in our galaxy,” Loeb suggested. “How do you detect that with telescopes? The energy released is so small we wouldn’t even be able to see it if it happened on the nearest star.” Currently astronomers are trying to design instruments that would be able to find life on other worlds, perhaps by looking for telltale signs of molecular oxygen, which is almost always created by life forms.
But in the meantime, Loeb has one piece of advice for cosmologists. “Until proven wrong, we should assume we are not special.”As expected, Mike Chabala has made his return to the Houston Dynamo. In the clubs first ever media day, Chabala's return was announced as all the 2013 players modeled the new jerseys for the upcoming season.
With Corey Ashe listed as the only option at left back, Dominic Kinnear knew he'd have to find at least another option for back up. Chabala was expendable for D.C. United with a couple players getting ahead of him on the depth chart, so Chabala went through the Re-Entry Draft process.
Chabala wasn't picked up by anyone, but found himself training with the club he started with this preseason. Chabala looked at home from the first practice and with his experience at left back in a host of reserve and MLS starting jobs and with Dominic Kinnear's system, it was a no brainer to bring back the fan favorite.
I took a tour of the Dynamo locker room prior to the actual press event today and was pleased to see Chabala's jersey hanging in his locker. While I've said several times over the last few days that his signing was imminent, the jersey hanging their cemented that thought.
With Chabala's signing, SuperDraft pick Jimmy Nealis became the odd man out and was cut from the team after the Carolina Challenge Cup. Nealis impressed Kinnear in his time in Houston, but ultimately Chabala locked up the spot.
In addition, it appears Anthony Arena has won a spot with the Dynamo as well. The centerback has appeared in the majority of the preseason action and will provide depth for the defense.
Earlier today, his Twitter account was updated with "professional player with the Houston Dynamo." Apparently, both players used social media to update their status prior to being formally announced. Chabala updated his Facebook background to BBVA Compass Stadium last week, prompting many to assume the eventual return home. Sign of the times.
With the addition of Chabala and Arena, the defense appears ready for an action packed year that will see the club play at least 41 matches.
What are your thoughts on Chewy's return to Houston, Arena's signing, and Nealis' exit?Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have poured across into neighbouring Colombia to buy basic goods amid shortages at home, during a brief opening of the border that has been closed for almost a year.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro closed the border in August 2015, citing smuggling and penetration by Colombian fighters. On Sunday, he authorised a 12-hour opening of the pedestrian bridge that connects Tachira, in Venezuela, and Cucuta, in Colombia, for the first time in 11 months.
Victor Bautista, the director of the Colombian border authority, said that an estimated 35,000 Venezuelans had arrived in Cucuta.
READ MORE: Lootings soar in Venezuela amid food scarcity
Some 25,000 people surged in within the first seven hours, William Villamizar, governor of the Norte de Santander department that includes Cucuta, said on Twitter.
"Thank you for this welcome, the people of Venezuela are experiencing a serious humanitarian situation," Jose Gregorio Sanchez, a resident of the border town of Urena, told the AFP news agency.
Venezuela has been mired in a deepening economic crisis that has emptied shop shelves and created a shortage of medicine. The recent slump in oil prices devastated the OPEC nation's economic model, leading to growing anger among the roughly 30 million residents.
Critics also blame grave mishandling of the state-led economy.
Maduro, elected in 2013 after the death of President Hugo Chavez, insists that he is the victim of an "economic war" led by businesses with the backing of the United States.
READ MORE: Venezuela-Colombia border tensions escalate
Protesters demanding food have clashed with authorities in several cities in recent weeks amid demonstrations and looting that have turned deadly.
Some 500 desperate Venezuelans illegally stormed the border earlier this week in search of basic goods.
"There's no medicine for children; children are dying," Tulia Somaza told AFP.
"People don't even have soap to wash clothes."
In a sign of Maduro's concern at mounting social unrest, the president replaced the head of the National Guard on Thursday.
The Venezuelan opposition launched its efforts to remove the president, including a bid for a recall referendum, after winning control of the legislature in January.
But Maduro has challenged his rivals through the Supreme Court, which they accuse him of controlling.
Maduro ordered the border shut last year after former Colombian fighters attacked a Venezuelan military patrol and wounded three soldiers, causing a diplomatic row between the neighbouring countries.🔊 Listen to Article
By Catherine J Frompovich
If readers aren’t aware already, hopefully, this article will get you thinking, talking and commenting about the proposed rulemaking the CDC wants to implement, which will take away an individual’s basic human rights, plus the right to Informed Consent regarding healthcare, violate your constitutional rights and even quarantine you if CDC thinks you are sick and need to be vaccinated!
Since I’ve been a consumer health researcher since the late 1970s when I worked on earning my degrees in natural nutrition and holistic health sciences, and then focused seriously on vaccine adverse events in the 1980s when doctors I knew and worked with started seeing children whose parents said their kids were fine until they were vaccinated, I’ve been tracking the unbelievable rise in both mandated vaccine schedules and the parallel track of adverse vaccine events that, coincidentally, some (about one to ten percent only are reported by physicians or parents) are documented on the CDC’s VAERS reporting system.
In recent years, the confirmed fraudulent science in the CDC, FDA and Big Pharma science have been uncovered, reported and parents, especially, are now refusing to have their children poisoned by toxic vaccines with resultant life-long health damages—so are other savvy healthcare consumers who have done their homework on vaccines.
That has led to many problems for federal and state ‘authorities’, so now the CDC wants to implement an ‘end run’ around vaccines using quarantines for those they consider sick, and whom they also redefine as sick in the proposed rulemaking, which I discuss along with Dr Rima Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, Ralph Fucetola, JD, Legal Counsel for the NSF, and Larry Becraft, Esq., attorney extraordinaire in such matters, in this just under two-hour video that you, hopefully, will listen to in order to understand what’s really at stake!
https://youtu.be/8f24Pg9-Ics
Now that you’ve heard and understand what’s going on, do you like it? Are you in agreement with the CDC’s plans to control your life, health and access to healthcare in such a totalitarian manner?
If not, then now is the time to send your comment to the CDC to tell them what you think. However, you must do that by Friday, October 14, 2016 and you must make that comment using the CDC’s website for that comment available HERE.
For those who are interested in what I filed as my dissenting comment, please see my article Control of Communicable Diseases Dissenting Comment to the CDC.
If concerned healthcare consumers are to get the CDC’s attention on this proposed fascist-like rulemaking—a prized one for total healthcare control—we need at least a million comments made to that CDC comment website HERE.
As of September 26, there were 5,161 comments filed. With only 18 days remaining to file your comment, or probably regret not having done so, please engage in keeping federal government agencies working for sane, constitutional and compassionate healthcare for consumers.
Resources:
The “Spider’s Web” of Controlling Factors 2016: Understanding the CDD’s Power-Grab Proposed Rule on Communicable Diseases
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/09/spiders-web-controlling-factors-2016-understanding-cdcs-power-grab-proposed-rule-communicable-diseases.html
ALERT: U.S. CDC Giving Itself Unconstitutional POWERS To Round Up And Detain Citizens En Masse Anytime, Anywhere And Throw Away The Key
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/09/alert-u-s-cdc-giving-unconstitutional-powers-round-detain-citizens-en-masse-anytime-anywhere-throw-away-key.html
Another Vaccine “Bombshell” Glyphosate – Think Monsanto’s Roundup –Confirmed In Most Vaccines
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/09/another-vaccine-bombshell-glyphosate-think-monsantos-roundup-confirmed-in-most-vaccines.html
Image via NaturalBlaze.com
This article (What’s At Stake With The Proposed CDC Rulemaking That Has An Open Comment Period Until October 14, 2016?) can be republished with attribution to Catherine Frompovich, source article and Natural Blaze.com, keeping all links and bio intact.
Like on Facebook – Follow on Twitter – FREE eBook
Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.
Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, isVaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.
Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.
Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick(2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)
Catherine’s NEW book: Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities©2016Catherine J Frompovich is now availableEminem is perhaps the greatest of all time and is commended for his contributions to rap |
Santiago's Metropolitan Zoo in Chile, a week later, are stark reminders.Many zoos claim that they exist to help protect endangered species.
But the fact remains that most animals in zoos aren't endangered. And the ones who are will never be released into natural habitats.There have been cases where animals have been poisoned, starved, denied veterinary care and have even been burned alive. Some have died after eating trash that was thrown into their cages. When natural disasters strike, they are left to fend for themselves - like the recent flooding incident at Georgia's Tbilisi zoo.
Setting examples
The local Rio 2016 organising committee has apologised for the killing of the jaguar. On the other hand, the Pope meeting the tiger cub may not have ended on such a happy note. Either of them could have been left injured or dead.
However, what went unnoticed was the trauma the little tiger cub must have gone through when he was paraded around in front of tens of thousands of spectators.
The time is ripe for a conversation about accountability and the responsibility that entities like the Pope and the Rio Olympic association need to imbibe. The voices against animal abuse need to be strengthened with support from all the quarters. Every step counts.
Edited by- Blassy BobenIn this day and age where oil spills are decimating wild life, where Black community members are systematically gunned down, where Aboriginal reservations are declaring a state of emergency, you know what is truly dangerous? A kid on a bicycle.
Let me explain.
A year ago, I was approached by Flamingo Rampant publisher S. Bear Bergman to be part of its first season of LGBTQ kids' books. Even as the invitation was expressed, I already knew what I was going to write about. As a queer single mama, my daughter, Arden and I would march together at Pride. When she was four and five years old, she was the Tyke on a Bike for the Dyke March, riding her pink bicycle down Yonge Street while waving her pink Stetson hat in the air for all to see. This memory became the picture book M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book which told the story of Arden and her Pride shenanigans with our chosen queer family in an ABC format.
This past May, I was excited as heck when the book was finally published and printed, in my hands and ready to show the world. Only -- not everyone in the world wanted to see it, and most certainly not the school within my district.
At Charlottetown Junior Public School, I approached my daughter's former kindergarten teacher about doing a reading to her students. I volunteered to simply come in, read the book in its entirety and do a couple of circle time songs. She was thrilled for many reasons: She was touched that a book immortalized Arden's renowned involvement in the queer community, and that she could trust my circle time to be a fun one given I am a theatre practitioner and I am the owner of a home daycare. Her Vice Principal, Marlie Delicieux, did not feel the same. Shortly after, I was told by the teacher that the VP said "not now" citing that the timing would likely create a backlash due to the introduction of Ontario's new progressive sex education curriculum.
I emailed the VP explaining this was simply going to be a reading of a book which shows positive reflections of a queer family during Pride and not sex education. I sent her a PDF of the book in its entirety as well as a list of my credentials as an artist who has been working with youth all over the world since I was a teen, as a twice published playwright and home daycare provider. I left a message for her on the school voice mail welcoming discussion. Save for doing handstands and back bends, I did everything possible to volunteer to do this circle time for her students. I heard nothing from Vice Principal Marlie Delicieux, although in a recent Daily Xtra article written about this unfortunate event the Toronto District School Board spokesperson was quick to defend, stating "The timing did not work given that it was getting close to the end of the school year, which is a very busy time." Uh huh. So...a month preparation for a ten minute voluntary reading? I highly doubt it.
After what was clearly an act of homophobia, I posted on facebook to my many parent and educator friends asking "Who wants a free reading of a great book about queer families?" My friend and ally, Corrie Sakaluk arranged for me to read at the daycare operated within Nelson Mandela Park Public School on both June 15 and July 20. Chuffed to bits and beaming with pride, my four home daycare kids and I travelled from Scarborough to the downtown school, read for the daycare kids (a raving success, I might add, complete with kids playing on imaginary guitars and painting rainbows in the air with their fingers). It went so well, we were invited minutes after to read the book to the kids at the Parenting and Family Literacy Centre down the hall. This time, though, there were parents present. These same parents complained to the coordinator about the LGBTQ content in the book and the next thing I knew, not only were the parents in an uproar that some homo just read a book about her homo life to their kids, but the daycare itself was considering cancelling the July 20th reading.
What was meant to be a triumphant return to the land of human kindness and acceptance ended up being yet another ticket to the fringes with my unacceptable sinful self. My face was hot and red. My heart was heavy. I just wanted to scream from the top of a mountain "Holy jeez, it's about a girl on a bicycle celebrating her family!" I was incredulous. In the midst of Pride season, I thought how ridiculous it was that we were given the brief privilege to march and be who we are, but god forbid we sit in a classroom and read a book to children in hetero-normative families. I thought of how ridiculous it is to have such a courageous and progressive sex education curriculum and have administrative staff reveal their own phobias while attempting to implement it.
Since the Daily Xtra article was published, the daycare within Nelson Mandela Park Public School has revisited the issue of me reading my book and has invited me back this July 20th. I have read successfully and drama free at Eastview Junior Public School and Lord Landsdowne Junior Public School (days before school has been let out by the way). Charlottetown Junior Public School, remains aloof.
I think often of how easy it was for my daughter to be proud during our marches, with Stetson hat and bicycle riding down Yonge street. If only it were that easy for us adults to be free of oppressive thinking, to be truly accepting of others. If only I was simply living as many do, making an honest wage and spending time with my daughter -- heck, even doing my laundry or eating ice cream -- rather than writing this article telling all of you about the cartwheels I had to do just to read a story about my family. As my book reads, "D is for Doesn't Matter. Like, it doesn't matter where we came from or what body parts we have, we are beautiful."
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:CLOSE Jerri Williams, a former officer with the Phoenix Police Department will become the new Chief of Police. She's currently the Police Chief for Oxnard, California.
Oxnard, California, Police Chief Jeri Williams answers questions during a public forum for the Phoenix police chief finalists at the Phoenix City Council chambers on June 6, 2016. On Wednesday, July 13, 2016, Williams was named Phoenix police chief. (Photo: Patrick Breen/The Republic)
The city of Phoenix made history on Wednesday, naming Oxnard police chief and Phoenix police veteran Jeri Williams as its first female police chief.
She will take the helm from current Chief Joe Yahner, who is scheduled to retire in October.
Williams has served in Oxnard since 2011 but maintained roots in the Valley — her husband, Cody Williams, is a justice of the peace and former city councilman, and her son, Alan Williams, is a center for the Phoenix Suns.
Jeri Williams, who framed herself as the insider with outside leadership experience, edged out two other finalists: D.C. Assistant Chief Peter Newsham and Phoenix police Assistant Chief Mike Kurtenbach.
“I'm honored to have served the Oxnard community for the past five-and-a-half years," Williams said in a statement. "I look forward to a new chapter in my career leading the Phoenix Police Department."
My statement on the hiring of our next police chief, Jeri Williams. pic.twitter.com/WNoNOAqpf7 — Greg Stanton (@MayorStanton) July 13, 2016
Williams will be introduced to the public in a news conference scheduled for Thursday morning in Phoenix.
Williams' hire is historic, both for the department and for the city at large. Her hiring will make Phoenix the largest city in the nation to employ both a female police chief and fire chief, according to Vice Mayor Kate Gallego. Chief Kara Kalkbrenner became the first woman to lead the Phoenix Fire Department in 2014.
"We're making history today," Gallego said.
Williams is expected to assume the post in October, according to the city.
Rose through ranks of Phoenix police
Beyond proud of my mom for being named the new the new Phoenix police chief! 🙌🏾🙌🏾 big time for the great city of Phoenix! #shesback#blessed — BigSauce (@alantwilliams) July 13, 2016
Williams spent 22 years rising through the ranks of the Phoenix police before becoming Oxnard's chief in 2011. She served as an assistant chief in Phoenix from 2009 to 2011, when she was responsible for more than half of the city's area and oversaw 1,000 sworn and non-sworn employees.
In Oxnard, Williams has led about 400 sworn and non-sworn employees and oversaw the management of a $50 million budget. The Phoenix Police Department has nearly 4,000 employees on its payroll, covers 500 square miles and serves 1.5 million residents.
Williams was ultimately chosen by City Manager Ed Zuercher but was interviewed by various city and police officials, as well as community members.
Though the field of 65 applicants was narrowed to three, most city and police officials agreed the choice really came down to the two insiders.
The last outside hire for Phoenix police chief, Dallas police veteran Daniel Garcia, clashed immediately with the department’s unions. His tenure was marked by various disputes — among them firing decisions and uniform policies — but the tensions hit a boiling point in November 2014, when the unions held a “no confidence vote” for Garcia after a fired officer’s suicide.
Garcia was ultimately fired for insubordination in December 2014 after holding a blistering news conference where he unloaded on his critics, including the unions, and demanded a two-year contract. Yahner took the reins thereafter, first as interim and then as permanent chief.
'Knows the Phoenix police way'
“I think that after experiencing our last external candidate, we realized that there is a lot to gain from selecting somebody that knows the Phoenix police way,” said Sean Mattson, president of the Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association.
Mattson defined the “Phoenix police way” as a department that prides itself on close ties to the community, being proactive and using community-based solutions in problem-solving.
“And Jeri Williams does that,” Mattson said. “That’s the one thing that Garcia did not have, is knowing the value of having that relationship with the community.”
While a spokeswoman said the city hasn’t determined Williams’ salary amount, she’s poised to earn a six-figure paycheck at the same time she collects a pension.
Williams already receives a roughly $84,100 annual pension from her previous career at the city. She began drawing a pension when she retired from Phoenix in early 2011, after nearly 22 years on the force.
Williams cannot add to her pension amount, but state law still requires the city to make contributions to Arizona’s public-safety retirement system on her behalf. Phoenix spokeswoman Julie Watters said the city must contribute 40 percent of Williams’ paycheck.
Although Williams will not earn another pension, Watters said, she will receive deferred compensation, like other city executives. Deferred compensation is another retirement plan, similar to a 401(k).
Reputation for being direct, honest, empathetic
CLOSE Phoenix police chief finalists Mike Kurtenbach, Peter Newsham and Jeri Williams respond to a question regarding their thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement.
Phoenix police Cmdr. Kevin Robinson said he’s known Williams for her entire career and that she has a reputation in the department as a direct, honest and empathetic leader.
“I do not believe that there is a better choice in all of law enforcement in the entire U.S. than Jeri Williams at this time, and for the Phoenix Police Department,” he said.
Robinson said Williams is prepared to take on the complex issues involving race and policing — a national conversation that reignited last week after two black men were killed by officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, and five Dallas police officers were killed by a sniper.
“I don’t think it has as much to do with race or ethnicity as it does with competence,” Robinson said of Williams. “I’ve been around for 35.5 years, and personally I would never want to compete against Jeri Williams.”
Local Pastor Warren H. Stewart Jr. said Williams’ Phoenix origins will help her take ownership of the city and make it a better place.
“It’s almost like LeBron going back to Cleveland,” he said. “He wanted to get a win for his city. She can do the same.”
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said Williams had a reputation for community policing prior to her departure in 2011.
“I was very impressed with not only her leadership, but strategic thinking and her empathy towards the homeless community,” he said. “I became a fan at that time and remained a fan, and think she’ll be a great leader of our department.”
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/29CEZEBWe’ve written about IMPS – India’s Instant Payment Service – in the past. In 2011, I made an “instant” payment to my friend Shyam. I hit send on my machine and it was on his netbanking immediately – and this is between two different banks!
IMPS has changed substantially. First, more banks offer it now. There are 84 banks that offer it, versus a handful in 2011.
Second, the concept has expanded. From the basic structure of using a “Mobile Identifier” or MMID, which you had to get from your bank, you can now use IMPS to transfer to any other bank account, using the IFSC Code and Account number.
This is brilliant. I’ve been paying my household help using this concept. The money is transferred instantly, so they can see the money in the account immediately – if they are at an ATM, they can get the balance right there and then.
Third, they even map accounts using the Aadhaar number. So you can pay someone by just mentioning their Aadhaar number, if they have linked it to a bank account. This is beyond powerful – it can change the entire ecosystem of small payments.
Fourth, merchants can even “request” payments now. Many banks (Yes bank is one of them) allow you to generate a One Time Password on your phone, and you can place that with a merchant who can use it to charge the exact amount. I have actually used this to make an LIC payment (LIC supports this concept). Why are merchant payments different? They need a lot more information that you will otherwise get in an IMPS transaction, which a single “reference” field is useless for).
And finally, you can use IMPS on any phone – no smartphone required. Just dial *99# and you can use the return instructions to make transfers. (See participating banks and telcos)
The Cost Is Attractive
What does IMPS cost? To the bank, it’s a mere Rs. 0.25 per transaction charged by NPCI. Many banks simply absorb the cost (it probably costs them more to charge you for it!).
It’s been growing!
IMPS has grown substantially, with transaction amounts going up 5x in the last year, to about 10,000 cr. per month.
This is quite an interesting field. IMPS will be absolutely HUGE going forward. We are looking forward to great implementations, such as:
Instant payment of auto/taxi fares through apps – since the amount isn’t known, they can use OTP based payments
Investing in Mutual funds as “SIP” but with varying amounts, with IMPS based quick payments
Paying merchants in shops by just connecting through your phone – with, of course, appropriate protection and two-factor auth
Quick transfer of money from one place to another; intra-country remittances can be instant
With ultra low costs, the IMPS system can be used for even micro-lending and on-the-spot lending
This will easily replace wallets, if banks got their act together. Soon, it seems, we will have a Unified payment system architecture where anyone (including non-banks) can integrate into this awesome network. It’s way better than anything else out there – it’s instant, it’s safe, and it’s reliable.
What are your experiences with it?
Now, tell them about it:We can’t wait to see you at a future volunteer event! Check out our calendar below for upcoming opportunities. Volunteers MUST register in order to attend an event with the ARPF. Registering ensures you receive proper instructions, directions and other important information prior to the event. To sign up for an event, click on the event you are interested in and follow the directions to register.
Youth Volunteers
Youth volunteers are welcome at most ARPF volunteer events. Any minor younger than 16 must be accompanied by an adult AND must have a Youth Liability Waiver signed by a parent or legal guardian. Minors age 16 and 17 can attend volunteer events unaccompanied, but must have a Youth Liability Waiver signed by a parent or legal guardian.
Cancellation Policy
ARPF volunteer events are subject to cancellation in the case of weather, flooding, and other natural causes for the safety of our volunteers. Cancellations will be posted on the ARPF calendar at least 24 hours before the event start time, and all registered volunteers will receive an email notification.Travel fail: 4 ways to not visit the Door to Hell
Everyone we met on the road told us that there are only two things worth seeing in Turkmenistan: the bizarre capital Ashgabat, and the Door to Hell. Ashgabat is basically a mad dictator’s personality disorders come to life. The Door to Hell is a gas-filled crater in the middle of the desert that the Soviets set on fire.
A gas filled crater in the middle of the desert that has been set on fire. It’s difficult to imagine, but the name “Door to Hell” is pretty accurate because it looks like this:
It’s been burning since 1971. Soviet petroleum engineers hit a jackpot natural gas site in Derweze, a tiny town in the middle of Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert. They began drilling and harvesting the gas, but in a big “FUCK YOU” from nature, a gigantic crater opened up and swallowed the the drilling rig and camp. They wanted to snub the release of gas, and had the brilliant idea to set the entire thing on fire, figuring it would burn out in a few weeks. Almost 45 years later, the Door to Hell is debatably Turkmenistan’s most popular tourist attraction, and people come from all over the world to watch the country waste this extremely valuable resource.
Sadly, the picture above is not one of ours. Despite our best efforts, we were never able to peer into the fiery depths of the Door to Hell. But every good traveller learns from their mistakes. The internet is already full of stories and pictures of Derweze Crater excursions, so here are our top four tips on how to NOT visit Turkmenistan’s Door to Hell.
1. Don’t book a tour or get a guide
Tours are lame and expensive. Nothing says “I am lazy and have too much money” then paying someone to schedule an itinerary then drive you around from place to place, so you don’t have to think for yourself. And to book a tour when you have your own perfectly good car? Stupid!!! On our five-day transit visa, we were hell-bent (ahahaha) on forging our own path and being truly independent travellers. And despite the fact that everyone said we absolutely needed a four-wheel drive vehicle to get there, we were determined to do it in our little VW Golf. Why should we trust the word of money-grubbing tea house owners who wanted to sell us a Jeep and a guide for 1.5 hours for $70, anyway?
2. Do the minimum amount of research
Google Maps will tell you that the Door to Hell is located right on the main highway, just slightly south of the now-inexistent town of Derweza, so definitely just assume that’s where it is and hope for the best. Skim the Thorn Tree forums for some information that you can unhelpfully bring up later when you’re lost. “I think someone online said it’s five kilometres from the road… or was it seven?” “Yeah, I guess someone might have mentioned that we need GPS to get there…”
3. Don’t ask for directions from friendly people
If you see a guide at one of the other two craters (there is one filled with water, and one filled with mud), and if he waves and says he saw you in Ashgabat, and DEFINITELY if he’s only got two customers and has loads of room in his Jeep, the very last thing you should do is ask to join them.
4. Do wait until dark and then hike through the desert
When one of the greedy tea house owners laughs at your paltry offer of $20 for a guide and tells you to just wait until dark and then “follow the light”, you should take his advice despite the fact that he said the crater is seven kilometres off the road. After about an hour, when you’ve been tripping through sand and weeds in the dark and the light that “is probably over the next hill” hasn’t got any closer, you definitely will not find the Door to Hell.
BONUS: Camping when you can’t find the Door to Hell
Apparently the thing to do is to pitch your tent near the Door to Hell and have a night by the fire enjoying the company of your rich, lazy tour mates and greedy tour guide. We planned to join them, but since things went decidedly pear shaped, we had to quickly formulate a Plan B.
This Plan B involved stopping at the side of the road and pitching our tent in some sand next to the car, listening to traffic all night and hoping no police would come and boot us out. Plan B was an amazing success. We woke up the next morning relatively refreshed (but cold) and without a cop in sight.
What was in sight, however, was a huge herd of camels. Gotta love the desert.
2Come November maybe we'll all be singing "If I could turn back time..."
Publicity-shy reality TV show host, avid Twitterholic, and hopeful first-time politician Donald Trump has somehow managed to grab the headlines again.
The Republican nomination for the most important job in the world has done what he does best (steal the news agenda from things which are probably more important) by seemingly asking Russian hackers to help him out in his upcoming presidential bunfight with Hillary Clinton.
Here is what Donald Trump said at a press conference, referring to the tactically-timed leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee’s network:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”
Some, of course, have suggested that the DNC email hack was perpetrated by Russian hackers.
The Trumpster stepped back a little in a subsequent tweet, where he acknowledged the possibility that it could be another country instead of Russia that hacked the Democrats, or indeed an individual:
“If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!”
Even with that minor correction, it does sound as though Donald Trump may have just encouraged President Putin and his cronies to provide him with some ammunition to help him win the US presidential election in November.
Of course, if you love Trump you will just laugh and say “that guy! he’s such a card!”. And if you don’t love Trump you won’t laugh, and might possibly use a different four-letter word beginning with C.
Judging by Cher’s response - yes, *that* Cher - she is definitely unimpressed about Donald Trump asking a hostile government to engage in “cybor warfare”.
What I don’t understand is how Cher can be *so* good at using emojis, and yet hasn’t worked out how to turn off Caps-Lock.
By the way, Donald Trump might have some history in encouraging hackers to target high-up politicians:This article is about the U.S. state of Kansas. For the American progressive rock band, see Kansas (band). For other uses, see Kansas (disambiguation)
State of the United States of America
Kansas () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States.[11] Its capital is Topeka and its largest city is Wichita, with its most populated county being Johnson County.[12] Kansas is named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area.[13] The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the (south) wind" although this was probably not the term's original meaning.[14][15] For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.
Kansas was first settled by European Americans in 1827 with the establishment of Fort Leavenworth. The pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery debate. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists prevailed, and on January 29, 1861,[16][17] Kansas entered the Union as a free state.
By 2015, Kansas was one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans.[18] Kansas, which has an area of 82,278 square miles (213,100 square kilometers) is the 15th-largest state by area and is the 34th most-populous of the 50 states with a population of 2,911,641. Residents of Kansas are called Kansans. Mount Sunflower is Kansas's highest point at 4,041 feet (1,232 meters).[19]
History [ edit ]
Samuel Seymour's 1819 illustration of a Kansa lodge and dance is the oldest drawing known to be done in Kansas.
For a millennium, the land that is currently Kansas was inhabited by Native Americans. The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541. In 1803, most of modern Kansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas until the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when these lands were ceded to the United States. From 1812 to 1821, Kansas was part of the Missouri Territory. The Santa Fe Trail traversed Kansas from 1821 to 1880, transporting manufactured goods from Missouri and silver and furs from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wagon ruts from the trail are still visible in the prairie today.
In 1827, Fort Leavenworth became the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state.[20] The Kansas–Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, establishing Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, and opening the area to broader settlement by whites. Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo.
Missouri and Arkansas sent settlers into Kansas all along its eastern border. These settlers attempted to sway votes in favor of slavery. The secondary settlement of Americans in Kansas Territory were abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters, who attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri. Directly presaging the American Civil War, these forces collided, entering into skirmishes that earned the territory the name of Bleeding Kansas.
Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861, making it the 34th state to join the United States. By that time the violence in Kansas had largely subsided, but during the Civil War, on August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led several hundred men on a raid into Lawrence, destroying much of the city and killing nearly 200 people. He was roundly condemned by both the conventional Confederate military and the partisan rangers commissioned by the Missouri legislature. His application to that body for a commission was flatly rejected due to his pre-war criminal record.[21]
After the Civil War, many veterans constructed homesteads in Kansas. Many African Americans also looked to Kansas as the land of "John Brown" and, led by freedmen like Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, began establishing black colonies in the state. Leaving southern states in the late 1870s because of increasing discrimination, they became known as Exodusters.
At the same time, the Chisholm Trail was opened and the Wild West-era commenced in Kansas. Wild Bill Hickok was a deputy marshal at Fort Riley and a marshal at Hays and Abilene. Dodge City was another wild cowboy town, and both Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp worked as lawmen in the town. In one year alone, eight million head of cattle from Texas boarded trains in Dodge City bound for the East, earning Dodge the nickname "Queen of the Cowtowns."
In response to demands of Methodists and other evangelical Protestants, in 1881 Kansas became the first U.S. state to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting all alcoholic beverages, which was only repealed in 1948.
Geography [ edit ]
Kansas is bordered by Nebraska on the north; Missouri on the east; Oklahoma on the south; and Colorado on the west. The state is divided into 105 counties with 628 cities, and is located equidistant from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states is in Smith County near Lebanon. Until 1989, the Meades Ranch Triangulation Station in Osborne County was the geodetic center of North America: the central reference point for all maps of North America. The geographic center of Kansas is in Barton County.
Geology [ edit ]
Kansas is underlain by a sequence of horizontal to gently westward dipping sedimentary rocks. A sequence of Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks outcrop in the eastern and southern part of the state. The state's western half has exposures of Cretaceous through Tertiary sediments, the latter derived from the erosion of the uplifted Rocky Mountains to the west. These are underlain by older Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments which correlate well with the outcrops to the east. The state's northeastern corner was subjected to glaciation in the Pleistocene and is covered by glacial drift and loess.
Topography [ edit ]
The western two-thirds of the state, lying in the great central plain of the United States, has a generally flat or undulating surface, while the eastern third has many hills and forests. The land gradually rises from east to west; its altitude ranges from 684 ft (208 m) along the Verdigris River at Coffeyville in Montgomery County, to 4,039 ft (1,231 m) at Mount Sunflower, 0.5 miles (0.80 kilometers) from the Colorado border, in Wallace County. It is a common misconception that Kansas is the flattest state in the nation — in 2003, a tongue-in-cheek study famously declared the state "flatter than a pancake".[22] In fact, Kansas has a maximum topographic relief of 3,360 ft (1,020 m),[23] making it the 23rd flattest U.S. state measured by maximum relief.[24]
Rivers [ edit ]
Nearly 75 mi (121 km) of the state's northeastern boundary is defined by the Missouri River. The Kansas River (locally known as the Kaw), formed by the junction of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers at appropriately-named Junction City, joins the Missouri River at Kansas City, after a course of 170 mi (270 km) across the northeastern part of the state.
The Arkansas River (pronunciation varies), rising in Colorado, flows with a bending course for nearly 500 mi (800 km) across the western and southern parts of the state. With its tributaries, (the Little Arkansas, Ninnescah, Walnut, Cow Creek, Cimarron, Verdigris, and the Neosho), it forms the southern drainage system of the state.
Kansas's other rivers are the Saline and Solomon Rivers, tributaries of the Smoky Hill River; the Big Blue, Delaware, and Wakarusa, which flow into the Kansas River; and the Marais des Cygnes, a tributary of the Missouri River. Spring River is located between Riverton and Baxter Springs.
National parks and historic sites [ edit ]
Areas under the protection of the National Park Service include:[25]
Flora and fauna [ edit ]
Climate [ edit ]
Köppen climate types in Kansas
Clouds in northeastern Kansas
Kansas Summer Wheat and Storm Panorama
According to the Köppen climate classification, Kansas's climate can be characterized in terms of three types: it has humid continental, semi-arid steppe, and humid subtropical. The eastern two-thirds of the state (especially the northeastern portion) has a humid continental climate, with cool to cold winters and hot, often humid summers. Most of the precipitation falls during both the summer and the spring.
The western third of the state – from roughly the U.S. Route 83 corridor westward – has a semiarid steppe climate. Summers are hot, often very hot, and generally less humid. Winters are highly changeable between warm and very cold. The western region receives an average of about 16 inches (410 millimeters) of precipitation per year. Chinook winds in the winter can warm western Kansas all the way into the 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) range.
The far south-central and southeastern portions of the state, including the Wichita area, have a humid subtropical climate with hot and humid summers, milder winters, and more precipitation than elsewhere in Kansas. Some features of all three climates can be found in most of the state, with droughts and changeable weather between dry and humid not uncommon, and both warm and cold spells in the winter.
Temperatures in areas between U.S. Routes 83 and 81, as well as the southwestern portion of the state along and south of U.S. 50, reach 100 °F (38 °C) or above on most days of June, July, and August. High humidity added to the high temperatures sends the heat index into life-threatening territory, especially in Wichita, Hutchinson, Salina, Russell, Hays, and Great Bend. Temperatures are often higher in Dodge City, Garden City, and Liberal, but the heat index in those three cities is usually lower than the actual air temperature.
Although temperatures of 100 °F (38 °C) or higher are not as common in areas east of U.S. 81, higher humidity and the urban heat island effect lead most summer days to heat indices between 107 °F (42 °C) and 114 °F (46 °C) in Topeka, Lawrence, and the Kansas City metropolitan area. During the summer, nightly low temperatures in the northeastern part of the state, especially in the aforementioned large cities, struggle to fall below 80 °F (27 °C). Also, combined with humidity between 85 and 95 percent, dangerous heat indices can be experienced at every hour of the day.
Precipitation ranges from about 47 inches (1,200 mm) annually in the state's southeast corner to about 16 inches (410 mm) in the southwest. Snowfall ranges from around 5 inches (130 mm) in the fringes of the south, to 35 inches (890 mm) in the far northwest. Frost-free days range from more than 200 days in the south, to 130 days in the northwest. Thus, Kansas is the country's ninth or tenth sunniest state, depending on the source. Western Kansas is as sunny as California and Arizona.
Kansas is prone to severe weather, especially in the spring and the early-summer. Despite the frequent sunshine throughout much of the state, due to its location at a climatic boundary prone to intrusions of multiple air masses, the state is vulnerable to strong and severe thunderstorms. Some of these storms become supercell thunderstorms; these can produce some tornadoes, occasionally those of EF3 strength or higher. Kansas averages over 50 tornadoes annually.[26] Severe thunderstorms sometimes drop some very large hail over Kansas as well. Furthermore, these storms can even bring in flash flooding and damaging straight line winds.
According to NOAA, the all-time highest temperature recorded in Kansas is (121 °F or 49.4 °C) on July 24, 1936, near Alton in Osborne County, and the all-time low is −40 °F (−40 °C) on February 13, 1905, near Lebanon in Smith County. Alton and Lebanon are approximately 50 miles (80 km) apart.
Kansas's record high of 121 °F (49.4 °C) ties with North Dakota for the fifth-highest record high in an American state, behind California (134 °F or 56.7 °C), Arizona (128 °F or 53.3 °C), Nevada (125 °F or 51.7 °C), and New Mexico (122 °F or 50 ° |
turning the seat - a Labour stronghold since 1945 - into a marginal.
The pattern is fairly consistent throughout the United Kingdom - Labour safe seats either vanishing or becoming marginal or even Tory seats. On Merseyside, three seats - Frank Field's Birkenhead, a Labour seat since 1950, and two marginal Labour held seats, Wirral South and Wirral West - will become two: a safe Labour seat, and a safe Conservative seat on the Wirral. Lillian Greenwood, the Shadow Transport Secretary, would see her Nottingham seat take more of the Nottinghamshire countryside, becoming a Conservative-held marginal.
The traffic - at least in the 2013 review - was not entirely one-way. Jane Ellison, the Tory MP for Battersea, would find herself fighting a seat with a notional Labour majority of just under 3,000, as opposed to her current majority of close to 8,000.
But the net effect of the boundary review and the shrinking of the size of the House of Commons would be to the advantage of the Conservatives. If the 2015 election had been held using the 2013 boundaries, the Tories would have a majority of 22 – and Labour would have just 216 seats against 232 now.
It may be, however, that Labour dodges a bullet – because while the boundary changes would have given the Conservatives a bigger majority, they would have significantly fewer MPs – down to 311 from 330, a loss of 19 members of Parliament. Although the whips are attempting to steady the nerves of backbenchers about the potential loss of their seats, that the number of Conservative MPs who face involuntary retirement due to boundary changes is bigger than the party’s parliamentary majority may force a U-Turn.
That said, Labour’s relatively weak electoral showing may calm jittery Tory MPs. Two months into Ed Miliband’s leadership, Labour averaged 39 per cent in the polls. They got 31 per cent of the vote in 2015. Two months into Tony Blair’s leadership, Labour were on 53 per cent of the vote. They got 43 per cent of the vote. A month and a half into Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour is on 31 per cent of the vote. A Blair-style drop of ten points would see the Tories net 388 seats under the new boundaries, with Labour on 131. A smaller Miliband-style drop would give the Conservatives 364, and leave Labour with 153 MPs.
On Labour’s current trajectory, Tory MPs who lose out due to boundary changes may feel comfortable in their chances of picking up a seat elsewhere.This article is from the archive of our partner.
LinkedIn has agreed to pay current and former employees a whooping $6 million in unpaid wages.
The Department of Labor found 359 LinkedIn workers were owed this sum after LinkedIn violated overtime and record keeping laws. The laws are part of the Fair Labor Standards Act and require hourly employees to earn 1.5 their rates for overtime.
The Department of Labor found the violations occurred in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York.
LinkedIn told the Associated Press that they were already working on resolving and were "eager to work closely with the (Labor Department) to quickly and equitably rectify this situation."
"This was a function of not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly; prior to the (Labor Department) approaching us, we had already begun to remedy this."
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.Nursing shortage is a problem in several districts of Norway. This nurse is employed at a nursing home
Nursing shortage refers to a situation where the demand for nursing professionals, such as Registered Nurses (RNs), exceeds the supply—locally (e.g., within a health care facility), nationally or globally. It can be measured, for instance, when the nurse-to-patient ratio, the nurse-to-population ratio, or the number of job openings necessitates a higher number of nurses than currently available. This situation is observed in developed and developing nations around the world.
Nursing shortage is not necessarily due to a lack of supply of trained nurses. In some cases, perceived shortages occur simultaneously with increased admission rates of students into nursing schools. Potential factors include lack of adequate staffing ratios in hospitals and other health care facilities, lack of placement programs for newly trained nurses, and inadequate worker retention incentives.[1]
Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a shortage of almost 4.3 million nurses, physicians and other health human resources worldwide—reported to be the result of decades of underinvestment in health worker education, training, wages, working environment and management.[2]
Causes [ edit ]
Nursing shortage is an issue in many countries. To remedy the problem, psychological studies have been completed to ascertain how nurses feel about their career in the hope that they can determine what is preventing some nurses from keeping the profession as a long-term career. In a study completed by sociologist Bryan Turner, the study found that the most common nursing complaints were:
subordination to the medical profession on all matters, even over standardized regulations
difficult working conditions
A report from the Commonwealth of Australia identified a few other matters that led to nurse dissatisfaction:
constant schedule changes
work overloads due to high number of patients and paperwork
shift work
lack of appreciation by superiors
lack of provided childcare
inadequate pay
Another study found that nurse dissatisfaction stemmed from:
conflicting expectations from nurses and managers due to regulation of cost
inability to provide comprehensive nursing care due to work
loss of confidence in the health care system.[3]
In many jurisdictions, administrative/government health policy and practice has changed very little in the last decades. Cost-cutting is the priority, patient loads are uncontrolled, and nurses are rarely consulted when recommending health care reform.[4] The major reason nurses plan to leave the field, as stated by the First Consulting Group, is because of working conditions.[5] With the high turnover rate, the nursing field does not have a chance to build up the already frustrated staff. Aside from the deteriorating working conditions, the real problem is "nursing’s failure to be attractive to the younger generation."[6] There’s a decline in interest among college students to consider nursing as a probable career. More than half of currently working nurses "would not recommend nursing to their own children" and a little less than a quarter would advise others to avoid this as a profession altogether.[7]
Australian nursing researchers John Buchanan and Gillian Considine described hospitals as "being run like a business" with "issues of patient care… of secondary importance."[8] Emotional support, education, encouragement and counseling are integral to the everyday nursing practice. However, these practices are not easily quantified and are considered by managers as unjustified cost for the patients, who are viewed as consumers.[8] Therefore, only clinical responsibilities, such as medication administration, dressing changes, foley catheter insertions, and anything that involves tangible supplies, are quantified and incorporated into the organization budget and plan of care for the consumers.
The nursing shortage affects the developing countries that supply nurses through recruitment to work abroad in wealthier countries.[9] For example, to accommodate perceived nursing shortage in the United States, American hospital recruit nurses from overseas, especially the Philippines and Africa. This, in turn, can lead to greater nursing shortages in their home countries. In response, in 2010 the WHO's World Health Assembly adopted the Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, a policy framework for all countries for the ethical international recruitment of nurses and other health professionals.
Impacts on healthcare [ edit ]
Nursing shortages (including low hospital-level nurse-to-patient ratios)[10] have been linked to the following effects:[5][10]
Increased nurses’ patient workloads
Increased risk for error, thereby compromising patient safety
Increased risk of spreading infection to patients and staff
Increased risk of adverse outcomes such as pneumonia, shock, cardiac arrest, and urinary tract infections [10]
Increased risk for occupational injury
Increase in nursing turnover, thereby leading to greater costs for the employer and the health care system
Increase in nurses' perception of unsafe working conditions, contributing to increased shortage and hindering local or national recruitment efforts
Global shortage and international recruitment [ edit ]
The nursing shortage takes place on a global scale. Australia, the UK, and the US receive the largest number of migrant nurses. Australia received 11,757 nurses from other countries between 1995 and 2000.[11] The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) records show that more than 10,000 foreign nurses were given H-1A visas in the same time frame.[11] The U.K. admitted 26,286 foreign nurses from 1998 to 2002.
Saudi Arabia also depends on the international nurse supply with 40 nations represented in its nurse workforce.[11] Netherlands needed to fill 7,000 nursing positions in 2002, England needed to fill 22,000 positions in 2000, and Canada would need about 10,000 nursing graduates by 2011.[12]
In an American Hospital Association study, the cost to replace one nurse in the U.S. was estimated at around $30,000–$64,000.[5] This amount is likely related to the cost of recruiting and training nurses into the organization. Hiring foreign nurses is more financially taxing compared to hiring domestic-graduate nurses; however, facilities save money in the long run because foreign nurses have a contractual obligation to complete their term.[9] The JACHO in the United States wrote in a 2002 research report on the shortage in the US that recruiting foreign trained nurses from abroad (not referring to those who reside in the United States already) does not help the global nursing shortage and, in fact, perpetuates it.[13]
Countries that send their nurses abroad experience a shortage and strain on their health care systems.
In South Africa, accelerated recruitment by developed countries such as United States, United Kingdom and Australia has placed more pressure on the health care system due to prevalence of diseases, such as AIDS, and limited resources.[9] Similar to the U.S., nurses who leave the organization are a financial disadvantage due to the need to fund recruiting and retraining of new nurses into the system. It has been estimated that every nurse who leaves South Africa is an annual loss of $184,000 to the country,[9] related to the financial and economical impact of the nursing shortage.
The following table represents the number of nurses per 100,000-population in southern African countries.[9]
Number of southern African countries Number of nurses per 100,000 population 16 100 10 50 9 20 3 Less than 10
In India international migration has been considered as one of the reasons behind shortages of nursing workforce. Social, economic and professional reasons have been cited behind this shortfall.[14]
Retention of nurses by sending (often developing) countries can be addressed by improving working conditions, minimizing wage differentials, and promoting medical tourism.[citation needed] Retention can also be promoted through educational activities to improve job satisfaction. There can be additional unintended impacts of nurses migration abroad. For example, there is growing evidence that physicians in the Philippines have shifted to the nursing field for better export opportunities.[9] The World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Manila believes the government should invest more into its health sector as it is 3% of the Philippines' GDP.[citation needed] Others have suggested programs which require domestic service or employment upon graduation.
Ethical concerns [ edit ]
Foreign nurses that migrate from developing countries to fill the nursing shortage of developed nations pursue their own economic, career, and lifestyle interests, but there are risks. The media and scholars have remained relatively silent on the ethical concerns involving the potential exploitation of foreign nurses.[according to whom?] On the level of national sovereignty and global equality, there are ethical concerns about the pull of developed nations on developing countries' skilled workers and assets. U.S. incentives such as signing bonuses can be seen as promoting brain drain. Activists have spread a new term for this: "Brain drain in the south, brain waste in the north."[15] The president of the Philippines Nurse Association, George Codero, was quoted in a New York Times article as saying "The Filipino people will suffer because the U.S. will get all our trained nurses".[16][17]
On an individual basis, foreign nurses are subject to exploitation by employers. In 1998 six Americans were charged with falsely obtaining H-1A visas and using them to employ Filipino nurses as nurse aides instead of registered nurses.[citation needed] In a case in 1996, a Catholic archdiocese employed some of these foreign nurses as nurse aides instead of nurses. In 2000, Filipino nurses in Missouri received $2.1 million for failure to receive proper wages that an American in the same position would receive. While these cases were brought to court, many similar situations are left unreported thereby jeopardizing the rights of foreign nurses. Foreign nurses have the tendency to receive less desirable jobs, such as entry-level positions, because of their immigrant status; they are excluded from jobs that would lead to facilities and are often not paid proper salaries.[citation needed]
Some U.S. health care facilities push to "ease restrictions" on the immigration law to increase the number of recruited foreign nurses. On the other hand, this recruitment practice is a temporary solution that does not fully address the nursing shortage as mentioned by American Nursing Association (ANA).[12] Others have taken a stand on ethically recruiting foreign workers. New York University Medical Center was cited in The Search for Nurses Ends in Manila as believing that it is a "poaching exercise" to take nurses from countries in need of their citizens.[18] The former health secretary, Dr. Galvez Tan, in reference to the doctors and nurses working for an American green card said, "There has to be give and take, not just take, take, take by the United States."[19]
Shortage by country [ edit ]
Morocco [ edit ]
Morocco has far fewer nurses and other paramedical staff per capita than other countries of comparable national income. The number of nurses in Morocco was 29.025 in 2011, two thirds being registered nurses and one third auxiliary nurses, a ratio of 8 nurses per 10,000 population.[20] As a result, Morocco has been classified among 57 countries suffering from a glaring shortage of medically trained human resources.
A recent study by the European Institute of Health Sciences (Institut Européen des Sciences de la Santé) in Casablanca based on scientific modeling of future needs[21] indicates that the situation will worsen and that to bridge the nursing gap, Morocco needs to produce between 40,000 and 80,000 new nurse graduates until the year 2025.
Philippines [ edit ]
The Philippines is the largest exporter of nurses in the world supplying 25% of all overseas nurses.[22] An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study reported that one of every six foreign-born nurses in the OECD countries is from the Philippines.[23] Of all employed Filipino RNs, roughly 85% are working overseas.[24] This is partially in response to the inability of Filipino nurses to enter their domestic workforce due to a lack of jobs and instead become heavily dependent upon international job markets for nurses. The United States has an especially prominent representation of Filipino nurses. Of the 100,000 foreign nurses working in the U.S. as of 2000, 32.6% were from the Philippines.[24]
Reasons for international migration [ edit ]
The international migration of Filipino nurses takes place in response to "push and pull" factors. The push factors are rooted in the economic conditions in the Philippines in which there is an overabundance of RNs and a lack of open employment positions. The unemployment rate in the Philippines exceeds 10%.[17] Additionally, health care budgets set up Filipino nurses for low wages and poor benefit packages. There are fewer jobs available, thereby increasing the workload and pressure on RNs. Filipinos often pursue international employment to avoid the economic instability and poor labor conditions in their native country. The government also highly encourages the exportation of RNs internationally. Filipino nurses are pulled to work abroad for the economic benefits of international positions. While a nurse in the Philippines will earn between $180 and $200 U.S. dollars per month, a nurse in the U.S. receives a salary of $4,000 per month.[25] Nurses abroad are greatly respected in the Philippines as they are able to support an entire family at home through remittances. In 1993, Filipinos abroad sent $800 million to their families in the Philippines thereby supporting the economy.[11] Additionally, remittances from Filipinos made up 5.2% of the Filipino GDP (gross national product) between 1990 and 2000.[24] Further pull factors stem from the additional economic benefits of signing bonuses in the U.S. To attract more foreign nurses, U.S. hospitals increased signing bonuses from $1,000 to $7,000.[26] Positions abroad in the health sector are also enticing for their immigration benefits. Throughout the past 50 years of nurse migration, the U.S. has made efforts to ease the visa application process to further encourage international nurses to relieve the nursing shortage. Scholars note that the better living and working conditions, higher income, and opportunities for career advancement draw nurses from the Philippines to work in the U.S.
As the relation between the U.S. and the Philippines stretches back 50 years, Filipino nursing institutions often reflect the same education standards and methods as the U.S. curriculum. Furthermore, a knowledge of English in the Philippines makes it easier for Filipino nurses (rather than nurses from other developing nations) to work in the U.S.
Since 1916, 2,000 nurses have arrived each year in the U.S.[27] In 1999, the U.S. approved 50,000 migrant visas for these nurses.[27] Today, on average, there are about 30,000 Filipino nurses traveling to the U.S. each year.
Effects of migration [ edit ]
The transnational migration of Filipino RNs has profound effects on the economy and workforce dynamics in both sending and receiving nations. The departure of nurses from the domestic workforce represents a loss of skilled personnel and the economic investment in education. In addition, the "scarce and relatively expensive-to-train resources" invested are lost when a worker chooses to work abroad.[11] When RNs migrate internationally, the country they emigrate from loses a valuable resource and any financial or educational support that was invested in the individual.
According to many Filipinos working in hospitals, the most educated and skilled nurses are the first to go abroad. There is disagreement among scholars on the extent to which the Filipino health sector is burdened by its nursing shortage. While the numerical data are inconsistent about whether the nurse supply is in excess or a shortage, it is clear that there is a short supply of the most skilled nurses who go abroad. As a result, operating rooms are often staffed by novice nurses, and nurses with more experience work extremely long hours. As skilled nurses decline in the urban areas, nurses from rural areas migrate to hospitals in the cities for better pay. As a result, rural communities experience a drain of health resources. Stories and studies alike demonstrate that a treatable emergency in the provinces may be fatal because there are no medical professionals to help treat them. In fact, "the number of Filipinos dying without medical attention has been steadily increasing for the last decade."[25] The lack of attention from medical professionals has increased despite advances in technology and medicine and the increasing number of trained nurses in the Philippines.
Doctors, too, have changed professions and joined the international mobility trend. Filipino doctors have begun leaving their professions to train as nurses under the title MD-RN with the hope of immigrating to the U.S. or other developed nations more easily. Since 2000, 3,500 Filipino doctors have migrated abroad as nurses.[22] The U.S. incentives for nurse migration encourage doctors to train as nurses in the hopes of increasing their economic prospects. As a result, the Philippines have a lower average of doctors and nurses with 0.58 and 1.69 respectively for a population of 1,000. The average statistics globally in contrast are 1.23 and 2.56.[23] Between 2002 and 2007, 1,000 Filipino hospitals closed due to a shortage of health workers. A study conducted by the former Philippine Secretary of Health, Jaime Galvez-Tan, concluded that close to 80% of government doctors have become nurses or are studying nursing.[25] Of the 9,000 doctors-turned-nurses, 5,000 are working overseas.[25] The extraordinary influence of this international migration has had devastating effects on the health of Filipinos. The number of deaths that were not prevented with medical attention have increased as hospitals are shut down and rural areas are deprived of any medical treatment.
Due to the high interest in international mobility, there is little permanency in the nursing positions in the Philippines. Most RNs choose to sign short-term contracts that will allow for more flexibility to work overseas. Filipino nurses feel less committed to the hospitals as they are temporary staff members. This lack of attachment and minimal responsibility worsens the health of Filipino patients.
The education system has also been hurt by the increase of nurses in the Philippines. As Filipinos are attracted to working as nurses, the number of nursing students has steadily increased. As a result, the number of nursing programs has grown quickly in a commercialized manner. In the 1970s, there were only 40 nursing schools in the Philippines; by 2005 the number had grown to 441 nursing colleges.[28] While the education opportunities for nursing students has grown tremendously, the quality of education has declined. This can be seen by the low rate (50%) of students who pass the nursing exam since the 1990s. Furthermore, the Technical Committee on Nursing Education of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) determined that 23% of Filipino nursing schools failed to meet the requirements set by the government.[22]
In summary, the emigration of Filipino nurses has encouraged doctors to switch to nursing, created a shortage of skilled specialized and experienced nurses, affected the education system, and distorted health care delivery and attention to medical issues in rural areas. While remittances, return migration, and the transfer of knowledge support the Philippines, they fail to fully compensate the loss of health workers, which disrupts the Filipino health and education sectors.
Dr. Jaime-Galvez Tan, the former Philippine Secretary of Health, warns that if the U.S. passes legislation allowing for freer immigration of nurses the health service of the Philippines could collapse.[25]
United Kingdom [ edit ]
In October 2015 The UK Government announced that Nurses will be added to the government’s shortage occupation list on an interim basis.[29]
In December 2015, 207 out of 232 English hospitals (90%) reported nursing shortages.[30]
In January 2016 the RCN stated that more than 10,000 nursing posts went unfilled in 2015.[31] This represented a 3% increase year on year from 11% in 2013, 14% in 2014 and 17% in 2015 of all London nursing positions and 10% as an average nationwide.[32] According to a BBC article the Department of Health said it did not recognise the figures.[31]
United States [ edit ]
According to the American National Council of State Boards of Nursing,[33] the number of U.S. trained nurses has been increasing over the past decade: In 2000, 71,475 U.S.-trained nurses became newly licensed. In 2005, 99,187 U.S.-trained nurses became newly licensed. In 2009, 134,708 U.S.-trained nurses became newly licensed. Therefore, a 9.8% annual increase of newly licensed U.S. nurses has been observed each year over nine years. It is clear that, nursing enrollment in the U.S. has significantly increased over the past decade relative to the 1.19% annual U.S. population growth.
While the number of U.S. trained licensed nurses has increased each year, the projected nursing demand growth rate from 2008 to 2018, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,[34] is anticipated to be 22%, or 2.12% annually. Therefore, the 9.8% annual growth of new RN's exceeds the current new position growth rate by a net of 7.7% per year with the assumption of consistent growth figures over the next decade.
The United States population is projected to grow at least 18% over two decades in the 21st century, while the population of those 65 and older is expected to increase three times that rate.[9] The increase in the number of elderly is projected to lead to an increase demand for nurses in senior care facilities as well as the need to fill the positions of nurses as they reach retirement age. Projections suggest that by 2020 to 2025 one third of the current RN and LPN workforce will be eligible to retire.[35] The current shortfall of nurses is projected at 800,000 by the year 2020.[9]
Professional health and related occupations were expected to rapidly increase between 2000 and 2012. The demand for health care practitioners and technical occupations will continue to increase. It is projected that there will be 1.7 million job openings between 2000 and 2012. The demand for registered nurses is even higher. Registered nurses are predicted to have 1,101,000 openings due to growth during this 10-year period.[36] In a 2001 American Hospital Association survey, 715 hospitals reported that 126,000 nursing positions were unfilled.[12]
Other research findings report a projection of opposite trend. Although the demand for nurses continues to increase, the rate of employment has slowed down since 1994 because hospitals were incorporating more less-skilled nursing personnel to substitute for nurses.[37] With the decrease in employment, the earnings for nurses decreased. Wage among nurses leveled off in correlation with inflation between 1990 and 1994.[37] The recent economic crisis of 2009 has further decreased the demand for RNs.
Comparing the data released by the Bureau of Health Professions, the projections of shortage within two years have increased.
Year Supply Demand Shortage Percent 2000 1,889,243 1,999,950 -110,707 -6% 2005 2,012,444 2,161,831 -149,387 -7% 2010 2,069,369 2,344,584 -275,215 -12% 2015 2,055,491 2,562,554 -507,063 -20% 2020 2,001,998 2,810,414 -808,416 -28.8% US: Supply versus Demand Projections for FTE Registered Nurses
Source: Data from the Bureau of Health Professions (2002)[38]
However, emergency and acute care nurses are in great demand, and this temporary reduction of the shortage is not expected to last as the economy improves.[39][40] In 2009, it was reported that in places like Des Moines, Iowa newly graduated nurses were having more difficulty finding jobs and older nurses were delaying retirement due to economic conditions. This hiring situation was mostly found in hospitals; nursing homes continued to hire and recruit nurses in strong numbers.[41]
Some states have a surplus of nurses while other states face a shortage. This is due to factors such as the number of new graduates and the total demand for nurses in each area. Some states face a severe shortage (such as the northwestern states, as well as Texas and Oklahoma), while other states have a surplus of registered nurses.
Year Supply Demand Shortage Percent 2000 1,890,700 2,001,500 -110,800 -6% 2005 1,942,500 2,161,300 -218,800 -10% 2010 1,941,200 2,347,000 -405,800 -17% 2015 1,886,100 2,569,800 -683,700 -27% 2020 1,808,000 2,824,900 -1,016,900 -36% US: Supply versus Demand Projections for FTE Registered Nurses
Source: Data from the Bureau of Health Professions. (2004).[42]
Patching up the shortage [ edit ]
Nursing shortages can be consistent or intermittent depending on the number of patients needing medical attention.
Retention and recruitment are important methods to achieve a long-term solution to the nursing shortage. Recruitment is promoted through making nursing attractive as a profession, especially to younger workers, to counteract the high average age of RNs and future waves of retirement. Refining the work environment can improve the overall perception of nursing as an occupation. This can be achieved by ensuring job satisfaction. Writers Lori Candela, Antonio Gutierrez, and Sarah Keating point out in the journal, Nurse Education Today, ways the academic nursing administrators can make a change. "Individual support to attend workshops or conferences, participation in on-campus teaching/learning faculty sessions, the use of consultants with expertise in particular areas around teaching and evaluation, and mentoring networks that include senior faculty with teaching expertise" can all create a strong relationship between staff members therefore developing a better environment.[43] Additionally, financial opportunities such as signing bonuses can attract nurses.
To assist the health sector, Congress approved the Nurse Reinvestment Act in 2002 to provide funding to advance nursing education, scholarships, grants, diversity programs, loan repayment programs, nursing faculty programs, and comprehensive geriatric education.[44] Currently, mandatory overtime for nurses is prohibited in nine states, hospital accountability to implement valid staffing plans in seven states, and only one state implements the minimum staffing ratio.[5]
Other ways of assisting to fill the shortage in the United States would include giving nurses the opportunity to pick their own overtime and schedules. Also, it would be a great incentive to young nurses to enter a hospital if they knew there were bonuses for continued excellence.[45]
To respond to fluctuating needs in the short term, health care industries have used float pool nurses and agency nurses. Float pool nurses are staff employed by the hospital to work in any unit. Agency nurses are employed by an independent staffing organization and have the opportunity to work in any hospitals on a daily, weekly or contractual basis. Similar to other professionals, both types of nurses can only work within their licensed scope of practice, training, and certification.
Float pool nurses and agency nurses, as mentioned by First Consulting group, are used in response to the current shortage.[citation needed] Use of the said services increases the cost of health care, decreases specialty, and decreases the interest in long-term solutions to the shortage.[citation needed]
International recruitment is often used to fill the nursing gap but gives rise to concern now that the U.S. Homeland Security has stopped the issuance of the H-1C visa, which was deemed specifically for nurses. Because of the Affordable Care Act, which will result in an increased number of insured Americans, it is estimated that there will be an even greater need for nurses in the near future.[46] U.S. trained nurses are concerned, however, that this recruitment initiative impedes on their ability to obtain positions in the field after completing their training.[citation needed] A nursing shortage does not translate to new nursing jobs.
A growing response to the nursing shortage is the advent of travel nursing a specialized sub-set of the staffing agency industry that has evolved to serve the needs of hospitals affected. According to the Professional Association of Nurse Travelers, there are an estimated 25,500[47] working in the U.S. The number of LVN/LPN nurse travelers is not known.
There is a nursing recruitment initiative and nursing workforce development program for residents of the United States originally from foreign countries, who were professional nurses in their countries but are no longer in that profession in the United States. This initiative helps them get back into the nursing profession, especially getting through credentialing and the nursing board exams.[48] The original model was developed in 2001 at San Francisco State University in cooperation with City College of San Francisco ("The San Francisco Welcome Back Center"). There are centers in many cities, such as Los Angeles, San Diego, and Boston—where it is called a "Boston Welcome Back Center for Internationally Educated Nurses".[49] It is a program meant for residents of the United States only.[50] The Boston Welcome Back Center was opened in October 2005 with a $50,000 seed grant from the Board of Higher Education’s Nursing Initiative.[51]
Legislation [ edit ]
In 2004, California became the first state to legally mandate minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in acute care hospitals.[52] A subsequent study evaluated the effect on outcomes for nurses and patients by comparing outcomes in California in the subsequent two years with those of New Jersey and Pennsylvania — two similar states without such mandates.[52] There was substantial compliance with the mandate in California, with over 80% compliance rates reported across several different units of surveyed hospitals; equivalent levels of non-mandated compliance in the comparator states were considerably lower, at 19%, 52%, and 63% compliance in medical/surgical, pediatric, and intensive care units (ICUs) in New Jersey and 33%, 66%, and 71% in Pennsylvania.[52] After extensive adjustment for patient and hospital characteristics, the study revealed statistically significant relationships between the nurse-to-patient ratio and 30-day mortality and failure to rescue (FTR — that is, failure to prevent a clinically-important deterioration, such as death or permanent disability, from a complication of an underlying illness or of medical care) in all three states.[52] Across all three states, facilities with nurse-to-patient ratios consistent with those mandated in California were associated with lower rates of nursing burnout, and nurses reported consistently better quality of care.[52]
In September 2007, in the 110th Congress, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois introduced S.2064: Nurse Training and Retention Act of 2007 on the floor of the Senate. It was a bill to fund comprehensive programs to ensure an adequate supply of nurses. It was referred to committee for study but was never reported on by the committee.[53]
In April 2008, in the 110th Congress, H.R. 5924: Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act was introduced as a bill to the House of Representatives by Robert Wexler of Florida. If it had passed, it would have amended the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000 and would have given up to 20,000 visas per year to nurses and physical therapists until September 2011. Immediate family members of visa beneficiaries would not be counted against the 20,000 yearly cap. The bill was referred to committees for study in Congress but was never reported on by the committees.[54][55][56]
On February 11, 2009, legislation was introduced by Representatives John Shadegg (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Ed Pastor (D-AZ) in the 111th Congress to the House of Representatives, HR 1001 ("The Nursing Relief Act of 2009": To create a new non-immigrant visa category for registered nurses, and for other purposes) making a new non-immigrant "W" visa category for nurses to be able to work in the United States. This was to relieve the nursing shortage still considered to be a crisis despite the economic problems in the country. The proposed bill was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary but was never reported on by Committee.[57][58][59]
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes more strategies for funding and retention. The act provides funding for advanced education nursing grants, diversity grants, and offers a nurse education loan repayment program. The program repays over half of the student loans if the nursing student signs a contract stating that they will work for two years at a medical facility that has a nursing shortage.[60]
The Nurse Reinvestment Act of 2002 had many strategies. The law authorized and had provisions that included topics such as loan repayment programs and scholarships, providing more grants to the nursing students, making more public service announcements about nursing and educating the public on what a great profession it is and making nursing school more flexible by creating options for the people who already have a degree but would like to go into nursing.[61]
Immigration process to U.S. [ edit ]
Nurses seeking to immigrate to the U.S. can apply as direct hires or through a recruitment agency. For entry to the U.S. a foreign nurse must pass a Visa Screen which includes three parts of the process. First they must pass a creditable review, followed by a test of nursing knowledge called the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools examination (CGFNS), and finally a test of English-language proficiency.
Foreign nurses compete amongst themselves, with professionals, and other skilled workers for 140,000 employment-based (EB) visas every year.[62] Filipino nurses are only allocated 2,800 visas per year, thereby creating a backlog among applicants. For example, in September 2009, 56,896 Filipinos were waiting for EB-3 visa numbers.[62] This number contrasts with the 95,000 nurses licensed in 2009, many of whom want to migrate to the U.S. Once a nurse obtains a visa number and is approved for a visa and authorized to work in the U.S., they must pass the National Council Licensure Examination to qualify for U.S. nursing standards. (See also employment-based visa retrogression.)
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Jump To: A One Page Summary of the Lincoln Assassination Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Theories Lincoln Escapes Death in 1864 Abraham Lincoln's Pre-Assassination Dream Abraham Lincoln's Last Day Abraham Lincoln's Autopsy The Route of Abraham Lincoln's Funeral Train --- The Life and Plot of John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth's Movements on the Day of the Assassination John Wilkes Booth's Final Hours and the Positive Identification of his Body The Text of John Wilkes Booth's Diary John Wilkes Booth's Weapons John Wilkes Booth's Autopsy --- The 1865 Conspiracy Trial Did John Wilkes Booth and Other Conspirators Attend Lincoln's Second Inauguration? The Text of John Surratt's 1870 Lecture on the Conspiracy John F. Parker: The Guard Who Abandoned His Post A Booth Saves a Lincoln --- The Strange and Eerie Events in the Years Following the Assassination The 1876 Attempt to Steal Mr. Lincoln's Body Boston Corbett: The Bizarre Soldier Who Killed John Wilkes Booth Mr. Lincoln's Casket Opened and the Remains Viewed in 1901 --- Mary Todd Lincoln's Nightmare at Ford's Theatre What If the Lincolns Had Attended the Play at Grover's Theatre? The Fifteen People Who Turned Down the Lincolns' Theater Invitation Private John Millington's Eyewitness Account of the Chase and Capture of John Wilkes Booth George Atzerodt's Lost Confession --- Photographs Related to the Assassination Photographs of the Convicted Conspirators Adjusting the Ropes Prior |
's birth. Each additional older brother increased the odds of homosexuality by 33%." It is possible that a father who was occupied with older sons might be more tolerant of the mother's protectiveness of a younger son or the father might invest less time with the younger son during the critical period of gender identity development. (Blanchard 1996)
Developmental models
Therapists who treat boys with GID propose various explanations for how the problem develops. According to Green, the mother perceives this particular child as special. This favoritism may reflect her own needs. She gives the child more of her time. The boy plays with his mother's possessions and imitates the mother. These behaviors are supported by adults. The father is less present or does not present himself as a model and does not object forcefully to feminine play. On the other hand aggressive boy play is frowned upon. The situation creates alienation between the father and son. The boy's perceived femininity is an obstacle to same-sex peer play. The mother responds positively to cross-dressing. The problem spirals out-of-control. (Green, p.239)
Zucker and Bradley, have observed that the Gender Identity Disorder arises when "a boy's temperamental vulnerability to high arousal" combines with "an insecure mother-child relationship." The mother may have problems with frustration, depression, or hostility. In these cases:
The boy, who is highly sensitive to maternal signals, perceives the mother's feelings of depression and anger. Because of his own insecurity, he is all the more threatened by his mother's anger or hostility, which he perceives as directed at him. His worry about the loss of his mother intensifies his conflict over his own anger, resulting in high levels of arousal or anxiety. The father's own difficulty with affect regulation and inner sense of inadequacy usually produces withdrawal rather than approach. The parents have difficulty resolving the conflicts they experience in their own marital relations, and fail to provide support to each other. This produces an intensified sense of conflict and hostility. In this situation, the boy becomes increasingly unsure about his own self-value because of the mother's withdrawal or anger and the father's failure to intercede. This anxiety and insecurity intensify, as does his anger. (Zucker 1995, p.262)
The mother's psychological problems can have a profound effect on a sensitive son. For example, a 10-year-old boy with gender identity disorder, whose mother suffered from recurrent depression, talked about "how difficult it was for him to predict what mood his mother would be in each day." (Zucker 1995, p.229) In another case Zucker and associates treated an anxious youngster, prone to fantasy and cross-gender identification, whose mother was depressed and have difficulty separating from her son. (Zucker 1995, p.91)
Bieber describes what is needed for a boy to develop a healthy sense of his own masculinity:The names in the news are of high voltage female stars. But don't ignore the deafening silence of the men who knew all along.
Harvey Weinstein, right, at a film festival in 2013. (Photo11: Laurent Cipriani, AP)
When you read the stories, the voltage of the actresses' names illuminates the screen. Gwyneth Paltrow. Angelina Jolie. Mira Sorvino. All share more in common than having won Academy Awards: They have all recently spoken about being sexually accosted by Hollywood career-maker Harvey Weinstein.
Hopefully the stories being told by these women and many others are an important start towards progress. But as eye-catching as these women's names are, the broader issue is about men — men who both commit and enable the ecosystems of horror inhabited by creatures like Weinstein.
More: Dems are giving away Weinstein cash. GOP should do same with Mercer money.
More: Readers sound off: Sexual harassment is not just a Hollywood problem
They are the menacing, sad men lounging around hotel rooms in bathrobes, waiting for obeisant staff to push young actresses through their doors as a zoo employee tosses meat into a lion's cage. They collect unearned conquests as currency; perhaps their whole motivation towards wealth would be to one day wield enough power to churn through scared young actresses afraid of losing their big break.
As youths, maybe they took inspiration in fictional film producer Jack Woltz from The Godfather movie, who brags about his conquests with innocent young women all over the world. But in the far less cinematic real world, they use their influence to abuse women, casting them off with broken dreams and emotional scars, knowing there are always more just pulling into town.
Then there are the men who enable such behavior, knowing what's happening and still saying nothing. They could be male employees of Weinstein's company afraid to blow the whistle for fear of losing their jobs, or notable actors who knew of Weinstein's actions but remained silent.
Dozens of women presumably could have helped by exposing Weinstein decades ago; but as long as the juicy roles and giant checks kept coming, many men likely felt it was necessary to protect Hollywood's most notorious predator. Of course, it is a victim's decision to tell her (or his) own story; but a conspiracy of silence only enables monsters to keep offending. Naturally, a flood of male actors will now come forward and condemn Weinstein; but they were all absent when they were needed the most.
More: Jolie, Paltrow and Harvey Weinstein: Shock, regrets and nothing changes
POLICING THE USA:A look at race, justice, media
There are the men who try to purchase good will by writing checks to progressive women's causes; they're always ready with a hefty check for Planned Parenthood, or willing to accuse the bumpkins in flyover country of waging a "war on women." They're simply a wealthier version of the college guy who tells girls in bars that he volunteers for the Sierra Club during the summers, hoping to score a deeply emotional one-night relationship. Only turning the rich guy down can come with career-ending consequences.
The Weinstein story is also about the men in law enforcement who knew of Weinstein's assaults and sat idly by. Men like Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., who held in his hands a recording of Weinstein admitting to past sexual assaults, and yet chose to do nothing. The crime Weinstein could have been charged with — misdemeanor third-degree sexual abuse — only carried a maximum of three months in jail, and thus probably didn't seem worth the trouble. But it likely would have shone a light on Weinstein's alleged crimes well before today.
No one seriously believes that Weinstein is the only powerful man in America who uses his influence to harass and even assault women. In the words of a man who was elected president of the United States less than a year ago, "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."
That's why the consequences of what powerful men do to women (and men) reverberate throughout society. Gargoyles like Weinstein are why women have to have their heads on swivels, not always sure of the situation they may be in. It's why they can't be sure if a one-on-one meeting with a male colleague is just for business, or whether a first date is with a nice guy or someone who might try to attack them later that night.
Men like Weinstein and his enablers harm women, but their actions also sully other men and complicate the relationships they have with women. We all need to listen to the stories women are telling now; but we should also pay equal attention to the deafening silence from men all along.
Christian Schneider is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter @Schneider_CM
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2ykaUYjImage copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Protesters have gathered outside the National Assembly in Seoul demanding Ms Park be impeached
South Korean lawmakers have begun voting on an impeachment motion that could see embattled President Park Geun-hye dismissed from office.
Thousands of angry protesters demanding her removal are outside the National Assembly's main gate.
Ms Park is embroiled in a political scandal that has sparked many protests.
At the heart of this scandal is the relationship between Ms Park and a confidante, Choi Soon-sil, accused of using connections to gain influence.
Prosecutors say Ms Park had a "considerable" role in the alleged corruption, which she has denied.
She has also resisted calls to step down, insisting that she would leave the decision up to parliament.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Ms Park has resisted calls to step down but said she would leave the decision up to parliament
South Korea's parliament introduced the impeachment motion on Thursday, which will go through if at least two thirds of the assembly vote in favour of it - something which observers say is likely.
The assembly is dominated by opposition parties and independents who want her dismissed - but they need at least 28 more votes from Ms Park's Saenuri party for the impeachment.
Reports say there may be enough Saenuri dissenters who would vote for it. Ms Park said this week that she would accept the vote's outcome.
If parliament votes for impeachment, Ms Park would not be immediately removed. She would only be suspended from office, with the prime minister taking over her duties.
The decision would still need final approval from the nine-judge constitutional court, which would have six months to deliberate.
If it upheld the decision, only then would Ms Park be dismissed. She would become the first sitting South Korean president to be deposed in the country's democratic era.
Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Ms Choi is accused of influence-peddling
At the heart of the scandal is Ms Park's links to Ms Choi, who has already been charged with coercion and abuse of power.
Ms Choi is accused of using her links with Ms Park to pressure some of the country's biggest corporations into donating to two foundations controlled by Ms Choi, who allegedly siphoned off funds for her personal use.
On Tuesday the corporations' leaders were grilled by MPs in a rare parliamentary enquiry on whether they made the donations in exchange for political favours.
Ms Park has also come under fire for allowing Ms Choi inappropriate access to government decisions, something which she has repeatedly apologised for.
The scandal has ignited public fury in South Korea, where tens of thousands of people have staged demonstrations in Seoul in recent weeks calling for Ms Park to step down.Originally published Sunday, September 8, 2013 at 3:58 PM
Proposals to build suburban-style retail projects in three dense Seattle neighborhoods have triggered an interesting debate about minimum density.
WASHINGTON’S 23-year-old Growth Management Act has effectively saved the green of the Evergreen State by funneling growth into increasingly taller, thicker Seattle and other urban sites.
Until now, developers haven’t needed more incentive to go further up. If anything, the Seattle City Council has been the hammer in a game of developer whack-a-mole, setting maximum-density caps to push building heights down.
But unusual spats in three Seattle neighborhoods suggest the council now has a duty to set a floor as well. Seattle City Councilmember Richard Conlin has introduced an emergency ordinance, to be heard by the council on Monday, to set minimum-density requirements on projects. It is an intriguing idea, but one that merits further discussion.
Conlin’s ordinance is in response to three proposals by a Michigan developer to build low-rise retail projects, apparently intended for chain-pharmacy stores in Wallingford, Uptown and West Seattle. The three are bland, car-centric, cookie-cutter designs that can be found in any suburban-strip mall in America, but shouldn’t be found in a dense Seattle neighborhood.
The Wallingford site, at the corner of North 45th Street and Meridian Avenue North, is zoned for 40 feet, but the project design calls for a one-and-a-half story structure with a generous parking lot. That drew a packed house of hostile neighborhood residents to a recent city-design review meeting.
The city has an clear interest in channeling growth into urban centers, like Wallingford, Conlin says. Density creates more vibrant, walkable neighborhoods while reducing pressure to up-zone residential areas.
“We’ve established a pretty good cultural preference in Seattle, but companies coming from the outside may not be thinking about that cultural preference,” said Conlin.
Conlin’s ordinance would set immediate rules on minimum requirements while opening a longer, broader rule-making process. It’s a good conversation for Seattle to have.
Ironically, the three projects which inspired this conversation would likely be vested under existing zoning rules and therefore exempt. But the neighborhoods seemed prime for a good, righteous fight.(Photo: PBS NewsHour / Flickr)Mitt Romney had hardly conceded before Republicans started fighting over where to head next. Some Republicans — and many Democrats — now claim that the writing is on the wall: demography is destiny, which means the GOP is going the way of the Whigs and the Dodo. Across the country, they see an aging white majority shrinking as the U.S. heads for the future as a majority-minority country and the Grand Old Party becomes the Gray Old Party. Others say: not so fast.
In the month since 51% of the electorate chose to keep Barack Obama in the White House, I’ve spent my time listening to GOP pundits, operators, and voters. While the Party busily analyzes the results, its leaders and factions are already out front, pushing their own long-held opinions and calling for calm in the face of onrushing problems.
Do any of their proposals exhibit a willingness to make the kind of changes the GOP will need to attract members of the growing groups that the GOP has spent years antagonizing like Hispanics, Asian Americans, unmarried women, secular whites, and others? In a word: no.
Instead, from my informal survey, it looks to this observer (and former Republican) as if the party is betting all its money on cosmetic change. Think of it as the Botox Solution. It wants to tweak its talking points slightly and put more minority and female Republicans on stage as spokespeople. Many in the GOP seem to believe that this will do the trick in 2014 and beyond. Are they deluded?
You’ve heard the expression “putting lipstick on a pig,” haven’t you?
The Blame Game and the Short-Term Outlook
Although most Republicans see hints of future demographic challenges in the exit polls, many prefer to focus on other factors to explain Romney’s loss out of a desire not to “blow up the party if there are less radical solutions.” (Hence, the delusional quality of so many of their post-mortems and the lack of interest in meaningful change.)
Do you support Truthout’s reporting and analysis? Click here to help us continue doing this work in 2013!
First, they cite the Romney factor: a weak candidate, too moderate — or too conservative — who failed to fight the Obama campaign’s early efforts to paint him as an out-of-touch plutocrat. In other words, his history (Bain Capital and Romneycare) depth-charged him before demographics could even kick in. He was, unfortunately, the perfect quarter-billionaire candidate for a Democratic narrative that the GOP is only out for the rich and doesn’t “care about people like me.” (He predictably lost that exit poll question by a margin of 81% to 18%). Running a “vulture capitalist” (and a Mormon) drove a number of Republican voters to stay home or even — gasp! — vote for Obama. It’s a mistake that won’t be repeated in 2016.
Second, they point to the Obama factor. In both 2008 and 2012, he attracted unprecedented levels of minority and young voters, a phenomenon that might not be repeated in 2016. Some Republican operatives are also convinced that his campaign simply had a much better “ground game” and grasp of how to employ technology to turn out voters. (Half of self-identifying Republican voters think, as they did in 2008, that Obama simply stole the election through registration fraud involving African Americans.)
Third, they emphasize the powers of incumbency. Romney only became the presumptive front-runner because the GOP’s A-list — mostly too young in any case — feared the huge advantage an incumbent president enjoys and stayed home. 2016, they swear, will be different. Nor do they seem to fear a reprise of the 2008 and 2012 primary circuses because the A-listers in 2016, they insist, will all have well-established conservative bona fides and won’t have to bend over backwards to cultivate the conservative base.
Trying to appeal to the Right while facing various nutcase candidates, Romney shot himself in both feet, labeling himself a “severe conservative” and staking an extreme anti-immigration position. George W. Bush, on the other hand, could run as a “compassionate conservative” in 2000 because his street cred on the Right was unchallengeable. Indeed, Paul Ryan is already talking up “compassion,” while Ted Cruz, the new (extreme) senator from Texas, ishawking “opportunity conservatism.”
Fourth, there is the perceived success of Republicans other than Romney, particularly in what white Republicans call the “Heartland.” GOP operatives are still angry at Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock for losing two gimme Senate seats to the Dems by “saying stupid things” (in the words of Bobby Jindal, Louisiana governor and frequent visitor to Iowa), and they wonder how they lost in Montana and North Dakota.
Still, they kept their majority in the House of Representatives, losing only a handful of seats. (That the GOP lost the majority of total votes cast gets less attention.) The Party also added a 30th governor to its roster, and held onto its control of the majority of top offices and legislative chambers in the states. Come 2014, GOP operatives expect the Party to do quite nicely, as the opposition party often does in midterm elections, especially if turnout demographics look like 2006 and 2010. Another lesson many movement conservatives have learned is that the more they pound away on their issues, the more they shift American politics rightward even when they lose.
All of this suggests to anxious Republicans that they are not crazy for seeing no immediate need to make big changes to appeal to demographic groups outside the Party’s aging white base. But the short term is likely to be short indeed. Think of them, then, as the POD or the Party of Denial.
Meanwhile, on the Bridge of the Titanic
Avoid it as they may, the long-term picture couldn’t look grimmer for the Party. Demographics may well be destiny. Even a cursory look at the numbers exposes the looming threat to the Party’s future prospects.
Whites: About three-quarters of the electorate (and 88% of Romney’s voters) this year were white, but their numbers are steadily sinking — by 2% since 2008. Yes, many whites may have stayed home this year, turned off by Mr. Car Elevator, but whites are projected to become a demographic minority by2050 — or possibly even before 2040 — and minority births are now outpacingwhite births. White Christians: The bulk of Romney’s supporters (79%) were white Christians (40% of whom were evangelicals), but this is an aging and shrinkinggroup. Three-quarters of senior voters but only a quarter of millennial voters are white Christians, and the generations in between are much less likely to consider themselves “strong” members of their religion than seniors. (Non-white Christians, Jews, observers of other faiths, and the growing number of the religiously-unaffiliated all overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.) Hispanics: According to the Washington Post exit polls, Obama received 71% of the Hispanic vote in 2012 (67% in 2008). Already 10% of this year’s voters (9% in 2008), the Hispanic population is exploding, accounting for halfof U.S. population growth. Asian Americans: The nation’s fastest growing demographic group — now 3% of this year’s voters (2% in 2008) — gave Obama 73% of its vote in 2012 (62% in 2008). Unmarried Women: The percentage of unmarried women has been growing slowly since the 1970s, up to 53% of women as of last year. Even among subgroups favoring Obama, there was a marriage gap in which unmarried women (23% of this year’s voters) favored Obama by huge margins. Despite winning 53% of (mostly white) married women, 31% of this year’s voters (down from 33% in 2008), Romney lost women overall by 11 points. The Young: The millennial generation (born between 1978 and 2000) has been voting overwhelmingly for Democrats (66% for Obama in 2008, 60% this year). They are projected to be 40% of the eligible voting pool by 2020. Because they are relatively diverse and secular, the GOP cannot assume that enough will emulate previous generations and swing to the right as they age.
Such polling figures should frighten GOP leaders. There’s no reason to believe that what we saw on November 6th was anything but the tip of the iceberg.
The factions in the party that are not socially conservative see these looming threats as an opportunity to get the GOP to drop the social stuff. But movement conservatives aren’t going to cede ideological ground, not when they (correctly) think it’s a necessity if they are to attract their base voters. “This country doesn’t need two liberal or Democratic parties,” is the way Bobby Jindal puts it, typically enough.
Like right-wing pundit Fred Barnes, many movement conservatives and Tea Party leaders will continue to insist that whites are going to remain “the nation’s dominant voting bloc… for many elections to come.” Hedging their bets, they have decided to become more “inclusive” or at least just inclusive enough in these days of micro-targeting and razor-thin election margins. After all, Romney would have won New Mexico, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado if he had captured even slightly higher shares of the Hispanic vote and he could have won in the Electoral College if fewer than 200,000 voters in key states had switched their votes.
To get more inclusive, however, these leaders offer an entirely cosmetic approach: emphasize the Party’s middle-class message, increase outreach or “partnership” with Hispanics and Asian Americans, back off the anti-immigration message a tad, say fewer stupid things à la Akin and Mourdock, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.
A Nonsense Strategy
When it comes to why this won’t work down the line, it’s hard to know where to start. Take that middle-class message. Many Republicans think that it should offer “crossover appeal” on its own, so long as it’s said loudly enough.
But what exactly is it? After all, it’s never about jobs going abroad, retirement worries (except insofar as the GOP wants to increase insecurity by privatizing Social Security), underwater mortgages, missing childcare for working families, exploding higher education costs, or what global warming is doing to the Midwestern breadbasket and coastal agriculture (much less the long-term capability of the planet to sustain life as we know it). Instead, it remains about “choice,” lowering taxes (again), “entitlement reform,” and getting the government out of the way of economic growth.
As if what the middle class really wants or needs is “choice” in education (Jindal’s plan to divert tax funds to private and parochial schools through vouchers was just ruled unconstitutional); “choice,” not affordability, in health care (the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in America); and ever more environmental pollution, as well as further challenges to getting workman’s comp if you get injured on the job.
Studies have repeatedly shown that most Americans are “operationally” liberalon the substance of most policy issues. In other words, Republicans will support “small government,” until you ask about cutting spending on anything other than anti-poverty programs. In fact, less than a third of self-identifying Republicans surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos this year “somewhat” or “strongly” disagreed with the proposition that the wealthiest Americans should pay higher tax rates.
As a counter to the charge that the GOP is the party of the rich, Jindal offeredthis on Fox News: “We… need to make it very clear… that we’re not the party of Big: big businesses, big banks, big Wall Street, big bailouts.”
Um… who other than Republican true believers will buy that?
The Jerk Factor
As for those demographic groups the GOP needs to start winning over in the medium- and long-term, putative 2016 A-lister Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to see a middle class “message of prosperity and freedom for all” communicated loudly to immigrants and the young. But as one astute Republican insider said to me, “Hispanics won’t hear our message so long as they think our immigration platform says, ‘We hate Mexicans.’”
Bobby Jindal was right to say, “If we want people to like us, we have to like them first.” But the Party hasn’t truly begun to grasp what might be called the liking gap between the GOP and the groups it needs to cultivate. It’s time for Republicans to take a long, hard look in the mirror. It’s not just recent anti-immigration fervor that repels Hispanics and others from the party. The GOP needs to internalize the fact that the dead bird hanging from its neck is its entire modern history.
It’s true that the Democrats were once the segregationists and Abraham Lincoln and the conservationist, trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt were Republicans, as Republicans are fond of pointing out. But that’s ancient history.
The Party’s modern history began when business leaders got politicized in response to the New Deal and then the GOP began courting the Dixiecrats after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 (despiteknowing that he had “just delivered the South to the Republican Party”). The white South started voting for GOP presidential candidates in the Nixon years and would soon become solidly Republican. At 70% of the electorate (nearly 90% in Mississippi), it remains so today.
White-flight suburbs around the country followed suit. Add in the fervent cultivation of evangelical Protestant Christians — anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-evolution, anti-science — and the various modern incarnations of nativist Know Nothings. Don’t forget the ejection of moderates from the Party, and you have the essential history of the modern GOP in two paragraphs.
So the GOP can say that it wants to and plans to like Hispanics, Asian Americans, unmarried women, and secular youth, but to be believable, merely easing off on its anti-immigration message or going quiet on abortion won’t do the trick. And if it wants to prove that it cares, it will have to put some real money where its mouth is.
What the Party Should Do — and Won’t
Here’s an idea: how about some “extraordinary financial gifts” like the ones Mitt Romney denounced just days after his loss!
To really go after the groups it needs, the GOP would have to do the inconceivable: drop the “entitlement reform” racket, open the wallet, and reach below a restrictive definition of the middle class. It might, for instance, mean adding more money to Food Stamps, rather than poking fun at the “food stamp president,” because a full quarter of Hispanics and 35% of Hispanic children are poor.
According to the Census, the median income for Hispanics in 2009 was $38,039 versus $51,861 for whites. The difference is far starker when you compare median net worth: Thanks to the economic crisis, Hispanic households lost 66% of their median net worth, falling to $6,325 in 2009, compared to $113,149 for white households (a 16% loss).
It would undoubtedly mean supporting equal pay for equal work, which the GOP has consistently opposed. It would mean working to make healthcare more affordable for everyone. That’s how you prove you care in politics — and it would also be good for the nation.
Similarly, if the Republicans want to be taken seriously as “defenders” of the middle class, they would need to do something to defend it from its predators. No, not the lower class but the upper class, the predatory lenders and speculators, the fraudsters, the manipulators of the financial system, the folks who got bailed out while everyone else shouldered the risk.
It hardly needs to be said that this isn’t likely to happen in any of our lifetimes.
So far the only Republican suggestion I’ve heard that seems more than (barely) cosmetic is for the Party to drop its aversion to gay marriage. That would, at least, be a beneficial, if cynically motivated, move to look less hateful.
Hesitation in the Face of Change
It is, of course, theoretically possible that Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) could attract enough Hispanic and other voters in 2016 to win the presidency. Provided that the primaries don’t turn into another bizarro battle. Provided that the tone set by Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, or fringe candidates of their ilk doesn’t sink the A-listers. Provided that not too many “stupid” things are said — on abortion, immigration, evolution, or global warming. (Rubio has already gotten to work on that one by punting on a question about the Earth’s age to keep the creationists happy.)
But come 2020, 2024, or 2028, whatever’s left of the GOP is going to be kicking itself for not having built a foundation of anything other than words that no one outside its rank-and-file actually believed. Texas, after all, could go purple by 2020 or 2024.
Of all the signals emanating from the GOP since Election Day, perhaps the most significant came last week when the socially and fiscally conservative Tea Party kingmaker Jim DeMint voted with his feet. The man who would rather have “30 Republicans in the Senate who believe in principles of freedom than 60 who don’t believe in anything” is leaving that body for the Heritage Foundation — a hint about the future of what is arguably the most important GOP organization in the country.
It looks like the GOP is at the wheel of the Titanic, sailing toward that iceberg, while the band plays “Nearer My God to Thee” for all it’s worth.
Copyright 2012 Jeremiah GoulkaLife really is a game. In August of 2015, I hit a low point – convinced that the change in climate, lifestyle, and culture was going to make a difference couldn’t be further from the truth. When I began to realize that the circumstances of my life didn’t dictate my happiness, that’s when my life began to change.
One year down the line and things are different – I’m more comfortable in my own skin and only growing in confidence, something which is commonly misinterpreted as arrogance, but that’s for another time. This post is about doing what is best for you and understanding that life is a game, and you are the player, the team and the referee – in fact, you make the rules.
Over the past few weeks, the UYP Team has been doing some experimenting. We have been analyzing habits and trying to figure out ways to expand on good habits and rid ourselves of old habits and we might have hit the jackpot. We have been trying to streamline the difficult task of self-improvement and turn that monumental task into one easy to use game.
So what have we learned?
We have all heard the saying that you should concentrate on one thing at a time and don’t spread yourself too thin i.e. saying yes to too many things is burning the candle at both ends and nothing of quality really gets done. This is definitely true. Type A personalities, the people who want to get things done are often caught in this trap of doing many things, but none very well and although they are working hard, they’re not really getting anywhere. Soon, when the inspiration begins to die down and the motivation lacks, they bring into existence the idea that the world is against them and this was never meant to be. Sound familiar? It certainly does to me. UYP believes in making your life as simple as possible because behind simplicity is beauty. Think of Apple iPhones and how simplistic they appear but how beautiful they look. Life is no different and the less moving parts we can have, the less likely we are to crash and burn.
Where does all this take us? It takes us to a simple formula, one that we will soon write an e-book on and one that can be applied to any area of your life. Firstly, you need to do some introspective thinking and see where it is you want to go and what you want to do. Nothing will ever be in vain and that must be kept in perspective because the person you become while chasing the dream of being the best version of yourself is the person you ought to be.
After finding your destination, you begin to figure out the habits that the great people in that field have. Do they get up early? What do they eat? Do they meditate? Do they workout? How do they workout? Etc. and from that list that you build, you must then figure out what are the most important habits that if implemented today would have the biggest impact in your life one year from now. Please be aware that the aim of this experiment is to help you become the person you ought to become. When people look at someone who eats healthily or works out a lot or gets up early, they often idolize that person and think about the discipline required to reach such levels of excellence and yes, discipline is required but it isn’t sustainable – what we hope this game will help you do is learn to live the way you want to live and then just be that way. When someone asks how you do it or how you’re so disciplined, your answer will simply be “this is the way I live, there is no discipline”.
Setting the Game Up
Let’s assume that after some hours of deliberation, you’ve come up with a list of 3-5 habits that you’d like to change or perhaps just do more of, or even something you want to stop. To begin, I recommend three habits, simply because it’s more sustainable and a little easier workload. Write those habits down.
• Wake before 7 am.
• Write a morning Journal when I get up.
• Meditate for 10 minutes per day.
These 3 habits are from my own list and some of the things that I’ve been working on. Once you have you list, you give each a points equivalent on a 1-5 scale. Take into consideration the following.
• How reluctant you are to do it.
• How difficult you find it.
• How good it is for you if you do it.
Based on this, you should be able to rank each habit and hopefully, they’re all good habits that fall between 3-5 on the points scale.
Once you’ve decided how many points each will get, you need to set a goal for the end of each week for each habit. By looking into it ourselves, we’ve noticed that setting the game up so failure isn’t an option is the best way to build confidence and momentum. What does this mean? People tend to overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year (see Time Perspectives) and thus, set themselves huge lists of things to do in the coming day or week, only to become paralyzed by the sheer volume of things that need to get done. This is how your week might look if you were to set the game up so failure isn’t an option.
Create a table with the days of the week on the top line and the habit you want to create or break along the left-hand side.
• Wake before 7 am – 4 points
• Morning Journal – 3 points
• Meditate 10 mins – 5 points
Then, on the right of the page, you set your goal. Setting the game up so you can’t fail means making it easy on yourself. There’s a total of 84 points this week, so your goal should look like this.
• Wake before 7 am – 12 points Goal
• Morning Journal – 9 points Goal
• Meditate 10 mins – 20 points Goal
What this does is still gives you freedom and allows you to go about your daily routine without really thinking about these things. Soon, you’ll begin to notice trends such as “I don’t meditate on weekends” or “I haven’t got up early any weekend yet”. This awareness is a catalyst for change. As you see, the goal is to do these things three times per week and meditate 4 times per week. You will then have an overall points goal of 41 and an individual goal for each habit. After 2 weeks, if you’ve met your goals both weeks, you can move onto the next level and allow yourself to aim for an extra day of each activity. In the space of about 3-4 weeks, you’ll begin to see yourself changing and you’ll begin to see these habits emerge as “how you live” and there’s beauty in that.
Try it for yourself and see how it goes. Don’t make the mistake that I made of setting yourself 10 habits you want to change because what ends up happening is that you become paralyzed and feel like you’re fighting a losing battle and that isn’t how life is meant to be lived.
Enjoy my friends,
Thank you,
UYP TeamZimbabwe will from New Year's Day ban foreigners from owning a majority stake in a host of businesses from bakeries to beauty salons, a Cabinet minister said Tuesday.
Foreigners will only be allowed to own minority stakes in the affected businesses if they have local partners, and will be given between four and five years to comply with the new law. "We are saying from January 1 2014, we will not be issuing foreigners licences in areas reserved for locals," Indigenisation Minister Francis Nhema, told AFP.
"Foreigners who are already operating in those areas reserved for locals should seek indigenous partners to buy shares," said Nhema.
"Likewise locals are free to seek foreign partners as long as the local retains their majority shareholding."
The ban will also include estate agencies, grain mills, retail outlets, milk processing plants, transport and valet services.
Nhema said foreign-owned businesses should hand in plans on how they intend to comply. "In some areas, they will be given four years in some areas, five.
It all depends on the area and individual circumstances," he said.
"Wherever there are problems we can always discuss and see how we can help each other. It's all about creating employment and empowering indigenous Zimbabweans. There is no victimisation," said Nhema.
Zimbabwe brought in indigenisation legislation in 2010 that compelled foreign firms including mine owners to cede majority shareholding to local investors. A number of foreign mines have complied with the law, which |
and sections of cities that were lost to car-oriented changes. It also means new changes — such as public bike programs, municipal broadband, and market-oriented parking — that were not around a century ago.
Part of this movement is tearing down or substantially modifying what I call "apple corer" highways, those that tear directly into old city centers and were mostly built in the first few decades after World War II. Portland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee have torn down some. Other cities like Syracuse are considering it. And as Seoul shows, it's not just an American phenomenon.
There are those, such as my friend and old colleague Earl Swift, who say urban highways are here to stay. They carry too many cars to be removed, says Swift, and hey, people love their cars! But these tear-downs are part of a package of changes to make cities more livable and people-centered. These new changes can be seen as a course-correction to what cities did to themselves in the 20th century to accommodate cars.
It's also helpful to realize that these city-stomping highways were never on solid policy ground. Swift says inner-city highways trace back conceptually to the seminal 1939 federal report, Toll Roads and Free Roads. My favorite illustration from that report shows a multi-level set of roads, including a sunken highway, plowing through Parisian-looking blocks of an old-style urban city. The series of surface and sunk lanes are probably a thousand feet wide. But only a few cars roll on them, (hey, traffic's no problem!) and there is not a parking lot in site. Walking across this moat is inconceivable.
Courtesy of Toll Roads and Free Roads.
All of these features point to conceptual flaws at the heart of the original interstate program. I live within a few blocks of one of these sunken highways — the Prospect Expressway in Brooklyn that master builder Robert Moses bore right through a neighborhood of row-houses — and it's a hellish environment.
A few keen observers realized this way back in the 1950s. Soon after Congress approved the Interstate Highway Act, people began opposing the part of it that prescribed highways through cities. Swift describes this well in his excellent book, The Big Roads. The always astute Lewis Mumford, author of the prophetic 1958 article "The Highway and the City", called the inner city highways something that would create "a tomb of concrete roads and ramps covering the dead corpse of the city." San Francisco halted the Embarcadero and several other highways in 1959.
Perhaps most significantly, President Dwight D. Eisenhower tried to stop the apple-corer highways once he realized they were in the plan that flew under his name. Eisenhower's Commerce Secretary, Frederick H. Mueller, suspended work on the city highways while Eisenhower's public works coordinator, General John S. Bragdon, attempted to redirect highways around or beside cities. This effort was for naught, but it remains telling.
History aside, there are several reasons why it's wrong to believe that no alternatives exist to urban highways. First of all, traffic is not some sort of fixed volume. People drive cars, and if a highway isn't there, they may take a bus or bicycle to work. They may telecommute, or they may sell their suburban home and move to the city. There is no set number of driver, for which you build roads.
American cities are in the midst of a cultural shift away from the traditional love of cars.
Secondly, big apple-corer highways decrease mobility as much as or more than they increase it. The limited access highway usually cuts across a grid-style street layout, sealing off surface avenues like a blowtorch cauterizing veins. Tearing down a big-city highway may actually improve traffic because it gives designers a chance to break open surface streets and restore overall circulation.
Finally, American cities are in the midst of a cultural shift away from the traditional love of cars. As detailed in a recent report by U.S. PIRG, Americans are driving fewer and fewer miles per capita every year. Even more significantly, getting a license is less of a rite of passage for young people. Instead, many are romanticizing the city and its urban ferment. When was the last time you saw a television show that portrayed the suburbs non-sarcastically?
All this means there is no fixed limit on the number of highways we can tear down or substantially modify. It depends more on political will and specific bureaucratic factors. Almost every major city has an apple-corer highway, sometimes several, that can be torn down, decked over or boulevardized.
Seoul shows how the process is both challenging and possible. When I was there in 2012, Kim Gyeng Chul, president of the Korea Transport Institute and one of the architects of the reforms, showed me around. He said the biggest opponents to tearing down the old freeway were the heads of companies headquartered in the high-rise buildings, who were driven straight to their offices in chauffeured cars. He also described how regular folks remembered when the highway was a symbol of modernity and progress. Through years of what sounded like Portland-style public meetings, opposition was won over or worn down, and the highway was torn down and the new park built. All this in just a few years. The mayor of the city at that time, Lee Myung-bak, went on to become president of South Korea in 2008 based in part on the success of his transformation of Seoul.
This is not to say that the only good highway is a dead one. But the ones that plow through neighborhoods and seal off waterfronts are truly destructive. And as Americans rush to embrace city living, I'm enough of a contrarian to remember the charms of the suburbs, which are increasingly a good deal (at least as far as home prices). But should we tear down the inner-city freeways? Yes. Can we? Yes again. What is needed is a game plan for doing it, and a coherent vision of the city that will emerge in their absence.
This article is part of 'The Future of Transportation,' a CityLab series made possible with support from The Rockefeller Foundation.The Devils began formal contract talks with potential restricted free-agent David Clarkson yesterday, according to Bergen Record reporter Tom Gulitti.
Clarkson is being represented by his agent, Pat Morris, in the talks.
With the hiring of John MacLean last week, Devils’ general manager Lou Lamoriello has been able to begin trying to sign free agents. Lamoriello would like to make an offer to all the team’s restricted free agents, but stressed the priority in re-signing Clarkson.
“[Clarkson is] a Group 2 free agent that we have to re-sign,” Lamoriello said to Gulitti.
Clarkson was excited to here that his signing is a priority.
“That’s good to hear,” Clarkson said. “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Lamoriello. All I can do it wait, but I’ve worn that Devils’ jersey for three and a half years. That’s the jersey I’ll always want to wear. I love playing there. The fans have been good to me. He’s been good to me. I really enjoy myself there.”
Usually, general managers and agents get together during the NHL draft, which begins this Friday (round one) and continues on Saturday (rounds two through seven).
Clarkson also expressed excitement for possibly playing under MacLean this season.
“I was happy to see John MacLean get picked as the coach,” Clarkson said. “That’s a positive thing I think for the organization. When he was (an assistant), he would pull me aside and help me and he was very understanding of the players. He’d go out and tell you what you could do better. But I just think he’s going to be a very good head coach and I thought it was a real positive when I heard the news. Especially having Larry Robinson back (as an assistant coach) was just amazing because he’s such a nice guy.”
If the Devils cannot re-sign Clarkson by noon on July 1, he then becomes a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. He would have until 5 p.m. on July 5 to file for arbitration. Clarkson’s restricted status allows the Devils would have the ability to match any offer from another team.
A few weeks ago, I put up a post debating what the worth of Clarkson would be to the organization. With the cap increasing to $59.4 million, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Clarkson get a raise and a two or three year deal. I think Clarkson has some solid potential, but the ankle injuries derailed him last season. Lamoriello won’t break the bank, but I think we’ll see him get a slight increase from his $875,000 he made last season.
AdvertisementsYou may have heard the word before, but quickly brushed it aside thinking it’s some fancy French thing. Well, technically it is, as sous vide is French for “under vacuum”. And the food prepared with this method tastes like it was ordered from a fancy restaurant, so you really weren’t that far off. However, you do not have to be a seasoned master chef to use a Sous Vide machine – in fact, they’re incredibly easy to use.
There are two main types of sous vide cooking methods – sous vide ovens (also called sous vide cookers) and immersion circulators (we’ll dive into each type in a second). Both methods serve the same function, which is to cook food at a consistent temperature throughout. This is achieved by vacuum sealing your food prior to cooking, and then immersing the packed food in hot water. Sous vide machines allow you to set your preferred temperature prior to cooking, and then letting the sous vide machine do the rest (very similar to crockpots). When you return, a perfectly cooked steak or the most tender salmon will be waiting you. Can’t beat that!
If you’re a complete newbie to sous vide, I’d highly recommend you check out my new book, Learn Sous Vide. It’s written specifically for beginners and will teach you everything you need to know to get cooking fast! Even if the sous vide technique is not new to you, you’ll still need to get a sous vide oven or immersion circulator to get started. Find out what are the best sous vide machines that the market has to offer.
Sous Vide Machines: Comparison Chart
Best Sous Vide Machines
Once the immersion circulators were introduced, they took the food industry by the storm.These compact devices offered an innovative and practical way to cook sous vide. While experts recommend pairing these sous vide machines with quality water containers, you can just as easily prepare restaurant-worthy meals in a pot or an old plastic cooler. To boot, immersion circulators are portable and easily stored. These unique kitchen gadgets can be placed in a drawer when finished, and work just as great as the larger sous vide machines. Because of their flexibility, the following circulators top our list for the best overall sous vide machines.
Top Pick: ChefSteps Joule ChefSteps, a pioneer in the “smart kitchen” arena, recently introduced their first sous vide machine. Meet Joule. ChefSteps perfected the immersion circulator on their first attempt by creating a gorgeous design that is nearly half the size of some other sous vide precision cookers. More importantly, performance is not limited due to the smaller size; in fact, Joule outperformed the majority we reviewed. Joule makes the sous vide cooking process a foolproof one, and is a great choice for novices and experts alike. The combination of design, ease of use, performance, and features makes ChefSteps Joule our most recommended sous vide machine.
Runner Up: Anova WiFi Precision Cooker Anova is one of the best-selling sous vide machines, and it’s to no one’s surprise. Their new Bluetooth and WiFi compatible sous vide immersion circulator can send notifications to your mobile phone, keeping you updated on cooking temperatures and status. One of the most impressive features of this gadget is the ability to set up the Anova cooker before you leave for work, and let it do its magic while you’re away. This way, you’ll be coming home to a perfectly cooked steak, just waiting for you to finish it off with a sear.
Honorable Mention: Sansaire The Sansaire immersion circulator is definitely one of the best-designed sous vide machines on the market. Not only does it look awesome, but its performance is immaculate. Within 0.1 degree Fahrenheit, Sansaire’s 1100W circulator heats water quickly and accurately. We find ourselves using the Sansaire sous vide machine regularly over many others out there since it is so easy to use, doesn’t take up much space, and works wonderfully. Oh yeah, and the price isn’t to shabby, either.
Budget Pick: Gourmia GSV140 Gourmia improved their flagship sous vide immersion circulator by rolling out the GSV140 sous vide machine. Gourmia packed in an unbelievable 1200 watt heater in their cooker but it still remains one of the most budget-friendly sous vide machines available. The improved circulator can also handle much larger water baths, which give you the chance to cook more food at one time. Additionally, the design and interface were also enhanced to make cooking easier. For the cost, you can’t go wrong with the Gourmia GSV-140.
Gourmia GSV130 Gourmia introduced the GSV130 immersion circulator as an alternative to their sous vide oven models. Not only does the Gourmia GSV130 perform just as well as competition, such as Anova, but Gourmia also costs quite a bit less. This is an impressive sous vide immersion circulator for entry level cooking. Simply clip the GSV-130 to a large pot or container, fill it with water, and cook your vacuum sealed food.
Hands-On Test: Comparing Sous Vide Performance
Here we conducted a quick test with each of our most preferred sous vide immersion circulators. In this test, we filled a 12 liter polycarbonate container with 6 liters of water at 75 degrees Fahrenheit and set each circulator to 135 degrees Fahrenheit. This chart below shows how long it took each sous vide machine to reach the set temperature. You will notice that PolyScience CREATIVE heated the water the fastest, even though Gourmia GSV140 has a higher wattage heater.
All-in-One Sous Vide Machine Comparison Chart
Best Sous Vide Cooker
Sous vide ovens are the all-in-one package for cooking sous vide. Essentially, these sous vide machines replace both an immersion circulator and the water container with one unit. With a built-in digital thermometer and timer and a water container, you’ll be getting everything you need for sous vide with one purchase. The only real negative of the all-in-one sous vide machines is their size. In case you don’t want to clutter your kitchen counter or have limited space available, than an immersion circulator would be a better choice for you.
Tribest Sousvant Tribest absolutely perfected the Sousvant, down to the smallest details. They managed to create one of the easiest sous vide machines on the market. Its vertical design saves counter space while also looking sleek and modern. The water container has a larger capacity than it appears, and the powerful circulator ensures precise temperatures. The combination of practical and creative design, matched with precision and ease of use makes the Sousvant our go-to sous vide oven.
Oliso PRO We’re calling this the Tesla of sous vide machines. Oliso took innovation to a new level with this all-in-one smart sous vide and induction cooktop. Not only that you can use this device to cook a meal at a perfect temperature via the sous vide oven, but you can also sear the food on the cooktop once finished. Talk about understanding your target group! While sous vide ovens are typically viewed as too bulky of an appliance to store, the Oliso PRO sous vide machine serves as a multi-purpose kitchen appliance. In turn, this makes it perfect for small spaces that may not warrant a full stove (RVs, tiny houses, etc) and just as suitable for standard kitchens.
Gourmia GSV-900 The Gourmia GSV900 is one of the most affordable sous vide machines out there. Don’t let the price tag fool you, though- this device boasts a powerful performance. The 10 quart water bath and 12 slot oven rack is large enough to cook for multiple people at the same time. You won’t have to open the lid to check your food’s progress and disrupt the temperature- a small window let’s you keep an eye without touching anything. In addition, the LCD control panel is incredibly easy to use. This is the one sous vide oven that I didn’t even have to open the manual to figure it out. Everything is straightforward, and the performance is spot on.
Sous Vide Supreme Demi The Sous Vide Supreme Demi water oven makes our list as an ideal compact sous vide machine. If you’re looking for an all-in-one sous vide machine that doesn’t take up much space, the Demi model fits the bill. Holding up to 8.7 liters of water, this sous vide oven can still cook up to 12 four-ounce portions of food at a time. There’s no question why Amazon users have this as 4.5 stars.
Sous Vide Machine Buying Guide
You’ve already decided you want to try cooking sous vide, or else you wouldn’t be here! We’ve recommended you the best sous vide machines that the market has to offer, but how do you know which one will be the best match for your needs? Let’s dive right in to the details to help make the buying decision easy. You will want to ensure you make the correct decision on the type of sous vide machine and type of water container. Also, you’ll need to find a reliable a vacuum sealer to prepare everything beforehand.
Sous Vide Oven vs Immersion Circulator: Which One to Choose?
The first thing you will want to decide is if you would prefer a sous vide oven or immersion circulator. As we discussed above, sous vide ovens are all-in one devices. There’s no need to invest in additional sous vide equipment, such as containers. The only additional thing you’ll need to get to cook sous vide is a vacuum sealer. Immersion circulators, on the other hand, are small gadgets that attach to the side of a pot or container which heats the water. With an immersion circulator, you will need to have a water bath suitable for cooking and a vacuum sealer, too.
Sous Vide Container or Pot
If you o pt for the compact version and get an immersion circulator, you must also buy a water container. Some people rely on large pots they already own, but it’s not always the best solution. Most i mmersion circulator owners decide on Rubbermaid’s containers as they’re relatively cheap and come in various sizes: from 2 quarts all the way up to 22 quarts. The amount of food you plan on cooking in one batch will determine which size you prefer. If you’re doing a single steak at a time, a large pot in your kitchen may suffice. If you want to make a full course or have friends over for an impressive sous vide dinner, you’ll need to up your game. Check out our suggestions for best containers for sous vide.
Sous Vide Vacuum Sealer or Bags
A vacuum sealer is not a prerequisite for cooking sous vide, but it is better if you use one. If you don’t seal your food in a vacuum pouch, it will simply boil in the water bath. Could you imagine having to eat a boiled steak? Yuck! When you use a vacuum sealer for sous vide, it will ensure all the of the juices and flavors are infused in the meat. Even if you simply seal a steak without any seasoning, it will still be much more flavorful than prepared by usual methods. The reason for this is that it will essentially be cooked in its own juices. If you’re looking to take it a step further, you can marinate the steak within the vacuum sealer for an intense flavor. If you don’t want to invest in a vacuum sealer, simple food-grade ziplock bags can be used with the water displacement method. Check out this amazing guide by ChefSteps for simple sous vide packaging. We do encourage you to read the packaging on the bags before buying, though. It’s important to make sure that you get BPA-free food-grade bags and not just your everyday sandwich bags. Depending on which route you wish to take, we put together reviews for the best vacuum sealer and a guide to sous vide bags.
Searing Equipment
The searing finish is what ties all together an d makes a stunning meal. Without searing, the sous vide meal just wouldn’t be of restaurant-quality like you’d expect it to. Traditional cooking methods give a nice finish or crust to the food since it’s in direct contact with high temperatures. Sous vide cooks at lower temperatures than that, and the food is encased in a bag, so there is no way for it to get that crispy crust t hat people know and love. As a result, you will need to use a cast iron pan to get a good base crust. Even a searing torch could be worth investing into! Check out our ultimate searing guide to master the finishing touches.
Benefits of Sous Vide Cooking
If you thought the only benefit to sous vide cooking is the unprecedented flavor, you’re mistaken. Sure, sous vide cooking relies on precise and consistent temperatures to lock the flavor in, but the biggest advantage of this method is its simplicity. All it takes is setting the temperature correctly and placing the food in the water bath. Each time, you’ll end up with a mouthwatering, gourmet meal. Seriously, it’s very difficult to mess up! Moreover, many cuts of meat that are traditionally tougher in nature become very tender after cooking them sous vide over longer periods of time. You can save money on buying cuts that are not popular with traditional cooking and transform them into delectable, juicy meals.
Consistent Temperatures
Let’s use medium steak as an example. In case you are using a traditional method of cooking, such as pan searing, you cook the steak on high temperatures over a short period of time. As a result, your steak has overcooked edges and a pink center, usually resulting in a gradient of color. On the other hand, with sous vide, I can set the temperature to 135 degrees F and cook the steak to that precise temperature over a period of 1-2 hours. The end result is a steak evenly cooked at an exact set temperature, whether it’s at the center or the exterior of the steak. The only thing left is to drop it on a hot pan for a minute or so to develop a nice crust and you have a fancy-restaurant-quality steak!
Tender Meat
Nobody likes their meat chewy and tough. This is why certain parts of the animal are less popular, leading to their cheap price- like beef rump. But, with sous vide cooking method, you can easily transform a tough cut into a juicy and tender one. How? By cooking them at a consistent temperature for a long period of time. Hassle-free but with extraordinary results! Roasts are ideal for cooking sous vide for 24 to 48 hours. We cooked a pork shoulder (after applying a dry rub) for 24 hours and it was unbelievable – fall-apart juicy pork. Plus, the set-it-and-forget it method ensure that you don’t have to fuss over the meat to get the results you want.
Better Flavor
Since the food is vacuum sealed beforehand, none of the juices can escape and evaporate. This means your steak can be cooked with all of the amazing flavors locked in in the sous vide pouch. Even better, once you are done cooking, the juices are left over in the bag, allowing you to pour it into a pan and create a delicious sauce. Dang… now I’m hungry.
Incredibly Easy!
Cooking sous vide is unbelievably easy. You certainly do not need to be a seasoned cook in order to start your sous vide journey. Someone with zero experience can purchase a sous vide machine and have it up and cooking within minutes by simply pouring water, adding your food, and waiting! Not to mention that there are tons of simple recipes that make the process foolproof.
Busy Parents
Working parents or stay-at-home parents running busy lives can maintain healthy diets and scrumptious meals by cooking sous vide. Work with your children to find a few meals they love, and you can set a schedule to start your sous vide machine at a certain time or even use Anova’s app to start your device before you leave work!
Students
We all remember dorm-room-eating – Hot Pockets and ramen. Let’s eliminate this trend by introducing college students to sous vide machines! Immersion circulators can fit in a backpack and cook pounds of chicken, beef, or vegetables in one sitting.
Meal Planners
Sunday meal planning has honestly never been easier. This is our personal favorite for sous vide cooking. Every Sunday we cook up a weeks worth of food in water baths and toss them in containers for the week. Perfectly cooked chicken and salmon are my go-to.
What Foods Can I Sous Vide?
This is perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of sous vide cooking. Most people immediately think of cooking steak with sous vide – I don’t blame them! However there are so many more options out there that all benefit from precise temperatures to ensure a perfect cook. Any sous vide machine will enable you to cook any of the following plus many more:
If you’re still not sold, we encourage you to check out Claire Lower’s “Will it Sous Vide?” column on Lifehacker. She consistently creates unique and interesting experiments with everyday food. Her sous vide hot pockets are a perfect example of her creativity!
Also, you can find a ton of delicious and easy to make sous vide recipes over at our Recipes section of the blog. You’re welcome!
Important Sous Vide Machine Features
Many new sous vide machines have fun and unique features to help set them apart from the rest. While these are great selling points, it’s important to remember a few of the key features necessary for sous vide machines in order to make the best buying decision. After all, bells and whistles can be tempting, but it’s all about the foundation.
Water Capacity: If you decide to go with a sous vide oven, which includes the water bath, you will want to know how much water the device can hold.
Heater & Circulator: This feature is more important to understand for immersion circulators than sous vide ovens. If you use an immersion circulator, the food capacity ultimately depends on the size of the container you are using. Which is basically limitless. However, if you a water bath that’s too large, the immersion circulator may not be able to heat it entirely.
Temperature Range: Most sous vide machines can reach 200 degrees F or higher.
Temperature Precision: The majority of sous vide machines available claim to keep temperatures within 0.1 degree F.
Safety: The important safety features include low water warning, for example. This will shut off the device when water is too low to prevent burning the unit. Power outage warning is another important feature to include. It will let you know if the power went out which may spoil food.
Hopefully, your buying decision will be easier after reading our ultimate guide on best sous vide machines. We went over the main ingredients necessary for cooking sous vide and identified our top picks for best sous vide machine. If you’re looking for more information about sous vide including how it became such a growing industry, we highly recommend watching this amazing video by PolyScience Culinary about the sous vide revolution:Screen Gems, Sony and Naughty Dog are joining forces to bring one of the most cinematic games in history to the actual cinema. Deadline reports that The Last of Us will be getting a film adaptation, and those behind the game will be instrumental working on the movie.
Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann will write the script, and Naughty Dog Co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra and Game Director Bruce Straley will all contribute creatively to the project. Screen Gems President Clint Culpepper expressed his enthusiasm for the project:
“Screen Gems’ Brian Dukes and Eric Ling brought this game to my attention insisting we go after it, and when I saw the quality of the storytelling, I knew the audience for this project was far greater than just the gaming community and that Neil Druckmann must write the screenplay,” he said. "I am thrilled that SCEA’s Riley Russell was able to get me in front of Neil and Evan Wells to plead my case. Sam and his team at Ghost House round out the perfect team to help realize Neil’s vision.”
On the surface, this seems like good news. The Last of Us was an incredible, moving, powerful game, and it could theoretically make for a hell of a film. But I'd say it worked so well because it was a game, not in spite of that.
The problem is that all the things most praised about the game don't translate to a film adaptation. Combat was realistic and harrowing, which it usually is be definition on film. The environments were gorgeous, but relatively standard in apocalypse heavy cinema. The voice acting was fantastic, but the roles will likely have to be recast. I would estimate that the story itself was the weakest element, though that's really all the film's getting.
The voice actor/film actor problem is particularly tough to get around. In a perfect world, Ashley Johnson (Ellie) and Troy Baker (Joel) would be able to reprise their roles onscreen. But the reality is, for as good as their performances were, it's hard to see a way that would work. Johnson is 31, and could not convincingly play a fourteen year old girl. Baker is probably 10-15 years too young to play Joel and despite leading man looks, couldn't look less like the character.
So what do you do here? Do you just say goodbye to the two actors who helped make your game what it was emotionally and creatively? Do you just hire Gerard Butler and Ellen Page and hope for the best (Page would never do it, incidentally, as she previously ridiculed the game for copying her likeness).
I've always said when Hollywood ran out of superhero movies, they'd turn to video games next. Yes, there have been many, many game-to-movie adaptations to date, but only a few are anywhere approaching "good" and most are mediocre to abysmal. I can't name one I'd classify as "great."
The old problem with video game movies was that the central stories and writing just weren't on par with traditional films. The quality wasn't there. Now the quality is there, and I would argue the best games, like The Last of Us, can create entertainment experiences even better than movies, giving the player investment in the story by controlling the protagonist's actions and fully immersing them in the environment.
That's the problem though. These game work great as games, but stripped of its "game-ness," The Last of Us may turn into just another post-apocalyptic sci-fi zombie movie. The powerful performances that made the game great would be hard to replicate, and things like the rich environments and realistic combat wouldn't necessarily wow people onscreen as they did in the game.
I will say it is fantastic that the Naughty Dog team is directly involved in the creation of the movie, much like Ubisoft is doing with Assassin's Creed. Another problem with video game films is that they're often made by Hollywood insiders trying to warp the original product into something it isn't. Working directly with the developer can ensure that doesn't happen, in theory.
There are risks involved with this too, however. Someone great at writing or directing video games may not see those skills transfer effectively to film. How do you cram 15-20 hours of a great game into 2 hours? Furthermore, I'm wondering how much this will distract the Naughty Dog team who just lost a key team member in Amy Hennig, and the rest of the group now has to pick up the slack on Uncharted 4. A Last of Us film adaptation is going to be no small feat itself, and I wonder how it will affect their other projects.
Obviously I'll watch the film and I look forward to seeing how it will translate. But I maintain that games like The Last of Us have reached a point where they're so good as games, it would likely diminish them to port them over to a non-interactive form of media. This will certainly be a prime test case for that theory.
Follow me on Twitter, subscribe to my Forbes feed, and pick up a copy of my sci-fi novel, The Last Exodus, and its sequel, The Exiled Earthborn.In the wake of the 2012 election, it seemed like there was no possible way for the Republican Party to further alienate the under-30 crowd, 60 percent of which voted for President Obama over Mitt Romney. But that was before the GOP added anti-porn language to its platform, doubled down on its dislike of gay people, turned against trade and immigration, and chose Donald Trump to lead it.
And make no mistake, Trump is uniquely unacceptable to young people—even ones who are otherwise part of the GOP.
"It seems like millennial Republicans support Trump to a lesser degree than the older members of the party," said Nick Allman, a 23-year-old delegate to the Republican National Convention, in an interview with Reason. When asked whether he would vote for Trump in the general election, Allman said he wasn't sure.
Pollster Frank Luntz hashed out the party's millennial problem during a session at the RNC earlier this week. "We have lost [millennials]," he told delegates on Tuesday. "It's not like we are losing. We have lost that generation."
Luntz blamed far-left universities for indoctrinating young people.
"The fact that 58 percent [of millennials] say socialism is the better form of economics, that is the damage of academia," said Luntz, according to The Hill.
Of course, it's not actually true that most millennials support socialism (or even know what it is). A Harvard University poll found just the opposite: 59 percent said they did not support socialism. A 2014 Reason-Rupe poll of millennial attitudes discovered that 64 percent of young people preferred a free economy to a government-managed economy.
So perhaps the problem is not that young people are hostile toward free markets—perhaps the problem is that the Republican Party has embraced a candidate who is hostile to free markets: Donald Trump. It's Trump who hates free market capitalism, not millennials. Luntz told his audience that students are learning about economics from professors whose views align with Bernie Sanders. That's a bad thing, but it's completely hypocritical for the GOP to treat it as such, since Trump himself agrees with Sanders on a host of economic issues. He mentions this at every opportunity in hopes of courting Sanders' supporters. He made it clear once again during his convention speech Thursday night. He vowed to put an end to "job-killing trade dels." In choosing Trump, Republican voters decided that the right person to head their ticket was the one candidate who could run to Hillary Clinton's left on economics.
Young people have correctly balked at this choice. Emily Ekins, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, says that Trump badly underperformed with young voters during the primaries.
"Trump tended to perform on average about 9 points lower among young people compared to seniors," wrote Ekins in an email to Reason. "Cruz did disproportionately better among young people by about 4 points and Rubio did disproportionately better among young people by about 5 points."
If there's a silver-lining for the GOP, it's that the DNC has a similar problem. Young voters within the Democratic Party are also dissatisfied with their candidate. They wanted Bernie Sanders, they got Clinton—and older voters forced her on them.
But there are many young Democrats. There are few young Republicans, and there will be even fewer of them within a Republican Party headed by Trump. The millennials whose votes are up for grabs—those who self-identify as non-liberals—are actually most closely identified with libertarianism, a philosophy for which Trump is the antithesis.
It's no wonder then that Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson is doing much, much better among millennials than Trump. Johnson actually draws more support from millennials than any other age group. Johnson is even competitive with Trump among all voters under the age of 45. He gets 20 percent of them, whereas Trump only gets 24.
The Libertarian Party has done what the Republican Party could not. It chose an experienced, likeable two-term governor who embodies fiscal responsibility and social tolerance. The Republican Party chose Trump. The Libertarians chose someone who doesn't come across as regressive on nearly all fronts. The Republican Party chose Trump.
If there's one exception to Trump's awfulness, it's that he's arguably better on social issues than many in the GOP (I say arguably, since Trump's actual beliefs are something of a mystery). But the party has corrected for that. The 2016 GOP platform isn't as anti-gay as it was last election cycle—it's more anti-gay. And it's going to cost the Republicans, says Allman.
"I'll be honest with you, that's a big problem, that one piece of the platform," said Allman. "It's going to push many people away. Particularly young people."
Trump surrogates know this is a losing battle, of course, which is why they have tried so forcefully to pivot on social issues. Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay millennial Trump supporter (they do exist—it's a big country) and writer for Breitbart made the case that gays should desert the Democrats because they aren't interested in protecting gay people from radical Islam. Yiannopoulos was the headline speaker at "Wake Up," a gay conservative party on Tuesday, the purpose of which was to reinvent the GOP as the party that defends gay people's lives (if not their civil rights).
It would be wrong to say that this pitch is completely ineffective. There are pockets of Trump-supporting young people on campus, where leftism is so powerful and oppressive that non-leftist students often make pro-Trump gestures to troll the tyrants. But it isn't clear that the students writing "Trump 2016" in chalk all over campus are actually going to vote for Trump en masse.
Some will, of course. I spoke with one such person at Wake Up.
"I love Trump as a character, and I'm pulling for him in November," said Hunter Swogger, a University of Michigan student. "I think he has a chance to be a disruptive force for good."
Anti-Trump libertarians might even agree. In moving the GOP further away from the policy positions of the millennial generation, Trump has damaged the Republican Party's chances of competing for their votes anytime in the near future—perhaps making the Libertarian Party the only serious competitor to the Democratic Party in the battle for the hearts and minds of the under-30 crowd.The Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater on Mars for more than three years now, decoding sand dunes, digging up ancient lakes, and now, figuring out how a mountain was built.
In a study published in Geophysical Research Letters this week, researchers announce that they think they know how the three mile-high Mount Sharp in the center of the crater was formed.
Apparently, the mounded mountain was molded by wind. And it's not just Mount Sharp. Astronomers |
and clinical facilitators (guides) needed for these trials – we will update this information as appropriate. How will guides be trained for your trials?
All guides (clinical facilitators) participating in Usona-sponsored studies will complete a combination of in-person and online trainings in order to qualify for the position. Strong preference is given to those who have already had extensive experience in guiding for previous psilocybin research studies. Primary guides in our studies will be doctoral level psychotherapists with experience in the treatment of major depressive disorder. Are you doing a trial in the cancer population?
The cancer population is one that we care about immensely. As we move forward in our work, our aim is to expedite the regulatory process toward FDA approval of psilocybin for depression in a way that opens up access to this medicine for as many people as possible – this includes people who experience depression as a comorbidity to cancer, among many other diseases. Our initial trial in the MDD population will inform how we can best move forward with final stage trials that will get this treatment to people suffering from cancer and depression as soon as possible. Are you recruiting? How can I refer someone to your trial?
We are not actively recruiting at this time. However, please refer anyone interested in learning more about our trials to Usona’s clinical trials website: www.usonaclinicaltrials.org About Our Psilocybin How is it being supplied and by whom?
Pharmaceutical-grade product is being produced by a collaborating contract pharmaceutical manufacturer outside of the US. While many cultures have utilized psychoactive mushrooms in sacred ceremony for millennia, the psilocybin that we will use for research is synthesized so that purity and consistency is closely controlled. Who can access it?
At this time, Usona will provide psilocybin to qualified researchers at no cost. Anyone who makes a request to receive psilocybin for research purposes must submit full protocol and other documentation for review and evaluation. Do you intend to provide this substance publically?
Pending FDA approval, we intend that the psilocybin would be made available as part of a carefully devised and controlled therapeutic protocol, administered by trained therapists. It would not be given to a patient/client for home or independent use.
Newsletter Archive
Usona Institute’s newsletters offer a view into our many dynamic program areas. To learn more, please follow the links to our archived newsletters below:
2017
2018
If you would like to sign up for future editions of our newsletters, please subscribe by following this link.
Back to top of page >US consumers spent less than expected over the festive season
Sales at US retailers saw an unexpected fall in December, casting uncertainty over the recovery of the US economy.
Retail sales fell by 0.3% compared with November, figures from the US Commerce Department said.
Sales of electrical goods and cars saw some of the biggest falls, though core sales - which exclude cars, fuel and building materials - still fell.
Concerns over job security are expected to continue to restrict spending, with unemployment still at 10%.
Many economists expect unemployment to keep rising until the middle of the year.
December's figures end a tough year for US retailers, with total sales for 2009 down 6.2% on the previous year.
But sales were expected to have been stronger, given the string of retailers reporting positive results for the festive season.
Job worries
The weaker-than-expected retail figures will add to concerns over the strength of the recovery in the US economy.
In December, the US unexpectedly cut a further 85,000 jobs after seeing some job creation in November.
Economists are still predicting a recovery in 2010, but warn that it will be slow.
"I don't think that portends a new downturn in the economy, but it does serve as a warning that the recovery is going to take some time to put in place here," commented Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York.Share. In Max we trust. In Max we trust.
When it was announced that six Halo 2 maps would be getting a full-blown Xbox One remake as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, was there any doubt that one of them would be Zanzibar, one of the most famous Halo maps ever?
In the video above, original Halo 2 lead multiplayer designer Max Hoberman (who's also the current-day president of Certain Affinity, the studio that's handling the multiplayer portion of Master Chief Collection) gives us a walking tour of the new Zanzibar, called "Stonetown" in this iteration. See what's changed and how Hoberman feels about the map today. Plus, learn all sorts of behind-the-scenes secrets and then check out the other video below, where you can see Team IGN (Alfredo Diaz, Sean Finnegan, Brian Albert, and me) win a thrilling one-flag CTF match against Team 343.
Exit Theatre Mode
Also be sure to stop by our ever-expanding IGN First hub page for this ongoing month of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the one-stop shop for everything we're doing.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.Oxford University researchers studying Cecil the lion before he was shot illegally were being funded by pro-hunting companies, it emerged yesterday.
The university's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) had been tracking the famous lion's movements by satellite since 2008.
Its founder, Professor David Macdonald, said he was 'horrified' after Cecil was shot dead in Zimbabwe on July 1.
But WildCRU's research is partially funded by the conservation group Panthera and the Dallas Safari Club, which support sustainable trophy hunting.
Scroll down for video
Its founder, Professor David Macdonald, said he was 'horrified' after Cecil (pictured) was shot dead in Zimbabwe on July 1.
The news will embarrass the unit, which has received more than £500,000 in donations from animal lovers following Cecil's death. The money, given by many to express their distaste at the shooting, will be enough to fund WildCRU for another 18 months.
Professor Macdonald said there was no conflict of interest, adding: 'There is no risk of any donor affecting our results – we report our results regardless of whether they state any particular point of view or not. We are not an advocacy organisation.'
He added that it was up to society to decide on hunting laws, but that WildCRU was simply an 'evidence-based organisation'.
Cecil was shot by American dentist Walter Palmer in Hwange National Park, causing international outrage.
Cecil was shot by American dentist Walter Palmer in Hwange National Park, who since gone into hiding
Cecil the Lion (pictured) was well known for running up to tour trucks and was comfortable around humans
Mr Palmer is said to have paid a professional hunter £32,000 to help him track and kill the lion.
Dr Luke Hunter, executive vice president of Panthera, claimed that while 'far too many lions are being shot for sport', hunting can 'benefit lions'.
In a blog this year, he said: 'In Africa, sport hunting is the main revenue earner for huge tracts of wilderness outside national parks. Many such areas are too remote, undeveloped or disease-ridden for the average tourist.
'Hunting survives because hunters are usually more tolerant of hardship, and they pay extraordinary sums to shoot a male lion. The business requires only a handful of rifle-toting visitors to prosper which, in principle, helps protect those areas.
Mr Palmer is said to have paid a professional hunter £32,000 to help him track and kill the lion, sparking global outrage at the killing
'The presence of hunting provides African governments with the economic argument to leave safari blocks as wilderness. As unpalatable as it may be... hunting remains the most convincing model for many wild areas.'
A spokesman for the Dallas Safari Club said it 'absolutely' supported sustainable trophy hunting.
But Chris Macsween, a trustee of the conservation charity LionAid, said: 'LionAid does not believe that there is any such thing as'sustainable trophy hunting' of vulnerable and endangered species.'
Yesterday, an African charity said it wanted Cecil's head to be mounted in a case in Hwange National Park as a memorial.In today’s post we showcase 43 majestic Antarctica pictures for your inspiration. Antarctica is Earth’s southernmost continent and the most magical place on the Earth. November marks the end of spring, the beginning of summer, and the beginning of Antarctica’s cruise season. This cold, southernmost continent is an increasingly popular tourist destination.
Antarctica is fifth largest continent, at 5.4 million square miles (14.2 million square kilometers), coming in between South America and Europe. The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on the whole of Earth. Most parts of the continent the snow rarely melts and is eventually compressed to become the glacial ice that makes up the ice sheet.
The temprature during winter in Antarctica drop as low as minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 68 degrees Celsius) and the temperature stay below freezing even during it’s warmest period.
Antarctica Pictures
Take a break from your day and experience the wonderful place that Antarctica is in the following photographs. We would love to hear from you guys what you think of these Antarctica pictures, the coldest, driest, windiest, and highest place on earth.
Hope you like the collection. We love to collect cool pictures around the world. If you got any photograph(s) and like to share with us, do it in the comments below.Nintendo of America has revealed which particular games you can download this week from the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShop. The big games this week include Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Azure Striker GUNVOLT which are both for Nintendo 3DS. Here’s the games you can download this week.
NintendoeShop on Nintendo3DS Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Join forces with expert investigator Professor Layton and ace attorney Phoenix Wright in this unbelievable crossover adventure. Find out what new twists they bring to the courtroom as they solve puzzles and debunk witnesses’ lies. Cross-examine multiple witnesses at the same time to uncover the mysteries of the magical city of Labyrinthia.Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney will be available in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS at midnight ET on Aug. 29. Click here to watch a trailer for the game. Azure Striker GUNVOLT – From Inti Creates and featuring the talents of Keiji Inafune, the creator of the Mega Man series, Azure Striker GUNVOLT takes the best aspects of Japanese 16-bit classics and updates them with new play mechanics and slick graphics. For a limited time, the game comes with a free digital code to download the 8-bit nostalgia-fueled MIGHTY GUNVOLT as well. Azure Striker GUNVOLT will be available in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS on Aug. 29. Click here to watch a trailer forAzure Striker GUNVOLT. Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter – Pilot one of three Skyfighters across alien worlds to protect Earth. Push your dogfighting skills to their limits in this futuristic 3D aerial shooter, available exclusively in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS. Clickhere to watch a trailer for the game.
Virtual Console on Wii U Mega Man X3 – Every Thursday in August, Nintendo and Capcomare bringing classic Mega Man games to the Virtual Console service in the Nintendo eShop on Wii U. Mega Man X and his partner, Zero, must discover why an antivirus has failed to turn robots from destructive Mavericks into peace-loving Reploids. Run, jump, dash, scale walls, avoid obstacles and fight enemies in eight challenging stages as you hunt for the latest cure.
NintendoeShop on Wii U SteamWorld Dig – After its positive reception on Nintendo 3DS, indie hit SteamWorld Dig is making its way to Wii U for the first time. In this platform mining adventure, take on the role of Rusty as he arrives at an old mining town in great need. Explore an underground world full of secrets, treasure and terrors with interface elements that use the Wii U GamePad controller. Click here to watch a trailer for the game. The Fall – Explore an alien world in this unique blend of action game play and adventure-game puzzles in The Fall, which launched Aug. 26. Take on the role of ARID, the artificial intelligence within a high-tech combat suit, as you struggle to save the suit’s unconscious human occupant. Get ready for a disturbing and engrossing journey as you explore the world of The Fall. Click here to watch a trailer for the game.
NintendoeShop Sales Select Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games from Capcom are now up to 60 percent off in the Nintendo eShop. This offer is valid until 8:59 a.m. PT on Sept. 4. Super Little Acorns 3D Turbo is 50 percent off (reduced from $7.99 to $3.95) from 9 a.m. PT on Sept. 3 through 8:59 a.m. PT on Sept. 24 in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS. Soccer Up 3D is 71 percent off (reduced from $6.99 to $1.99) until 9 a.m. PT on Sept. 17 in the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo 3DS.
Coming soon:
Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight – Sept. 1 (Virtual Console on Wii U)
Nobunaga’s Ambition – Sept. 4 (Virtual Console on Wii U)
Price reduction:
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist is being reduced to $19.99 (from $39.99) starting Sept. 1 on Wii U.
Also new this week:"Never be scared to be uncomfortable. Being nervous can be a good thing."
During a recent visit to Winslow Township School No. 1, Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin commended art teacher Caitlin Black for doing just that.
Black, who heard about Barwin's Make the World Better Foundation at the beginning of the school year, has been using his message to teach her students about art.
"I'm very thrilled to be here with you today," Barwin said to the third grade class at the Winslow School. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her reaching out and getting in contact with me and my mother. So, I can't thank you enough for doing that and having me here today.
"There are too many people who are scared to do that. You can't be scared to do something that's hard."
Back in October, Black began teaching her third-grade students about different artists and their works.
"As the art teacher at Winslow Township Elementary School One, it has been my dream to take my third-grade students to the Philadelphia Museum of Art," Black said. "As the oldest students in the lower elementary school, the third-grade students have studied a variety of artists and works of art that are housed in the local, world-renowned art museum."
Black applied for a Target Field Trip Grant and received $700 to take the children to the museum.
"While this was absolutely fantastic, it still left us with the costs of buses and chaperones," she said.
Then, her younger sister had an idea.
"This all started when my little sister led me to Connor's foundation," Black said.
Barwin founded his Make the World Better Foundation in December 2013. The foundation is dedicated to raising funds through innovative and creative ways to ensure that every child has access to play in spaces that are fun, educational, and safe.
Five ways to Make the World Better, according to Barwin
"Throughout the school year, my third-grade students have been learning about Connor Barwin's foundation," Black said. "The foundation believes communities prosper when young people have access to athletics and the arts."
She began discussing ways to make the world better with her students, and as a group they created large paintings inspired by Barwin's message.
"The students all shared inspirational visions that left me hopeful for a brighter future," she said.
Finally, Barwin responded to Black and her dream was set into motion.
"Although Connor was unable to attend our trip, he generously donated the funds to cover all of the remaining field trip costs," Black said.
Because of Barwin, the third-grade class was able to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art on May 29.
"Thanks to Connor Barwin and the Make The World Better foundation, my students were provided a unique field trip that brought the arts to life, and allowed students to interactively participate in an unforgettable educational journey," Black said.
And to top it all off, Barwin visited the school on Friday to hear all about their trip.
School principal Sharon Galloway was thrilled to have Barwin visit the school.
"This experience, from the opportunity to meet him and make the connection between helping others and being a professional athlete and the feeling that comes from being generous...all of those things combined makes it all worth it," Galloway said. "He really is genuine about what he is doing and it shows."It was hard to blame Danny Ainge for having a laugh. At the time, the Celtics were still on an incredible win streak that started in the third game of the season and lasted until the night before Thanksgiving. The Celtics probably should have lost a game before the Heat beat them last week—Boston trailed in the fourth quarter in eight of its 16 consecutive victories—but Kyrie Irving wouldn’t allow it.
The young point guard, now finally and fully in command of his own team at 25 years old, has been exceptional this season. Especially late in games. According to ESPN, Irving’s PER in crunch time was an unreal 73.6 coming out of the league’s Thanksgiving break. (The best PER in crunch time was set by LeBron James at 59.3, back in 2009-10.) The Celtics needed every bit of late-game Kyrie to push past the Mavericks more than a week ago. Irving had a season-high 47 points, 10 of which came in overtime. The Celtics were down 13 points in that game. It was their 16th win in a row. Given the unlikely set of circumstances that led them to that point, you could imagine the Celtics general manager winking at his phone as he tweeted.
That certainly did not amuse round-earth traditionalists, Celtics haters, or my editor (who wanted to throttle me with a middle-school science book for being so amused by Ainge), but at the least it was an unexpected and interesting moment in a season that’s been both so far for Boston. After losing Gordon Hayward in the opening minutes of the opening game, the Celtics have been powered not only by Irving, but by sophomore Jaylen Brown and rookie Jayson Tatum. If the Celtics’ young talent hasn’t made them the most interesting team in the league to date, they’re certainly among them—which is part of the reason their NBA TV tilt against the Sixers on Thursday night in Boston is so fascinating.
Like the Celtics, the Sixers’ youth movement has made them one of the most compelling teams in the NBA. Ben Simmons is the universal favorite for Rookie of the Year, and fourth-year redshirt sophomore Joel Embiid—who will sadly sit against the Celtics since it’s the second game of a back-to-back—is one of the most versatile players on the floor and one of the funniest off it. After Jalen Rose called Embiid “immature” for saying he was “69 percent healthy,” Embiid went on SportsCenter and said he was “81 percent healthy”—because Kobe once scored 81 points in a game against Rose. (That last part is probably why Sports Illustrated will honor Embiid as its “Rising Star” at next week’s Sportsperson of the Year Awards.)
Between their respective kid cores and the unending story lines, the Celtics and Sixers have become appointment League Pass viewing—which is remarkable considering it wasn’t that long ago when both franchises were so down that watching them felt like work. Even crazier: They aren’t alone. There’s a concentration of new talent that’s made the league intriguing and enjoyable, precisely because of where many of those young guys play. While we were distracted by the Warriors and the West the past few years, the other half of the NBA evolved. I can’t believe I’m writing this sentence, but, all of a sudden, the Eastern Conference is young and fun.
Six of the 10 youngest teams in the NBA play in the Eastern Conference (the Sixers, Bulls, Celtics, Raptors, Magic, and Hornets). If you expand that to the 15 youngest teams, you can add the Nets, Pistons, and Bucks to the mix. Stretch it to 20, and the Hawks, Pacers, Knicks, and Heat are included. Done in reverse, 10 of the 15 oldest teams in the league are in the Western Conference.
Considering all the high-quality veterans, it makes sense that the West has been the NBA’s better half over the past decade. But while one conference racked up wins, the other tanked its way into a steady stockpile of young talent. Among players who are 25 or younger and average 15 or more minutes per game, 14 of the top 20 in PER play in the Eastern Conference. Sorted by win shares, it’s 14 out of 20. By box plus-minus, it’s 13 out of 20. You get the idea. Change the metric to something different and you’re still likely to find a host of teens and 20-somethings from the East in the top tier.
It’s no surprise, then, that the most recent NBA.com rookie rankings were dominated by kids from the Eastern Conference: Simmons, Tatum, Lauri Markkanen, and John Collins. Lakers forward Kyle Kuzma was the only Western Conference representative to crack the top five. (Sad trombone sound for Lonzo Ball.) As one Western Conference executive told me, while “the West has the Warriors,” the East has “a bunch of young kids who are going to be very good.”
Chief among them, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is already very good. While we wait for his contemporaries to become consistent, the soon-to-be 23-year-old has emerged as one of a handful of MVP favorites this season. That will likely be true next season and for lots of seasons thereafter. What Giannis lacks in the way of an outside shot he makes up for as an all-court terror.
It’s been fascinating to watch him—not simply because he’s a physical monster who fills out box scores, but also because of how he plays the game. He’s a massive man with point guard skills, and he’s not alone on that front. Giannis and Simmons are both young, and they have similar frames and approaches that are making us change the way we think about the game.
“They have a whole different vision line than most people,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said two weeks ago, while his team was on a West Coast road trip. “They’re 6-foot-10. When you’re seeing the world from that vision line, and you have the athleticism and the length to make plays, it’s not all contingent on knocking down 3s. Their breakaway speed, along with their physical gifts and their vision line, it lets them just see the world from a whole different perspective. And so they light up stat sheets. They really make statisticians work.”
Brown said there are times when he feel like Simmons has not “had that big of an impact” in a game—and then he’ll check the box score and find “triple-doubles that you weren’t even aware of.” Simmons isn’t the only Sixer putting up cartoonish numbers. Amid a recent two-game stay in Los Angeles, Embiid had 46 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists, and seven blocks in a win against the Lakers. It was the first time since the NBA started recording blocks that a player posted those lofty numbers. “We’re seeing their future in real time right now,” a longtime league exec told me about Philly.
Indeed. As Zach Lowe noted, the Sixers’ best lineup—Embiid, Simmons, Dario Saric, Robert Covington, and J.J. Redick—has outscored its opponents by a wider margin than any five-man group in the league that’s played 50 or more minutes together. Simmons is only 21. Embiid and Saric are 23. Covington is 26. (Redick, at 33, is comparatively old, but he has a new podcast, which gets him at least a few points on the millennial scorecard.)
While the Sixers were the second-youngest team to start the season, with an average age of 24.2, the Celtics weren’t far behind (25.0, which made them sixth-youngest). Their biggest contributors this season are also some of their youngest. Tatum is 19. Brown is 21. Marcus Smart and Terry Rozier are 23. Irving won’t turn 26 until late March.
Maybe some of the other young teams in the East haven’t been as successful as the Celtics—Boston topped the latest ESPN and NBA.com power rankings—but they sure have been entertaining to watch. Considering how awful the Eastern Conference has been over the past decade, that’s not nothing.
In Detroit, 24-year-old Andre Drummond leads the league in rebounds. He’s also finally making his free throws and is putting up some historic lines in the process. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Tobias Harris has become one of the most underappreciated players in the league. All of which has helped the Pistons to 14 wins. Only the Celtics have more in the East.
In Indiana, 25-year-old Victor Oladipo (who leads the Pacers in points per game and PER), looks like the player the Magic always hoped for and the Thunder never allowed him to be. He’s been a nice complement to 21-year-old Myles Turner, who’s shown flashes that make him one of the most promising young bigs in the NBA. Together, they’ve helped turn Indiana into an early-season surprise with unexpected playoff aspirations.
In Orlando … actually, things are pretty much the way they usually are in Orlando. The Magic just routed the Thunder, but are mostly bad again, having lost nine in a row heading into Wednesday’s matchup. Poor Kevin Clark. (At least Aaron Gordon is taking 3-pointers and leading the league in unrepentant young-guy-on-young-guy crime.)
In Brooklyn, 21-year-old D’Angelo Russell was finally finding his way and led the team in points per game before getting hurt. And in Manhattan, 22-year-old Kristaps Porzingis has been excellent as the main guy (he is second in the league in blocks per game, fifth in points per game, and 12th in PER). The Knicks have regressed a little lately as a team, but Porzingis alone is reason enough for New York to be excited.
Michael Beasley, NBA First Team All-BenchMob pic.twitter.com/0LMSWcKVzu — Rob Perez (@World_Wide_Wob) November 23, 2017
It’s been awhile since the Eastern Conference has been this fun—and that’s without going into Embiid’s vaudevillian social media routine or Hassan Whiteside’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Instagram. Between the overarching entertainment value and the potential to provide us with some really good basketball through the next decade, it feels like the Eastern Conference is becoming the new Western Conference. I don’t feel like I’m getting too carried away, either.
“You’re getting too carried away,” a longtime league executive told me.
Which … fine. Probably. But the Eastern Conference was buried for years, and now it’s at least up and breathing again. Just wait until the Warriors (average age of 28.3 on opening night; only the Spurs and Cavs are older) finally age themselves out. The 2024-25 season is gonna be fire.Professor Dame Julia Slingo is not a shadowy figure. As chief scientist at the Met Office, she is an expert on a national obsession and has barely been out of the spotlight since Britain was taken by storm. But hunt for her on Wikipedia and just five short paragraphs pop up.
"Many female scientists are either not there at all on Wikipedia or just [have] stubs," said Dame Athene Donald, fellow of the Royal Society and professor of experimental physics at Cambridge University. "It's not just the historical characters, it's the current ones, and these very eminent women just somehow get overlooked."
Now the Royal Society, in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering, is throwing open its doors and encouraging enthusiastic volunteers to go on to Wikipedia and blow the trumpet for unassuming women whose contributions to science and engineering are far from modest. Taking place on 4 March ahead of the celebrations surrounding International Women's Day, the edit-athon will include a crash course in creating new entries, while assistance will be on hand as participants write, tweak and refine.
"It's really spreading knowledge and awareness of female scientists, and that there were a lot more than you might think," said Anna Knutsson, one of those who has already signed up. "I really want to emphasise that."
With reports, including a recent study by the Wellcome Trust, suggesting a lack of female role models could be contributing to the leaky pipeline of women in science, raising the profile of pioneers is a priority. And Wikipedia is the perfect arena in which to do it. "It is almost always going to come top of Google search results and it will get higher readership than almost any other source," said the Royal Society's Wikimedian-in-residence, John Byrne, who will lead the event.
Studies by the Wikimedia Foundation suggest that as few as 9% of Wikipedia editors are female, so it is hoped that the edit-athon will encourage women to share their interests and expertise online. "There is the hope that by training more women not only will they do a good job of [creating] new entries but they will also become more confident about doing this more generally, and that will change the sorts of things that are done," said Donald.
Places for the edit-athon are limited but there's plenty of room in cyberspace to take part. "There will be a page on the wiki that will have the suggested articles and links to tutorials if you have never edited before," said Byrne. So you too can make sure women's achievements are written up, not written off.The 2013 Champions Trophy has been a success. High quality cricket played by the world’s best players in front of fans of all eight of the participating nations. Even the soggy day of the final was redeemed by a dramatic match won by the more courageous team. This, we have read and heard – and you and I may have thought or said – is what the World Cup should be like.
And the whispers (actually, tweets) from those in the know is that the ICC may not liquidate the Champions Trophy after all. Something to be pleased about? A common-sense decision? Maybe, but maybe not.
The most appealing feature of this tournament was that it was played by eight well-matched sides, where the result of very nearly every match mattered. A four-yearly, or even biannual, repeat would be very welcome. But how likely is it that cricket will continue to have eight international teams so closely clustered in ability? History suggests not. For much of the last generation, there have been half-a-dozen or so teams of a fairly even standard and one other – Australia – way out ahead. Eight happened to be the perfect number for a short, sharp tournament in 2013, but I suspect, with the diverging (financial) fortunes of the cricketing nations, a competition of the same size in the future will have a few makeweights and so a loss in intensity.
The tournament was played in cricket grounds that hummed with spectators, rather than echoing to the shouts of the players, as has happened at other ICC events when the home nation is not in action. This is another aspect of the 2013 Champions Trophy that it would be highly desirable to replicate. But it is a product of Britain’s multi-cultural and densely located population, which other cricketing nations don’t offer. A top level sports tournament for international teams needs to be rotated around the major nations so home advantage isn’t monopolised, the teams are tested in differing environments and the opportunities to earn revenues for national associations are shared.
So, in terms of two of its most attractive features, the 2013 Champions Trophy may be better appreciated as a one-off, rather than the formula for a sure-fire, repeatable winner.
Other than the misplaced optimism that the Champions Trophy could provide the model for ICC tournaments, the other aspect of this discussion that struck me was the inconsistency with other, earlier comment on international cricket competitions.
Two years ago we heard and read – and you and I probably thought or said – that the ICC’s decision to reduce the number of associate members playing in the World Cup was unfair to those emerging cricket nations and would hinder their development into full members of the international cricket circuit. The critics’ consensus was that the ICC should keep its competitions open, not allow them to be closed-shops for the established nations.
And amongst the very many of us taking the side of Ireland, Afghanistan and other aspiring cricket nations, I’m sure some of us were complaining just a few weeks earlier that too many games in the group stages of the World Cup were one-sided. We want tight competition and we want encouragement to the weaker nations who cannot yet sustain that competition and so we want to keep international tournaments the preserve of the strongest. There are some critics and commentators who have stayed consistently on one side of this argument, but many have flip-flopped between the two positions. I know I have drifted.
For sensible cricket folk to take a series of such logically inconsistent positions suggests there is something else going on; a deeper uncertainty that we cannot resolve but allows us to advocate strongly heading north and then a short while later insist on having east to our left-hand side.
I speculate that the issue that pulls us strongly in varying directions is the game’s global ambition. Should cricket try, or is it even sensible to attempt, to expand its international playing base?
The ICC’s statement of strategic direction suggests an expansionist agenda, but with a clear acknowledgement of standards:
Strategic Direction A bigger, better, global game targeting more players, more fans, more competitive teams. Our long-term success will be judged on growth in participation and public interest and the competitiveness of teams participating in men’s and women’s international cricket.
Motivating that strategy may simply be the business commonplace that an enterprise not expanding is managing decline. Is there perhaps a moral dimension – a cricket crusade? In the ICC’s vision for success, it is aiming for a situation where, “cricket will captivate and inspire people of every age, gender, background and ability while building bridges between continents, countries and communities.”
It seems right to want to share our great sport with others, but let’s go no further than this expression of altruism. Because the next stop on this line is that cricket is a civilizing force for good. That’s the cricket of the racist British Empire, apartheid South Africa, caste-ridden India, aboriginal-oppressing Australia, civil war infested Asian Sub-Continent, etc.
Part of me thinks that cricket has enough to do tending its roots in its traditional soils, whether that’s fighting for its place in the leisure saturated industrialised countries or ensuring its popularity translates into more players and more consumers in the developing countries of cricket-playing Asia.
And then I spend my time consuming cricket works by writers and broadcasters in the USA and Czech Republic; I am moved by the story of the Afghan national team and I want Irish players to have the pride of playing for Ireland, not hopping across to England. These fans and players deserve top level cricket where they are, not merely rendered on their screens digitally.
Then back I swing again. New Zealand cricket cannot afford its players to have first class games acclimatizing ahead of a Test series in India. The West Indies and Sri Lanka shelve tests to accommodate ODIs which will earn more revenue. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have set up shop in a de facto second division. What sort of elite world of international cricket would we be welcoming Ireland, Afghanistan and the USA into?
I cannot decide what shape I want future international cricket tournaments to take. I do recognise, however, that the format selected needs to be consistent with the game’s global ambition.
AdvertisementsVideo-sharing site YouTube announced today that it’s expanding the number of languages that will automatically be captioned in videos uploaded to its library. The new languages supported include German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Dutch, so that deaf, hard-of-hearing, and viewers who speak other languages will be able to follow along to those videos.
YouTube has been doing this captioning thing for a while: It started automatically adding captions to English-language videos in 2009, but over the past few years it’s been slowly but surely adding increased support for more languages. Today’s addition now brings the total number of supported languages to 10, which also includes Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
The move comes as YouTube is seeking to make videos more accessible to all its viewers. In addition to auto-captioning, the site has launched tools to enable its users to create their own captions and translate them into different languages. It recently integrated the YouTube Video Manager with the Google Translator Toolkit, providing support for 300 different languages.
Since a large majority of YouTube’s viewers actually come from outside the U.S., expanded support for captions — automatic or otherwise — only makes sense. Altogether, YouTube says it has more than 200 million videos with automatic and human-created captions on the site.Abstract In the present study, we investigated the relation between cognitive performance and heart rate variability as a function of fitness level. We measured the effect of three cognitive tasks (the psychomotor vigilance task, a temporal orienting task, and a duration discrimination task) on the heart rate variability of two groups of participants: a high-fit group and a low-fit group. Two major novel findings emerged from this study. First, the lowest values of heart rate variability were found during performance of the duration discrimination task, compared to the other two tasks. Second, the results showed a decrement in heart rate variability as a function of the time on task, although only in the low-fit group. Moreover, the high-fit group showed overall faster reaction times than the low-fit group in the psychomotor vigilance task, while there were not significant differences in performance between the two groups of participants in the other two cognitive tasks. In sum, our results highlighted the influence of cognitive processing on heart rate variability. Importantly, both behavioral and physiological results suggested that the main benefit obtained as a result of fitness level appeared to be associated with processes involving sustained attention.
Citation: Luque-Casado A, |
posts.
“In picking Mattis, the president got someone who had bipartisan credibility and was seen as a tough national security official who wasn’t going to toe the White House or the GOP line,” said Jeremy Bash, a former Pentagon spokesman under Secretary Leon Panetta. “Independence is an important attribute in a SecDef. But when you get that, you get frustration from the political folks. When you’re not coming out of the establishment, you have the credibility to do bipartisan things. You’re just going to take incoming from Democrats and from Republicans from time to time.”
The situation at the Pentagon mirrors that at the State Department, where many top positions, including the No. 2 spot under Secretary Rex Tillerson, remain unfilled after Trump scuttled the appointment of Elliott Abrams after learning that he criticized the then-GOP nominee last year.
The White House last week announced the nomination of Boeing vice president Pat Shanahan, a Washington outsider relatively unknown among defense policy experts, to be deputy secretary of defense. The announcement included four other high-level Department of Defense appointments, many of them Pentagon veterans of past GOP administrations, in an effort to mollify Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Morning Defense newsletter Sign up for Morning Defense, a daily briefing on Washington's national security apparatus. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
But that’s unlikely to quell criticism on Capitol Hill, where Republicans on the House and Senate armed services committees say Mattis' troubles extend beyond personnel. They are frustrated by his failure to wage a political battle to raise the Defense Department's budget beyond the 3 percent increase initially proposed by the White House — or to fight to roll back the Obama-era Budget Control Act, which strips $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget over a decade. Mattis has told associates he will make it up to them when he proposes his own budget in 2019, according to a source familiar with the conversations, but that does not satisfy Republican hawks concerned in part about whether their party's majorities will hold through 2018.
House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) tweeted at the president about his concerns last month. “Could not have a better leader than #SecDef Mattis, but…,” he wrote in the first of two tweets, “@RealDonaldTrump promise is facing Obama holdovers @DOD who have been fighting against rebuilding & are still undermining agenda.” It was a tacit shot at Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, the Obama holdover whom many Republicans blame for the secretary's failure to advocate for a bigger budget number.
Mike Gallagher, a Republican representative from Wisconsin, said that while Trump’s proposed budget cuts domestic programs in order to fund a $54 billion increase in military spending, it’s not enough to make up for past cuts. “I suspect Secretary Mattis — who understands how to connect ends, ways and means better than anyone—knows this and hope he will emerge as a forceful advocate for the rebuild,” Gallagher said.
Others said it’s crucial that Mattis embrace the reality of navigating the Hill. “Everybody thinks very highly of him, but he doesn’t have any political sense, and he doesn’t think he needs any political sense,” said one former Bush administration Defense Department official. “But it’s quintessentially a political job.”Sachin Choudhary returned positive for a banned substance in a test conducted by NADA Sachin Choudhary returned positive for a banned substance in a test conducted by NADA
The Indian contingent at the Commonwealth Games was left red-faced on Thursday after para-powerlifter Sachin Choudhary returned positive for a banned substance in an out-of-competition test conducted by the National Anti-Doping Agency last month.
Choudhary, who was a late inclusion in the Indian team for the Games, left Glasgow on the pretext of his father's ill-health but it is now learnt that he was caught for doping in a test conducted by the NADA before leaving the country.
"It is true that Sachin tested positive for a banned substance. The test was conducted by the NADA around a month back. It is an unfortunate incident," a member of the para-sports contingent said on condition of anonimity.
"He will not return to Glasgow and his name will be removed from the starting list in the team managers' meeting," he added. "Sachin is an experienced para-athlete and medal prospect. He took part in 2012 London Paralympics and also World Championships." Para-powerlifting competition in the Games is to be held on August 2.
It is also learnt that Choudhary's name was removed from the list of those recommended for the Games after the Sports Ministry asked the Paralympics Committee of India (PCI) to recommend medal prospects only.
"I think the PCI recommended 16 names first but the sports ministry wanted to know who were the medal prospects. Then Choudhary's name was not there in the list sent again to the IOA. But somehow his name was included later on," the official said.
Paralympics Committee of India President Rajesh Tomar, however, feigned ignorance about the issue, saying that he has no knowledge of it. "I don't have any such information. If at all there is any such communication about an athlete found positive then it must be sent to Secretary's office in Bangalore. I have not got any such information," he said.Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economist at Princeton. For previous posts in his series on why America pays so much for health care, click here, here and here.
Medicare, the federal health-insurance program for America’s elderly, plays a major and highly controversial role in our health-care system. To many Americans it is a blessing. Others view it as a source of all that’s wrong with American health care. I propose to explore these views in this and the next two posts to this blog.
Congress established Medicare in 1965, when close to 40 percent of America’s elderly lived at or below the federal poverty line. They simply could not afford the ever more sophisticated and expensive health care then starting to come on line.
The program now covers 45 million Americans 65 or older, as well as younger people with permanent disabilities, among them patients afflicted with End Stage Renal Disease. About half of Medicare beneficiaries live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line (i.e., $20,800 annual income for a single person and $28,000 for a couple). Over a third of the beneficiaries are afflicted with three or more chronic conditions.
In 2009, Medicare is expected to cost the federal government about $480 billion. That represents over a fifth of total national health spending on personal health care, 13 percent of the federal budget and close to 3.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. These outlays are financed with a combination of payroll taxes (41 percent), general tax revenues (39 percent), premiums paid by the elderly (12 percent) and sundry other sources, including interest earned on a trust fund established for the program.
Because Medicare’s benefit package traditionally has been less generous than traditional employment-based private insurance for younger Americans –- it has covered prescription drugs only since 2006 — many beneficiaries have sought supplemental, wrap-around coverage from their former employers (about 33 percent) or from a purchase of a private Medigap policy (about 20 percent). The federal-state Medicaid program for the poor provides such gap coverage for some 7 million (or 15.5 percent) Medicare beneficiaries, called “dual eligibles.”
Even with such supplemental coverage, however, out-of-pocket cost-sharing at the time health care is received has always been high relative to employment-based private insurance for younger Americans. In 2005, the median fraction of income Medicare beneficiaries spent out of pocket for their care was 16.1 percent. For the 11 percent of beneficiaries without supplemental coverage, out-of-pocket spending can absorb 30 percent or more of their income.
Medicare was originally established as a single-payer, government-run, fee-for-service plan whose claims by patients and health care providers were administered, for a modest fee, by a select group of private insurance plans called Medicare Intermediaries -– typically Blue Cross plans. This arrangement is now known as “Traditional FFS Medicare.”
Starting in the 1970s, however, Medicare beneficiaries have had the option of enrolling in a variety of health plans offered by private insurers. Starting with the Medicare Modernization Act passed in December 2003, which offered beneficiaries drug coverage for the first time, these private insurance options have been called “Medicare Advantage” plans. About 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have chosen this option.
Driven by an ideological preference for private over government-run health insurance, the Republican Congress in 2003 made taxpayers effectively pay these private plans an average of 13 percent more per Medicare beneficiary than these beneficiaries would have cost taxpayers under the government-run program. Consequently, the private plans can offer beneficiaries superior benefits, which has caused enrollment in them to double from 5.3 million to 10.1 million between 2003 and 2008. Because it is hard to justify this extra public subsidy to the private plans on the basis of health policy, however, it has been highly controversial among health policy experts and is likely to be eliminated by the new Congress in the next few years.
Although often decried by its critics as “socialized medicine,” Medicare remains a highly popular health-insurance product among the elderly, who rate the quality of care they receive under it higher than younger, privately insured Americans rate their health care (see, for example, this and also this, Charts 4:1 to 4:3).
This sentiment is not surprising, because, from both the patient’s and the provider’s perspective, claims processing under Medicare is relatively simple in comparison with the complexity of private health insurance, although Medicare is much more administratively complex than are similar government-run, single-payer health insurance systems in other countries (e.g., Taiwan or Canada).
Furthermore, in surveys of Americans 50 and older, respondents expressed greater trust in Medicare as a source of health insurance, possibly still remembering the late 1990s, when many private plans terminated their coverage of Medicare patients.
In the next post, I shall assess the often-made claim that Medicare is not much longer “sustainable.” Thereafter I shall explore whether Medicare in its current form should be sustained, even if it were affordable in that form. In the meantime, readers who wish more detail on the program than could be offered here may wish to consult the excellent primer on Medicare found at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Web site.Hall, C.A.S., Groat, A. 2010. Losing Faith in Economics. Energy price increases and the 2008 financial crash: a practice run for what’s to come? The Corporate Examiner. 37: No. 4-5: 19-26.
The summer of 2008 saw the third year in a row in which oil production did not rise, leading some to say that the long predicted “peak oil,” the time of maximum global oil production, had indeed arrived. Partly as a result, that summer also saw the highest oil prices ever, as well as historically high prices for other energy and most raw materials. Wall Street was down from its historic high of the preceding fall but by the end of the first week of August, the Dow Jones Industrial average closed at 11,734. Then, a series of disasters struck the financial markets, with many of the largest, most prestigious and seemingly impervious companies declaring bankruptcy. Each week the stock market lost 5 or 10 % of its value until, by the end of November, the Dow Jones had dropped to as low as 8,000. Many investors lost from one-third to one-half of the value of their stocks.
Although the media and American lawmakers focused on many issues as the culprits of the crash — the sub-prime mortgage crisis, high foreclosure rates and Wall Street’s sale of opaque financial products known as derivatives — we believe that the root cause of the current downturn is the same one that sparked the last four out of five world recessions:
the high price of oil. Why did most economists and financial analysts not see this coming? One hypothesis, advanced by Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman (2009) is that the economics profession “went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.” But, as the market debacle has shown, mathematical elegance in economics is not a substitute for scientific rigor, something that we have discussed in many previous papers (e.g. Hall et al. 1986, Hall et al. 2001).
As of this writing global oil production had been flat since 2004 and then declining for several years so that peak oil appears to have occurred – with the remaining debate only about whether there may be a subsequent peak. If indeed we have passed the global oil peak – or at least have reached the point at which an increase in annual production is no longer possible – then indeed the end of cheap oil might be soon upon us, especially if global economies return to growth. Because of the critical importance of liquid and gaseous petroleum for essentially everything we do economically, there are major concerns as to what the financial implications might be. Some (ourselves included) ask whether conventional economics and conventional economic models and tools work only when it was possible to readily expand the petroleum supply. Will our conventional economic approaches, derived during periods of expanding energy supplies, have less relevance during times of contracting supplies? In other words, are finances beholden to the laws of physics? We think yes. Thus the question becomes: can we supplement or improve upon our ability to do economics and financial analysis by using procedures that focus more on the energy available (or not) to undertake the activity in question?
The Predictors
What is the relation, if any, between the run up in oil prices and the market crash? Resource scientists have predicted such a financial crash for a long time. Any good physical or biological scientist knows that all activity in nature is associated with energy use. Consequently, many in the scientific community were not the slightest bit surprised by the financial crash or its timing. For example, Colin Campbell, a former oil geologist and co-founder of ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, predicted serious financial responses to peak oil in his (and Jean Lahererre’s) classic Scientific American article “The End of Cheap Oil” (Campbell and Lahererre 1998). He was more explicit in the ASPO meeting in Pisa, Italy, in 2006 when he said that we are likely to see an end of year after year economic growth and a movement to an “undulating plateau” in oil production, prices and economic activity, with periodic high prices in oil generating financial stress. These financial strains would, in turn, cause a decrease in oil use and hence a price decline, with low prices then leading to new financial growth and new increases in use followed, eventually, by increases again in oil prices. In other words he foresaw very large impacts of restrictions in oil availability, and consequent price increases, on the market: “Every single company on the stock market is overvalued from the perspective of what the cost of running that company will be after peak. Value is determined by performance which has been based on cheap oil.”
Many other analysts have remarked upon, and even predicted, the probable impact of peak oil, or at least oil price increases, on the financial status of the United States and the world (e.g. Huang et al. 1996; Sauter and Auerbach 2003). A thoughtful, chilling and ultimately correct view of the implications of peak oil on the American economy was presented by Gail Tverberg in January 2008 on the energy log site “The Oil Drum”. Her predictions, which we thought impossibly pessimistic at the time, have been vindicated in great detail. Many analysts foresaw these issues as early as the 1970s, including the authors of the famous but subsequently dismissed “Limits to Growth” studies of 1972, ecologists Garrett Hardin and Howard Odum, economists Kenneth Boulding and others. The first author of this piece made his retirement decisions in 1970 based on the assumption that peak oil and a crash of stocks would occur in about 2008 (Hall 2004). The reason is that all of these people understood that — of necessity — real growth is based on growth in real resources, and that there are limits to those resources. The case for peak oil was clearly laid out 40 years ago by Hubbert (e.g. 1968; 1974) who had correctly predicted the U.S. peak in 1970, 15 years before the fact. While many economists place a great deal of faith in increasing technology, in fact technology does not operate on a static playing field but continually competes with declining resource quality. There is little or no evidence that technology is winning this game (e.g. Hall and Ko 2004, Hall et al. 2008, Gagnon and Hall 2009), and it is important to understand that at least so far, the Limits to Growth model is an almost perfect predictor (Hall and Day 2009).
Resource-based analysts understand and appreciate that the recent turmoil in much of our financial structure has many plausible causes, among them greed, the relaxation of financial controls, sub-prime mortgages, the decrease in risk premiums, excessive leverage, and overrated bundles of toxic securities. But, in the minds of resource-based analysts, energy underlies even these issues. The fundamental dilemma is this: if oil, the most important energy source to fuel the economy, goes through the inevitable path of growth, plateau, and eventual decline (i.e. peak oil) while the financial market is built on the assumption of unfettered growth, then something has to give. Eventually the aspirations and assumptions of indefinite growth in assets, production and consumption must collide with the reality of an ever-constricted source of the energy that fuels real growth. There are related, but more subtle, arguments as well.
Starting in the early 1990s until 2007, the financial system, with various forms of new financial engineering, had seen an unprecedented increase in the use of leverage. Relatively inexpensive oil, declining interest rates, and globalization all contributed to declines in risk premiums for virtually all asset classes. Capital went further out on the risk curve to make up for reduced returns and increased leverage became the new norm. As volatility seemed to disappear, even more leverage was piled on to the system. Along with the changing landscape in global credit markets came cheap financing for U.S. home buyers. The low price of energy greatly increased discretionary income which further encouraged people to take advantage of this cheap financing, all of which added to massive residential development.
This created a self-reinforcing “reflexive” system (Soros 1987), where increasing home values increased collateral, which encouraged further borrowing in the household sector and lines of credit for consumption and so on. But the U.S. reached a “tipping point” (Gladwell 2000) in 2006-2007. As the price of gasoline rose, the assumption that the suburban lifestyle would be sustainable became a question in every driver’s mind. The most audacious growth in real-estate had been in the ex-urban areas, most vulnerable to gas price spikes. The system had been built on the premise that large amounts of discretionary spending would always be available and the notion that everyone was entitled to a McMansion, a “lawyer-foyer,” and a home theater. To get it, we had to build out from the cities. However, discretionary wealth — that which is available for non-essential investments and purchases — is extremely sensitive to volatile energy prices (Hall, Powers and Schoenberg 2008).
Discretionary income dropped substantially when gasoline and other energy prices, which had been creeping up from a very low level in 1998, increased sharply in 2007-2008. This became a domino that toppled aggregate demand, particularly for ex-urban real estate. It may have been that this was the first domino that triggered the massive de-leveraging we are now experiencing globally. (A good summary of the various analyses by Rubin, Hamilton and others who argue that oil price increases were behind this, and past, recessions is given at http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/5304.) Massive household debt could not be supported when the value of the underlying collateral declined: a decline triggered, at least in part, by the spike in energy prices. As the collateral disappeared, huge derivative positions that had been built in the previous decade had margin-calls. The spiral down of forced selling pressured all asset classes further, and forced the banking sector to essentially freeze in September of 2008. Will this questioning of the suburban model be a preview to our ultimate response to peak-oil? Perhaps. The general pattern of oil price changes can help us understand these things better in the longer term.
At the start of 1973, oil was cheap at $3.50 a barrel. The U.S. was still the world’s largest producer. Peak oil had just occurred in the United States in 1970, but no one noticed. Oil imports and the economy kept growing. As domestic oil production in the U.S. declined from 1970 to 1973, foreign suppliers gained leverage. Political events and a bulldozer accident that severed an export oil pipe in the Middle East triggered massive price increases in oil. By 1979 the price of oil had increased by a factor of ten, to $35 a barrel. The proportion of Gross Domestic Product that went to buying energy increased from about 8% to 14%, restricting discretionary spending for all while causing stagflation. The prices of other energy and commodities more generally increased at nearly the same rate, driven in part by the price increase of the oil that was behind all economic activities.
But then, in the 1980s, all around the world oil that had been found but not developed (as it had not been worth much) suddenly became profitable to develop, and it was developed. By the 1990s the world was awash in oil and the real price fell to nearly what it was in 1973. The energy portion of GDP fell to about 5%, essentially giving everyone a sudden free extra 8 to 10% of their incomes to play with. The impact on discretionary income, perhaps a quarter of the total, was enormous. Many invested in the stock market, but the burst tech bubble of 2000 cured them of that. Real estate was considered a “safe” bet, so many invested in what was really surplus square footage. Speculation became rampant as real estate was valued for its financial returns rather than as a place to live. For a while it seemed as if investment in real estate was the best thing for everyone but, as we now recognize, most of the increase in wealth was illusory.
With energy price increases over the past 6 years (until the summer of 2008), an extra 5 to 10% “tax” from increased energy prices was added to our economy as it had been in the 1970s, and much of the surplus wealth disappeared. Speculation was no longer desirable or possible as consumers tightened their belts because of higher energy costs. While this perspective is not a sufficient explanation for all that has happened, the similar economic patterns in response to the energy price increases of both the 1970s and of the last decade give it credibility. In systems theory language, the endogenous aspects of the economy that the economists focus on (Fed rates, money supply, etc.) became beholden to the exogenous forcing functions of oil supply and pricing that are not part of economists’ usual framework.
The Relation of Oil and Energy more generally, to our economy
While economics is overwhelmingly taught as a social science, in fact, our economy is completely dependant upon the physical supply and flow of resources, including materials and energy, for the production, transport and use of goods and services. Specifically, our economy is overwhelmingly dependent upon oil, which supplied about 40% of U.S. energy use in 2007, and natural gas, which supplied about another 25%. Coal provides about 20% and nuclear a little less than 5%. Hydropower and firewood supply no more than 4% each. Wind turbines, photovoltaics and other new solar technologies together account for less than 1%. Global percentages are similar. Our economy has been and continues to be based on increased use of fossil fuels for most of its growth, so that we have in recent years added much more new capacity with fossil fuels than we have with new solar, which has only added a bit to total growth in the use of all energies rather than replaced fossil fuels.
Although we have been trained from birth to think about the economy as something run by money, from our perspective money is just our means of keeping track of the energy flows and investments. The fossil fuel-based economy has given each of us the equivalent of 60 to 80 “energy servants” and the more money you earn, the more energy servants you have. Each time you spend a dollar, roughly a coffee cup’s worth of oil (or some other energy) has to be pulled out of the ground, refined, transported and burned to provide the energy for that economic activity. For example, if you buy a bagel for a dollar, natural gas is used to make fertilizer, diesel is used to drive a tractor to plant and harvest the wheat, electricity is used to grind the wheat and more diesel is used to ship the flour from Kansas to wherever the bagel will be made, using, of course, more energy during baking. Food eaten in the United States, on average, requires about 10 times more calories of fossil fuel for its production than is found in the food itself (Hall et al. 1986).
Because of the enormous interdependency of our economy, there is not a huge difference in the energy requirements for the various goods and services that we produce. Thus a dollar spent for most final demand goods and services uses roughly the same amount of energy no matter what the good or service is. An exception is money spent for energy itself, which includes the chemical energy plus another 10 or so percent which is the energy needed to get it. For 2005 an average dollar spent in the economy required about 8 or 9 megajoules (1 MJ equals 240 Kilocalories) for that activity. For heavy construction the estimate is about 14 MJs per dollar and for very heavy industry such as obtaining oil and gas about 20 MJs per dollar; Gagnon et al. 2009). As time and inflation proceed you have less and less energy to do work in the economy per dollar spent. There continues to be decreasing energy return on energy invested (EROI) for our major fuels as we must go after ever more difficult resources (e.g. Hall and Cleveland 1981, Gagnon et al. 2009).
Making Investment Decisions
There is an implicit assumption, probably believed by most market analysts, that if they (collectively) make good financial decisions, based on market information, market projections and good hunches, then we collectively (i.e., society) will make the best investments possible. Although there are certainly good rationales that such financial analyses make considerable sense, in many cases it is not so clear that they are an effective guide to the future of energy supplies. This is because: 1) current prices of energy in the U.S. are greatly influenced by various subsidies; 2) few understand the degree to which most technologies today are principally a means of subsidizing whatever it is we do with still-cheap petroleum; 3) today’s price signals are unlikely to be influenced by the future conditions when today’s most abundant and cheapest fuels may be scarcer, for either geological (depletion) or political reasons; and 4) there is painfully little transfer of information from the (rather limited) scientific community that has examined the large picture of energy to the financial communities.
We include here some preliminary analyses that we think show the importance of energy to Wall Street and the economy more generally. First, Wall Street prices reflect not only a portion of the real operation of the economy but also a large psychological factor often called “confidence”. Our hypothesis is that the energy used by the economy is in some sense a proxy for the amount of real work done, and that over time the Dow Jones should “snake” around the real amount of work done, reflecting issues of speculation, confidence and so on, but that over sufficient time it must return approximately to the real energy use line. To test this hypothesis we have plotted the prices of the Dow Jones index (corrected for inflation) from 1915 until 2008 along with the actual use of energy by the United States economy.
In fact the inflation-corrected Dow Jones Index has snaked around the use of energy (Figure 2). We think it will be interesting to plot this relation in the future. We hypothesize that the Dow Jones will over the long run continue to snake about the total energy use in response to periods of irrational exuberance and the converse. If U.S. total energy use continues to decrease, as it has for the last 18 months, this hypothesis implies no sustained real growth for the Dow Jones. We also hypothesize that in a general sense the amount of wealth generated by the U.S. economy should be closely related to fuel energy use. Cleveland et al. (1983) found that the Gross National Product of the United States was highly correlated with quality-corrected energy use from 1904 to 1984 (R2 = 0.94). This high correlation appeared to be much poorer for the period 1984 until 2008. It is possible that the divergence is due not to increasing efficiency but rather an increasing proclivity of governments to “cook the books” on inflation (see the online group shadowstatistics.com). Correcting for this, if indeed that is needed, would make the relation of energy use and GDP growth much tighter through the 1990s and 2000s.
A Financial Analyst Concurs
Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, wrote in a recent report that defaulting mortgages are only a symptom of the high oil prices. Higher oil prices caused Japan and the European Nations to enter into a recession even before the most recent financial problems hit. According to Rubin:
Oil shocks create global recessions by transferring billions of dollars of income from economies where consumers spend every cent they have, and then some, to economies that sport the highest savings rates in the world. While those petro-dollars may get recycled back to Wall Street by sovereign wealth fund investments, they don’t all get recycled back into world demand. The leakage, as income is transferred to countries with savings rates as high as 50%, is what makes this income transfer far from demand neutral. […] By any benchmark the economic cost of the recent rise in oil prices is nothing short of staggering. A lot more staggering than the impact of plunging housing prices on housing starts and construction jobs, which has been the most obvious brake on economic growth from the housing market crash. And those energy costs, unlike the massive asset writedowns associated with the housing market crash, were borne largely by Main Street, not Wall Street, in both America and throughout the world.
This big increase in oil prices has caused the annual fuel bill of OECD countries to increase by more than $700 billion a year, with $400 billion of this going to OPEC countries. Rubin asks: “Transfers a fraction of today’s size caused world recessions in the past. Why shouldn’t they today?”
We and others believe that there is ample evidence that our economy is beholden to energy supplies and prices, and that good investors and good economists need to learn a great deal more about energy. We are attempting to tackle this problem head on through the development of a new approach to economics called biophysical economics (e.g. Hall et al. 2001, Hall and Klitgaard 2006, Hall et al. 2008, Hall and Klitgaard in preparation). It is based on the simple premise that since economics is about the production and transfer of physical things or services that require energy, why should it be considered a uniquely social, rather than equally a biophysical science? Probably most readers of this article understand in their day-to-day work that the economy doesn’t work the way economics textbooks say, if indeed it ever did. But getting the economists to re-think their training will be a tough job, no matter how much that is needed.
References
Colin Campbell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNMjV6sumQ&feature=related
Cleveland, C., Costanza, R., Hall, C., and Kaufmann R. (1984). Energy and the US Economy: A Biophysical Perspective. Science, 225: 890 897.
Gagnon, N., Hall, C., and Brinker, L. (2009). A Preliminary Investigation of the Energy Return on Energy Invested for Global Oil and Gas Production. Energies, 2:490-503.
Gladwell, M. (2000). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown & Company.
Hall, C. (January 4, 2008). At $100 Oil – What Can the Scientist Say to the Investor? http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3412
Hall, C. (April 1, 2008). Why EROI Matters (Part 1 of 6). Retrieved from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3786 Hall, C., and Cleveland, C. (1981). Petroleum Drilling and Production in the United States: Yield per Effort and Net Energy Analysis. Science, 211: 576-579.
Hall, C., Cleveland, C., and Kaufmann, R. (1986). Energy and Resource Quality: The Ecology of the Economic Process. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
Hall, C., Lindenberger, D., Kummel, R., Kroeger, T., and Eichhorn, W. (2001). The Need to Reintegrate the Natural Sciences with Economics. BioScience, 51(8): 663-673.
Hall, C., and Klitgaard, K. (2006). The Need for a New, Biophysically-Based Paradigm in Economics for the Second Half of the Age of Oil. International Journal of Transdisciplinary Research, 1: 4-22.
Hall, C., Tharakan, P., Hallock, J., Cleveland, C., and Jefferson, M. (2003). Hydrocarbons and the Evolution of Human Culture. Nature, 26: 318-322.
Hall, C., Powers, R., and Schoenberg, W. (2008). Peak Oil, EROI, Investments and the Economy in an Uncertain Future. In David Pimentel (Ed.), Renewable Energy Systems: Environmental and Energetic Issues (pp. 113-136). London: Elsevier.
Hall, C., and Day, J. (2009). Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil. American Scientist, 97(3): 230-237.
Hall, C.A.S., and K. Klitgaard. 2011. Energy and the Wealth of Nations. The Biophysical Origins of Wealth. Springer.
Hersch, R., Bezdec, R. and Wending, W. (2005). Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management. U.S. Department of Energy. National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Huang, R., Masulis, R., and Stoll, H. (1996). Energy Shocks and Financial Markets. Journal of Futures Markets, 16(1): 1-27.
Hubbert, M. K. (1969). Energy Resources. In National Academy of Sciences, Resources and Man, a Study and Recommendations (pp 157-242). San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.
Hubbert, M. K. (June 4, 1974). Testimony before Subcommittee on the Environment of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, Washington, D.C.
Rubin, Jeff (October 31, 2008) Just How Big is Cleveland, CIBC World Markets. Retrieved from http://research.cibcwm.com/ economic_public/download/soct08.pdf
Sauter, R., and Awerbuch, S. (2003). Oil Price Volatility and Economic Activity: A Survey and Review of Literature (International Energy Agency Research Paper). Paris: IEA. Retrieved from http://www.awerbuch.com/shimonpages/shimondocs/Oilprice- Volatility-03.doc
Soros, George. (1987). The Alchemy Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Tverberg, Gail (January, 2008). Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008. Retrieved from
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3382#more
Please follow and like us:Amazon got more heat from the White House this week, and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said it's sending shivers down the spines of CEOs across the technology sector.
"Your hackles are certainly up about things like the word'monopoly,' and worrying that general political views could be used against you to artificially constrain your business," Costolo told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Tuesday.
Trump unleashed tweets this week aimed at The Washington Post's reporting on the conflict in Syria. The Post reported that the Trump administration is working in cooperation with Russia, a strategy that some see as "short-sighted," according to the Post.
Costolo called the tweets "disconcerting and extreme."
While The Washington Post is not affiliated with Amazon in a business capacity, it is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon does collect sales taxes nationwide as of this year, but the company's growing influence in retail, cloud, smart-home devices, content creation and now groceries has raised eyebrows.
"Probably the worst way to attack [Bezos] is to refer to the stock in which most of his wealth is held as the 'no-tax monopoly,'" Costolo said. "On a serious note, the president probably used the word monopoly intentionally there. Amazon just acquired Whole Foods."
With inflammatory remarks frequently gracing the president's Twitter feed, eventually business leaders may brush off such comments, Costolo said. Indeed, Amazon shares were down less than half a percent midday Tuesday.
Still, Amazon, alongside other technology companies, has spent record-high amounts lobbying during the last three months.
"People out here — and I'm probably understating this — are concerned about the kind of discourse we're hearing about technology and business in these seemingly off-handed remarks," Costolo said.
— CNBC's Ylan Mui contributed to this report.Well today is the last day of RWBY Week and it was a blast like always. My favorite pieces I’ve made this week would be, Weiss in Pants, Coffee Battle (Part 1), Bad Luck Charm #13, and this one
For my last piece |
the brain means tethering subjects—just mice, for now—to a cumbersome fibre-optic cable that is fastened to a light source. This has limited a mouse’s mobility, sabotaging its social life and making it difficult to parse the behavioral effects of turning certain neurons on and off. Rogers may have solved this problem, too. With neuroscientists at Washington University’s Bruchas Lab, he designed a flexible, wireless L.E.D. far thinner than an eyelash. Its antenna is a cube that the mouse wears like a tiny top hat, secured with denture paste. The antenna receives signals that operate the light and harvests the power to run itself from radio waves. The researchers concentrated on a cluster of the mice’s neurons that they knew released dopamine, a neurotransmitter that confers a pleasurable sensation. They infected them with the protein that would make them react to light and implanted Rogers’s device a few microns away. After a month of recovery, the mice were let loose in a Y-shaped maze. If they poked a button at one end of the maze with their nose, it sent a signal that turned on the light in their brain and triggered a rush of dopamine; if they poked buttons at the other ends of the maze, the light stayed off. In the study, the mice returned obsessively to the dopamine button: they had gained, and liberally employed, the ability to wirelessly activate neurotransmitters that made them feel good. Similar implants in people might one day offer patients a way to activate their own neurotransmitters to alleviate pain, epileptic seizures, Parkinson’s tremors, and disorders such as addiction and depression, without employing drugs, electroshock, or the removal of brain tissue. One afternoon, Jordan McCall, a bearded graduate student at the Washington University School of Medicine, and Ream al-Hasani, a postdoctoral fellow with a soft British accent and turquoise fingernail polish, let me watch as they implanted in the brain of a mouse a device that their lab had designed with Rogers. The mouse lay on a platform, its nose positioned at the mouth of a tube delivering a combination of oxygen and anesthesia. The plan was to use the device, which had two L.E.D.s, to study two groups of neurons in a region called the nucleus accumbens, which humans also possess. Though the groups were situated less than a millimetre apart, they appeared to have opposite roles; activating one group should produce a rewarding sensation, while activating the other should produce an unpleasant one. Given their proximity to one another, their roles can’t be teased apart using drugs, electricity, or a scalpel. With his thumb and forefinger, McCall lifted the device they were implanting from a petri dish: two translucent L.E.D.s hung from a plastic cube the size of a die—the mouse’s top hat. Alongside each one was an electrode to measure neural signals and a temperature sensor to make sure that it wasn’t overheating the brain. Each strand was virtually invisible, about the size of four mouse brain cells. The strands would cause far less inflammation than typical, stiffer fibre-optic cables do. “The bad news is, it’s so flexible and floppy that it doesn’t have the rigidity needed to penetrate the brain tissue in the first place,” Rogers told me. To push it in, he had mounted the L.E.D. on a needlelike polymer base, using a thin film of silk glue that would dissolve in brain fluid. The researchers could lower the needle and L.E.D. into the brain, wait fifteen minutes for the silk to dissolve, and then pull out the needle, leaving the device behind. McCall clamped the polymer needle in a mechanical arm and lowered it and the electronics gingerly into the mouse’s brain through a hole drilled in its skull, watching the device’s x, y, and z coördinates on a monitor. “Looks like the flexible part is not coöperating,” he said. The silk glue had come loose as the needle entered the brain, and one of the L.E.D.s had bent and caught on the surface tissue. McCall tried a second device, which slid into the brain as planned, but the antenna slipped from his grip before he could secure it with paste. “I’m sorry, gravity worked against us,” he said. “That was user error, not design error.” To avoid damaging the mouse’s brain, he aborted the experiment. Later, I called Rogers and told him what had happened. He was philosophical. “I think ninety-nine per cent of the experiments one does are failures,” he said. “One of the frustrating aspects of academic, discovery-based research is that the minute you figure out how to do things repeatedly and reproducibly, you immediately go on to something else.” Even so, he hated it when a device broke. When I visited his lab, I’d remarked on how delicately his students packaged their creations, nesting them in petri dishes on beds of foam. He said that he’d suggested this, in part, to encourage outside clinicians and researchers to handle them gently. “The devices need to be able to operate in the hands of people who didn’t build them,” he said. “Inevitably, they’re way rougher on them than they’d be if they’d made them. They’re precious things, but you hand them off to some other guy and he’s tossing them around.” As scientists continue mapping the brain and its billions of connections, they are finding new ways to electronically tweak them to fix the body’s failings. People who have lost their hearing because they’ve damaged the hair cells in their ears, which normally mediate the perception of sound, can turn to cochlear implants that send electrical signals straight to the auditory nerve. Last year, researchers for the company BrainGate released a video of a woman who has been paralyzed for fifteen years by a brain-stem stroke. With a brain-machine interface, and using just her thoughts, she directs a robotic arm to lift a bottle of coffee to her lips so she can sip it through a straw. At the 2014 World Cup, the ceremonial kickoff will be made by a paraplegic wearing a robotic “exoskeleton,” operated with EEG sensors taped to his or her scalp. “You’ll see these new prosthetics and new technologies to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders come very soon,” Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University and the device’s designer, told me. “You’ll be part of the computer literally. You’re going to be embedded into your operating system by using your brain both to control the operating system and to receive feedback from it.” Eventually, as we gain the ability to hot-wire individual neural circuits, our senses could be enhanced as well as repaired. Michael McAlpine, a nanotechnology engineer at Princeton University, recently created a bionic ear by 3D-printing flexible electronics and cartilage; it can detect frequencies that no biological ear, human or other, can hear. “If you think of all the different animals on the planet, they all have different ranges of capabilities,” McAlpine told me. “For instance, a dog can hear at higher frequencies than a human. Being able to turn the human into a universal animal that can do all those things would be kind of cool, I think.” One afternoon, I asked Rogers if he had any interest in becoming a universal animal. We were in his office, where he was waiting for a call. In the hallway, a coffee tureen had drawn a crowd, and the smell of the coffee and the sound of voices drifted in. “I wouldn’t argue with that vision,” he said. “But I think for things to go on the brain, at least in my lifetime, it has to be pretty compelling. If someone is dying or someone is suffering from severe epilepsy, that’s reason enough to take your skullcap off. But to see in the dark—probably not.”Former lawmaker Wendy Davis told students of the Catholic university abortion helps the economy, and that she killed her child 'out of love.'
Catholics celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation on Monday, when the Virgin Mary said “yes” to God and Christ was conceived in her womb through the power of the Holy Spirit. But at the University of Notre Dame, a number of students spent Monday night on campus listening to former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis describe the benefits for women of choosing abortion or using contraception.
During Mass on Monday, Pope Francis encouraged the faithful to open their hearts to God and to say “yes” to his message of salvation. “Mary’s ‘yes’ opens the door to Jesus’ ‘yes’: I have come to do Your will, this is the ‘yes’ that Jesus carries with him throughout his life, until the cross,” he said. “Today,” he said, “is a beautiful day in which to thank God for showing us that path, but also for thinking about our lives.” The Feast was transferred to April 4 because it would have fallen on Good Friday.
Davis’ message ultimately taught students at the nation’s most recognizable Catholic university that saying “no” to God’s plan for the creation of life and to the Catholic Church’s teachings on human dignity can help women achieve worldly success.
Davis — who rose to stardom in the political world following her 2013 filibuster of pro-life legislation in Texas — ran the gamut of pro-abortion, anti-Catholic talking points during an event Monday hosted by the University of Notre Dame Department of Gender Studies. The department co-sponsored the event in coordination with the College Democrats of Notre Dame, the Progressive Student Alliance, Notre Dames, Women in Politics, and bridgeND.
The Notre Dame Department of Gender Studies touted Davis’ abortion advocacy in a description of the event posted on the department’s website, calling her “a modern-day Texas heroine”:
Former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis is widely recognized as a passionate advocate for women’s healthcare and other national issues which threaten our individual freedoms. Sen. Davis prides herself on the ability to see an issue from multiple perspectives, while forging a path to consensus and compromise. She skyrocketed to near celebrity status after her historic 13 hour filibuster in the Texas Senate to stop a legislative effort that would have dramatically reduced women’s access to healthcare services in her state.
Wendy Davis, a modern-day Texas heroine, appeared on the national scene as a State Senator during her 2013 filibuster that temporarily blocked devastating legislation seeking to limit women’s access to abortions and reproductive healthcare in the state of Texas. Before that, Davis fought tirelessly in the Texas legislature to further equality for women through education, fair lending, and equal pay initiatives. A single mother from humble beginnings who worked her way to Harvard Law, Davis shares her inspiring story of overcoming adversity, fear, and self-doubt to reach these incredible heights and underscores the importance of how every woman’s story can make a difference.
The event description was removed from the department’s website Monday afternoon, but a cached version is available here, and The Cardinal Newman Society captured an image of the web page. The College Democrats of Notre Dame used a similar description for their Facebook event promoting Davis’ talk.
A question and answer segment was moderated by Notre Dame Professor Candida Moss, who has “built herself a reputation for making outrageous statements about the Church,” as noted in the Newman Society’s previous reporting.
During her talk, titled, “Rising Up: From Single Mother to Harvard Law, How Every Woman Stands to Make a Difference,” Davis referred to abortion as a necessity for the advancement of women, praised Planned Parenthood, and said the U.S. Supreme Court decided when human life begins.
Davis told the gathering of students it would be wrong for them to ‘impose’ their ideas about abortion on others.
Davis told the gathering of students it would be wrong for them to “impose” their ideas about abortion on others. “The issue of [abortion] is not to impose our ideas on other people — particularly when we may not understand the position a person is in, and the decision she is making,” she said, according to the Notre Dame student newspaper The Observer.
Her position is similar to the one held by Vice President Joe Biden, whom Notre Dame is awarding its Laetare Medal — the “oldest and most prestigious honor accorded to American Catholics” — despite his support for abortion. Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne – South Bend, Ind., provided an excellent response to this scandal on March 14, but so far, The Observer has yet publish any reports online exploring the bishop’s statement.
In a personal moment, Davis told students she aborted her more than 20-week-old daughter “out of love.”
“[I was] post-20 weeks of pregnancy of a much-wanted pregnancy that I had waited years to have, and … our very much-wanted child was suffering from a fatal fetal brain abnormality,” she said. “What we were told was that if our child survived delivery, which she would likely not, that she would live a life of tremendous suffering — if she lived long at all — and we made a decision out of love.”
The legislation Davis filibustered in Texas was intended to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, when children can feel pain. Davis told students her abortion was the reason she started the filibuster.
‘It is easy to love the perfect; but how much we are willing to give to the imperfect is the true measure of love.’
The Catholic Church teaches that all human life, including unborn children with disabilities, “must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception,” and that abortion is never permissible. The Catholic pro-life group Human Life International (HLI) describes the abortion of children specifically because of their disabilities as “nothing more than eugenics, discrimination of the basest kind.”
“Those who abort a preborn child with genetic abnormalities are saying by their actions that a baby with disabilities has less of a right to live than a baby without such disabilities,” according to HLI. “A truly humane society would not kill its weakest members, but would rather love them and support them, even if their disabilities are incompatible with life.”
“Even if a baby will die shortly after she is born, what is a more civilized response — to hold and love her in the short time she has on this earth, or cut her apart with a vacuum curettage machine?” the pro-life group continued. “It is easy to love the perfect; but how much we are willing to give to the imperfect is the true measure of love.”
Turning to issues of education and jobs, Davis told students that the “connection between reproductive autonomy and economic opportunity in this country” is “very important.”
Praising Planned Parenthood, Davis said the various services provided by nation’s largest abortion provider “allowed her to climb the ranks her mother and grandmother could not.”
The Observer editor tweeted that Davis received a standing ovation at the conclusion of the event.
“Without my access to [Planned Parenthood], it was very likely I would have found myself with a second unplanned pregnancy,” Davis said, according to a tweet from an editor of The Observer.
She also linked her views on abortion and “reproductive autonomy” to an embrace of feminism, an argument pro-life feminists absolutely reject.
Taking questions from the crowd, Davis was asked, “At what point do you believe life begins and at what point do you think it should be protected?”
“I think the Supreme Court has had made that decision for us,” she responded. Davis reportedly responded to another question saying, “Let’s remember that abortion is a protected right in this country.” Davis’ answers were clearly not in line with church teaching, but there is no indication from reports on her comments that Catholic teaching was ever discussed during the event.
Laws legitimizing abortion are considered immoral and should be opposed, according to the Catholic Church. Saint John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae: “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.”
A few minutes later The Observer editor tweeted that Davis received a standing ovation at the conclusion of the event.
Responding to the event announcement, the Notre Dame alumni group Sycamore Trust stated in an email on Sunday: “A supporter also of same-sex marriage, Ms. Davis is a state version of Vice President Biden. There could scarcely be a more obvious contravention of the bishops’ declaration that ‘Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles’ and that they ‘should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.’”
Considering Notre Dame’s honor of Biden with the Laetare Medal, Sycamore Trust Chairman William Dempsey said, “[I]t is unsurprising that faculty units and student clubs don’t hesitate to put forward Ms. Davis as a model for modern women, a ‘Texas heroine,’ for championing ‘reproductive rights.’ … Those in governance who should check this sort of misadventure are themselves causing scandal of the same sort.”
But Dempsey added, “[L]et us not forget that Notre Dame is home to many faculty, students and organizations dedicated to the school’s Catholic mission. They are really the front line victims of these blows at the school’s Catholic reputation, and they deserve the prayerful support of all who love Notre Dame.”
This article originally appeared at the Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Daily.SimpleDB is a service primarily for storing and querying structured data (can e.g. be used for a product catalog with descriptive features per products, or an academic event service with extracted features such as event dates, locations, organizers and topics). (If one wants “heavier data” in SimpleDB, e.g. video or images, a good approach be to add paths to Hadoop DFS or S3 objects in the attributes instead of storing them directly)
Unstructured Search for SimpleDB
This posting presents an approach of how to add (flexible) unstructured search support to SimpleDB (with some preliminary query latency numbers below – and very preliminary python code). The motivation is:
Support unstructured search with very low maintenance Combine structured and unstructured search Figure out the feasibility of unstructured search on top of SimpleDB
The Structure of SimpleDB
SimpleDB is roughly a persistent hashtable of hashtables, where each row (a named item in the outer hashtable) has another hashtable with up to 256 key-value pairs (called attributes). The attributes can be 1024 bytes each, so 256 kilobyte totally in the values per row (note: twice that amount if you store data also as part of the keys + 1024 bytes in the item name). Check out Wikipedia for detailed SimpleDB storage characteristics.
Inverted files
Inverted files is a common way of representing indices for unstructured search. In their basic form they (logically) contain a word with a list of pages or files the word occurs on. When a query comes one looks up in the inverted file and finds pages or files where the words in the query occur. (note: if you are curious about inverted file representation check out the survey – Inverted files for text search engines)
One way of representing inverted files on SimpleDB is to map the inverted file on top of the attributes, i.e. have one SimpleDB domain with one word (term), and let the attributes store the list of URLs containing that word. Since each URL contains many words, it can be useful to have a separate SimpleDB domain containing a mapping from hash of URL to URL and use the hash URL in the inverted file (keeps the inverted file smaller). In the draft code we created 250 key-value attributes where each key was a string from “0” to “249” and each corresponding value contained hash of URLs (and positions of term) joined with two different string separators. If too little space per item – e.g. for stop words – one could “wrap” the inverted file entry with adding the same term combined with an incremental postfix (note: if that also gave too little space one could also wrap on simpledb domains).
Preliminary query latency results
Warning: Data sets used were NLTK‘s inaugural collection, so far from the biggest.
Conclusion: the results from 1000 fetches of inverted file entries are relatively stable clustered around 0.020s (20 milliseconds), which are promising enough to pursue further (but still early to decide given only tests on small data sets so far). Balancing with using e.g. memcached could be also be explored, in order to get average fetch time even lower.
Preliminary Python code including timing results (this was run on an Fedora large EC2 node somewhere in a US east coast data center).It’s getting more expensive to be poor.
Over the past two years, prices have risen more quickly for many of the things that low-income households spend a lot of their money on, such as rent and utilities. As a result, these households — families earning less than $20,000 — are experiencing a higher rate of inflation than the public at large even as their wages have stagnated, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of government data.
We tend to talk about inflation as a single number affecting the whole economy. But everyone experiences a slightly different rate of inflation for the simple reason that we all spend money on different things. The price of cigarettes matters primarily to smokers; the price of diapers affects mostly parents of young children; and the price of gas is a much bigger deal to someone with an 80-mile daily commute than to someone who only takes the car out for weekend excursions.
Overall inflation has been muted in recent years; consumer prices were up just 1.1 percent in February from a year earlier, far below their long-run average. But prices are rising a bit faster for both the poor and the wealthy, who have been hit harder by the ongoing increase in college tuitions. The result: from February 2012 to February 2014, the poorest fifth of households have experienced an annual rate of inflation that’s about two tenths of a percentage point higher than the population as a whole. The richest fifth have experienced inflation about a tenth of a point higher.
The difference in the rate of inflation between income groups is too small to matter much in the short-term, adding just a few dollars to the average family’s monthly bills. But the longer that low-income families continue to experience faster price increases, the bigger the effect will be, quickly adding up to hundreds of dollars a year in extra costs for the households least able to afford it.
This trend is unusual. Past studies have found that the rate of inflation tends to be more volatile for the poor, largely because they have historically spent more of their income on gasoline, which tends to see bigger price swings than other goods. But over the long-term, low-income families’ rate of inflation tracks closely to the average household’s. This time, however, the split has been persistent: The poorest 20 percent of American households have experienced a higher rate of inflation than the overall population every month for the past two years.
We can calculate inflation for different groups using the same basic methodology that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to compile the Consumer Price Index, the government’s best-known measure of inflation. The CPI aims to calculate changes in the cost of living by tracking the cost of a “basket of goods.” Every month, data collectors from the Bureau of Labor Statistics fan out across the country to check prices of thousands of goods and services, from eggs to auto repair.
That basket of goods is based on the Consumer Expenditure Survey, an annual survey of about 14,000 households that collects detailed data on how Americans spend their money. Government economists use the survey to determine not just what goes in the basket but how much weight to give to each item. Housing, for example, is the biggest expense, eating up close to a third of the average household’s annual spending, so changes to the price of shelter have a much bigger impact on the overall Consumer Price Index than changes in the price of shoes, which account for less than 1 percent of average spending.
To calculate the rate of inflation for a particular group of people, all we need to know is what they’re spending their money on — how their basket of goods differs from the one used to measure inflation for the overall population. We can do this using detailed data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which also collects information on households’ earnings, education and various demographic factors.
The table below breaks down household spending by income groups. As a percentage of total spending, there’s actually relatively little difference between the groups. Wealthier households spend far more than poorer ones in dollar terms; the wealthiest fifth of households spend about $100,000 a year, five times as much as the poorest fifth. But both groups devote about 3 percent of their total spending to clothes and between 11 and 13 percent to food.
Still, even small percentage differences in various categories can add up. Low-income households spend 54 percent of their money on the bare necessities: housing, utilities and food prepared at home. The wealthiest households devote 44 percent of their spending to those areas, leaving them more to spend on entertainment, education and restaurant meals.
Drill down into more detailed categories and the differences become starker. The poor spend much less of their money on new vehicles (less than 1 percent, versus 5 percent for the wealthiest fifth) and more on electricity (4 percent versus 3 percent). They spend less at full-service restaurants and more on fast food; more on cigarettes and less on liquor; more on laundry and less on “domestic services.”
Since the prices of those goods rise and fall at different rates, the rate of inflation for any given group of people depends on how much they spend on each item. Prices for women’s dresses, for example, are up 7.8 percent over the past year, while gasoline prices are down 8.1 percent. So, all else equal, bike-riding shopaholics have experienced a higher rate of inflation than SUV drivers who prefer pants.
To figure out how inflation varies by income, I divided the population into five groups by earnings, then calculated how much different income groups spend on each of more than 150 goods and services. Then I applied those spending shares to the price changes for each item to construct a re-weighted Consumer Price Index — the rate of inflation experienced by each income group.
According to that analysis, the rich and poor have experienced faster inflation than those in the middle, but for different reasons. For low-income families, the biggest cause was rising rents, which are up 5.6 percent over the past two years, more than double the overall rate of inflation. The poor spend significantly more on housing than other groups, so rising costs hit them harder. Similarly, low income families devote a disproportionate share of their spending to car insurance, where prices are up 8.8 percent over the past two years, and electricity, where prices are up 4.7 percent. And the poor spend relatively little on televisions, computers and other technology items, which have seen prices fall in recent years.
Wealthier households, on the other hand, were much more affected by the 8.6 percent increase in college tuition because they spend two and a half times as much of their income on higher education than the average family. They also spend more on new cars, restaurant meals and various services that have seen faster than average rates of inflation.
This analysis doesn’t perfectly reflect the changing cost of living for different groups. The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t publish sufficiently detailed information to know whether, for example, the price of organic chicken (presumably bought more often by wealthier customers) is rising more quickly or slowly than non-organic chicken. Additionally, my analysis of what people buy is based on their spending over a two-year period (2009 and 2010) and doesn’t account for how spending patterns have changed — and, importantly, how they might have changed differently for different groups. Poorer consumers might be more likely to switch from beef to chicken if beef prices rise, for example, or quicker to cut back on driving when gas prices increase. If so, my estimate may overstate the rate of inflation they actually experience.
On the other hand, lower-income households generally have less flexibility in how they spend their money. Among the biggest drivers of inflation for the poor were rising prices for rent, utilities, health care and car insurance — not exactly discretionary items. Indeed, other evidence suggests rising rents are pinching many household budgets.
Also pinching budgets: stagnant incomes. The average household income for the poorest 20 percent of Americans barely rose faster than the official rate of inflation in 2012. If you account for the higher rate of inflation they experienced, as this analysis suggests, then their income actually fell. The government hasn’t yet released 2013 income data, but there is little evidence of an acceleration in wages: Weekly earnings for workers in many low-paying sectors such as the hotel and restaurant industries rose at or below the rate of inflation in 2013.
Higher earners, on the other hand, belong to the only income group that saw incomes rise faster than inflation between 2010 and 2012; recent gains in the stock market suggest their earnings growth has likely continued since then.
It’s hard to know whether the divergence in the rates of inflation between different income groups will continue. Real estate developers are racing to build apartments in many cities, but rents are likely to keep rising until supply catches up with demand. On the other hand, there are signs that the long rise in college tuitions may at last be slowing. Health care inflation has slowed too, but no one is sure how long that trend will continue.
The overall rate of inflation, however, is likely to rise as the economy improves. The Federal Reserve expects prices to rise faster over the next two years, gradually returning to the Fed’s long-term target rate of 2 percent annually. Few consumers will welcome faster price growth, but if that inflation is the result of faster economic growth, it might also bring a more welcome development: faster wage gains.South Dakota could very soon become the first state to pass a bill requiring transgender youth to use any bathroom or locker room other than the correct one. This bill has passed both the state house and senate, and now is sitting on Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s desk waiting for his signature.
HB 1008 says that public school restrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms that are designated for student use “shall be designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.” The bill doesn’t just extend to schools, though, adding “any public school student participating in a school sponsored activity off school premises which includes being in a state of undress in the presence of other students shall use those rooms designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.”
The bill crudely defines “biological sex” as “the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth.” There are a couple problems with this. First of all, this is a very limited and arbitrary definition of biological sex. It makes absolutely no sense that a trans girl should have to use the same bathroom as a boy. Second of all, the only way to check to see if students are breaking this rule would be to either keep track of every student’s chromosomes (that doesn’t sound very much like limited government) or to look at nude pictures of the students as infants.
The bill does throw trans students a bone, though, allowing a “reasonable accommodation” like a unisex restroom, single-occupancy restroom or faculty restroom, as long as it doesn’t cause the school district an “undue hardship.” Because nothing makes a student feel safer and more accepted than having to use a separate bathroom away from all the other students in order to protect those other students from them.
While there’s been a very understandable and justified uproar against the bathroom bill, the House State Affairs Committee also voted 8-4 to advance HB 1209, which states that “any public body of the state or its political subdivisions” (which includes school districts) that accepts any information on a South Dakota birth certificate as official (for instance, to establish a student’s age in order to determine eligibility for school sports and schools) shall now accept all information on that birth certificate as official. This means that trans kids who want to play sports or simply go to school in the state would no longer be able to play on the correct team or be officially recognized as the correct gender at school. Schools would have to look at the sex they were assigned at birth, as listed on their birth certificate, and take that as their official gender.
This disgusting, discriminatory and oppressive rabbit hole gets even deeper when we find out that the South Dakota legislature has also tried to pass two more bills, one (HB 1112) that expressly denies trans students from playing sports on the correct teams, and one (HB 1107) that allows those who receive taxpayer funds to discriminate against gay people, single mothers, and — you guessed it — trans people.
How did we get here? In my time writing about trans issues and anti-trans legislature, I’ve never noticed South Dakota as a particularly terrible place for trans people to live, so what changed? One notable thing about the support for these bills is that it’s mainly coming from several of the same people. If you look at who sponsored or introduced the bills, you’ll find the same names on two, three or even all four of the lists.
One of these names is former Evangelical Pastor, Rep. Craig Scott, who called LGBTQ people “sexual deviants” and “the perverse” in a 2010 sermon decrying government support for LGBTQ people, “abortionists” and other groups. In support of his HB 1107, the one that would let people and businesses discriminate against LGBTQ people and single mothers, he said “The real victims of intolerance and discrimination in our day are those who conduct their lives according to a belief regarding marriage and human sexuality. Our founding fathers never intended erotic freedom to trump religion’s freedom.”
Rep. Fred Deutsch is another person who appears more than once, and is the prime sponsor on HB 1008, the bathroom bill that’s in front of the governor right now. In a blog post called “Bicycles, Baby Parts and Bathroom Privacy,” he said that he sponsored the bill because he’s worried about what he sees happening in schools across America. According to Rep. Deutsch, “Federal bureaucrats, without the force of federal law, are threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that do not allow transgender students full, unrestricted access to facilities of the opposite biological sex.” Imagine that, allowing kids full access to the correct bathroom. He continues, “I especially don’t want our children to be required by the federal government to shower, change or use restrooms with other young people of the opposite biological sex.” Rep. Deutsch clearly has a very mistaken view of how sex and gender work and what transgender people are. A 12-year-old transgender girl is in no way the “opposite biological sex” to a 12-year-old cisgender girl.
Rep. Lynn DiSanto, who is a sponsor on three of these bills, said that she supports the bathroom bill because she sees it as a proactive measure against trans students who might stand up for their rights in the future. “I wouldn’t say that there’s already a big problem,” she said, adding later, “It’s coming no matter what. If we do nothing it’s coming, if we do something it’s coming.” At the same meeting, Rep. Mike Verchio, a sponsor on all four bills, said with a smug look on his face that he supports the bathroom bill because “I don’t want my 15-year-old neighbor boy claiming that he’s transgender, taking a shower with my 18-year-old daughter.” Neither of these two lawmakers say that they’re trying to address a problem that actually exists, but instead are supporting the bill in order to fight off transgender boogeymen that live only in their heads.
Another sponsor on all four bills, Sen. Brock Greenfield, claimed that the bathroom bill was not brought to the floor out of contempt, but then went on to say “Do you feel it appropriate for a 13-year-old girl to be exposed to the anatomy of a boy? Or for a boy to be exposed to the anatomy of a girl because of the decisions we make out here?” While it seems to me that he does have contempt for trans kids, it could simply be that he doesn’t care enough about them to try to understand them, listen to them or see them for who they are.
Others, including Sen. David Omdahl were less coy about their hatred of trans students. Sen. Omdahl said, “I’m sorry if you’re so twisted you don’t know who you are,” “it’s about protection for our kids” and “they’re treating the wrong part of the anatomy, they ought to be treating it up here” pointing to his head. Rep. Steve Haugaard added that being transgender is a “choice of lifestyle” and that “for us to perpetuate confusion in the lives of anyone is a disservice to them.”
If we examine Gov. Daugaard’s record, things aren’t exactly looking good for South Dakota’s trans residents. Gov. Daugaard, a Republican, has been consistently far right on issues throughout his political career, and especially on social issues. In 2010, on his campaign website, he wrote “I supported and voted for the constitutional amendment in 2006 that defined marriage in South Dakota as being between one man and one woman. The traditional family is the foundation of our society, and it should be protected. Although I do not support discrimination against any class of people, I also do not think that individual groups should be given special privileges or be allowed to redefine the centuries-old institution of marriage.” Additionally, as recently as 2014, he said that he agrees that “Judeo-Christian values established a framework of morality which permitted our system of limited government.”
There is some hope though. Gov. Daugaard had originally said about the bathroom bill that “as far as he was aware, he hadn’t met a transgender person and likely wouldn’t do so before deciding on the measure so as to ensure objectivity in his decision,” but recently changed his mind and agreed to meet with a group of transgender students. Hopefully when he sees that they’re human beings and real children, he’ll see just how damaging this law would be. There are also a few days when people can contact Gov. Daugaard to let him know that South Dakota residents are not in favor of any of these laws. Furthermore, based on what the US Department of Education announced last year, South Dakota schools would be in violation of Title IX if they don’t allow transgender kids to use the correct bathrooms. So, even if these bills are signed into law by Gov. Daugaard, they’ll likely be challenged and eventually defeated (although they can still harm trans kids in the meantime).
It’s pretty clear that one of the main reasons South Dakota lawmakers are sponsoring and voting in favor of these bills is because of the increased visibility, but not increased humanization, of trans people and especially trans women. A few years ago, most of these lawmakers probably thought that trans people only existed as sex workers and perverts in Leftist cities like New York and San Francisco. It wasn’t until trans characters started appearing in more movies and TV shows, and trans people started publicly speaking out for their rights that they realized that there had been trans people in their very own state this whole time.
It gets worse, as much |
, the 1982 Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, one of the first to establish a link between cholesterol and heart disease, involved 12,866 men and no women; the 1995 Physicians’ Health Study, which found aspirin to reduce the risk of heart attack, involved 22,071 men and, again, no women.
The focus on men extended to medical education as well. “When we were taught about it at medical school [in the 1970s and ‘80s], no one explicitly said, ‘This is a man’s disease,’” said the New England Journal of Medicine editor Harlan Krumholz, who started studying heart disease in young women in the early ‘90s as a medical researcher. “The case studies at that time, 20 or 30 years ago, were focusing on the man as the prototype of the problem.” Krumholz recalled the iconic drawings of Frank Netter, arguably the most famous medical illustrator of the 20th century—Netter’s illustrations, which medical students still use to learn about human anatomy and a variety of diseases, only rarely depicted women with heart disease.
The absence of female subjects in medical textbooks and in research papers means many doctors simply didn’t know how to treat heart disease in women, or even how to recognize it. Symptoms can differ by gender: Men are likely to get chest pains when they’re having a heart attack, for example, but women may instead feel discomfort in the neck, jaw, shoulder, back, or arm. Many women also experience nausea, vomiting, or a feeling similar to indigestion, as Larko did.Gov. Jerry Brown, who is so far ahead in his re-election bid that he only recently started campaigning, has been asked any number of times why he hasn’t done more to lay out an agenda for a fourth term.
On Wednesday, he appeared to have had enough.
“No,” Brown said when asked at a campaign stop in Modesto to address his reluctance to discuss his plans. “Quite the opposite. I have communicated more completely to the people of California than any other governor in history.”
“How so?” the reporter asked.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee
Brown guffawed.
“This is my 12th year,” he said. “No one’s ever had 12 years of constant press conferences and discussions and letters and what do they call those things – state of the state speeches. Three separate inaugurations. So what don’t you know? What don’t you know that you think I could tell you now in front of all these people? Because I’d really love to get a new opening here to propound one of my many deep thoughts.”
Brown, standing in front of a red barn in the afternoon sun, pointed his index finger and talked about managing California’s water infrastructure and its budget, and he said it will be a “big job” to continue implementing prison realignment, in which the state shifted responsibility for certain offenders from prisons to county control.
However, Brown said, “You raise a point that I want to tell.”
“In back of your question is the idea that the only thing that counts is whatever happened yesterday. We want new, we want novelty, you know, we want ideological or substantive trinkets that you can report or that other people can talk about,” Brown said. “But the way you build a newspaper or a college or a state or a prison or a water project, it takes time, and taking time of a leader, of experts, of collaboration, not running over people, working with people. That’s a full-time job.”
By this time, Brown could have stopped. But it was his third campaign event of the day, following appearances in San Diego and Arvin, and the Democratic governor, despite being nearly two hours late, was on a roll.
“So I said water, I said the budget, because there have never been five years of budget stability in California,” Brown said. “So just saying that is like promising what has never been promised before, or at least never delivered.”
He discussed education challenges ranging from the common core curriculum to tuition rates at universities.
“By the way, I didn’t even mention the Delta conveyance or the storage – you know, above ground, below ground – plenty of work there, plenty of meeting with people. And then besides the water, we’ve got, what else have we got? Oh, we’ve got that train to move from north to south, I mean, getting that thing built. That’s going to take some time. I mean, that’s more than a 15-minute coffee break.”
“Now what else? You think there’s still too much time?”
The exchange went on for five minutes.
“Look, you won’t print half of what I say. You won’t. I dare you to, OK? So this whole canard about, ‘What are you going to do, Brown?’ Think about it.”
Brown got a laugh from his supporters. But in focusing almost exclusively on a $7.5 billion water bond and budget reserve measure on the ballot, Brown has rarely discussed his agenda for a fourth term.
It was just before speaking with reporters, during remarks to the crowd, that Brown offered a less explicit view about the future that is more in keeping with his style.
“A fourth term will be very different than a first term or a second term, and it will be even different than a third term,” he said. “Now what that will all be, you just, you know, fasten your seat belt, it’ll be a very exciting ride.”I’d invite you to read two articles today, one from the Left and one from the Right, outlining different aspects of the systematic repression and persecution that characterizes much of the Muslim world today.
Over at CNN, Nina Burleigh outlines our government’s truly embarrassing non-response to allegedly “allied” governments that imprison rape victims. After outlining story after story that made news only because the targets of persecution were Western women, Ms. Burleigh gets to the political heart of the matter:
The U.S., incredibly, has had three female secretaries of state in a row who never put this issue on the table despite many meetings with kings and princes. We should be applying much more political and diplomatic pressure on these countries to give women their basic human rights. We should also be supporting the brave women in these countries fighting for change.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Exactly so. The treatment of women in much of the Middle East is so abysmal it has to be seen to be believed. But they are of course not the only victims of oppression.
Today at the Hoover Institute, Bruce Thornton writes about the “Christian Tragedy in the Muslim World”:
Few people realize that we are today living through the largest persecution of Christians in history, worse even than the famous attacks under ancient Roman emperors like Diocletian and Nero. Estimates of the numbers of Christians under assault range from 100-200 million. According to one estimate, a Christian is martyred every five minutes. And most of this persecution is taking place at the hands of Muslims. Of the top fifty countries persecuting Christians, forty-two have either a Muslim majority or have sizeable Muslim populations.
It is a sign that we have utterly lost our minds that many Americans worry far more about “Islamophobia” than they do about this very real oppression, and many Americans will mock critics of the Muslim world as bigots or extremists for condemning conduct that should shock the conscience of any civilized person.
It’s one thing to be so blinded by multicultural nonsense (failing to appreciate that it is the Muslim world — not America — that desperately needs to embrace “diversity”) that we can’t clearly identify evil, it’s another thing entirely to subsidize oppression on a grand scale. Read this ABC News chart of American aid recipients and weep:
I’m no math major, but even a lawyer can see that we subsidize oppressive Muslim governments to the tune of roughly $8 billion per year — collectively far more than we give our closest Middle Eastern ally (and vibrant Democracy), Israel. We’ve certainly debated aid for Egypt in recent weeks and months, but note that Pakistan receives far more aid than Egypt. At the ACLJ we have an office in Pakistan that works overtime defending Christians from trumped-up blasphemy charges, and gruesome tales of Pakistani intolerance are legion. Shall we also mention Osama bin Laden’s hiding place for the better part of a decade, or the Pakistani intelligence service’s spotty (at best) record on fighting the Afghan Taliban? Pakistan has American blood on its hands and American dollars in its banks.
For too long — through Republican and Democratic administrations — we’ve turned away from abuse of women, ignored the persecution of Christians, made excuses for terrorism, and attached few meaningful conditions to our billions upon billions of dollars in aid. Instead, we’ve wrung our hands about our own “imperialism,” vigilantly policed our alleged Islamophobia, and kept writing checks to intolerant regimes — even as extremism flourished.
Advertisement
At some point this policy moves from naïve, to foolish, to pathetic, and — ultimately — to evil. Right now, we’re pathetic. If we keep paying for this oppression, we’ll be complicit in evil.Scream Factory: Army of Darkness Collector's Edition Blu-ray Release Detailed Posted September 9, 2015 03:34 PM by Webmaster
Scream Factory, the horror-thriller offshoot of independent film distributor Shout Factory, has detailed its upcoming Collector's Edition Blu-ray release of Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness (1992), starring Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, and Richard Grove. The three disc set will be available for purchase on October 27.
Synopsis: Forced to lead a makeshift Dark Ages army against the demonic Deadites, who possess all the deadly magic of hell, the shotgun-toting, chainsaw-armed, reluctant 20th century time traveler Ash must save the living from the dead, rescue his medieval girlfriend and get back to his own time.
SPECIAL FEATURES AND TECHNICAL SPECS:
DISC ONE Theatrical Version (81 min.) 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (1.78:1), DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 & 2.0
NEW Medieval Times: The Making Of "Army Of Darkness" featuring interviews with star & co-producer Bruce Campbell, actors Marcus Gilbert, Ted Raimi, Timothy Quill, Richard Grove, Bill Moseley, Patricia Tallman and Angela Featherstone, director of photography Bill Pope, editor Bob Murawski, production designer Anthony Tremblay, composer Joseph Lo Duca, costume designer Ida Gearon, special make-up effects artists Howard Berger, Tony Gardner, Robert Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero, "Pit Bitch" performer and effects artist William Bryan, mechanical effects artist Gary Jones, first assistant director John Cameron, visual effects supervisor William Mesa, and stunt coordinator Christopher Doyle (96 min.)
Original Ending
Original Opening With Optional Commentary by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell
Deleted Scenes With Optional Commentary by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell
Theatrical Trailer
TV Spots
Home Video Promo DISC TWO Director's Cut (96 min.) 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (1.78:1), DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 & 2.0
Audio Commentary with director Sam Raimi, actor Bruce Campbell and co-writer Ivan Raimi
NEW Additional Behind-The-Scenes Footage From KNB Effects (55 min.)
Vintage Creating The Deadites Featurette (21 min.)
Vintage "Making Of" Featurette
Extended Interview Clips with Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert DISC THREE International Cut (88 min.) 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (1.78:1), DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 & 2.0
NEW 4K Scan of The International Interpositive
Television Version With Additional Footage (90 min., Standard Definition (1.33:1), DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0)
Theatrical Trailer
NEW Still Galleries With Rare Behind-The-Scenes Photos from production designer Anthony Tremblay, visual effects supervisor William Mesa, and special make-up effects artists Tony Gardner and KNB EFX, Inc. (Over 200 Stills)
NEW Still Gallery Of Props And Rare Photos from the collection of super fan Dennis Carter Jr.
NEW Storyboards for Deleted or Alternate Scenes
Vintage The Men Behind The Army Featurette (19 min.) ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM SCREAM FACTORY
Even being as detailed as we could here, we anticipate that there are questions you may still have about the cuts of the film. Our Blu-ray producer has provided a couple of Q&As that we felt might come up and that some may be curious about:
Q: Is the U.S. Theatrical version a new transfer?
A: Unfortunately, we were not able to do a new transfer of the theatrical cut (which was
provided by our partners at Universal). However, we did do additional color correction.
Q: Why is the International version a 4K transfer and not the Director's Cut?
A: Our original intention was to do a new 4K scan on the director's cut, so we started with
elements that were available in the MGM vault. Unfortunately, we could not find all of the
additional footage (film and audio) for the 96 minute Director's Cut.
Source: Blu-ray.com | Permalink | [Country settings]
Sort by popularity Sort by date
Top contributor willo007 Sep 09, 2015 DAY ONE! RiffFan924 Sep 09, 2015 YESSSSSS!!!! Will gladly get rid of the Universal Blu I have for this!
SUPERMAN311 Sep 09, 2015 This sounds awesome!! Even has the featurette from the previous blu-ray (so that's gone). This appears to be the definitive set and I no longer have to keep the previous releases. The new Medieval Times: The Making Of "Army Of Darkness" documentary sounds great!! Well-done Scream Factory!!
filmgrainiac Sep 09, 2015 what a bummer.... they are using the same exact terrible transfer of the theatrical cut that Universal botched up BIG TIME. "Army of Darkness makes its highly-anticipated Blu-ray debut with a disappointing 1080p, 1.85:1-framed transfer. The transfer appears to be the victim of noise reduction; it looks overly processed and far too sharp, lending to it an artificial appearance rather than a pleasant, film-like look."...and this is what they think is worthy of releasing....AGAIN??? What a DISAPPOINTMENT!! Why put something out if they're not gonna do it right? So frustrating!
Top contributor Socko Sep 09, 2015 "A: Our original intention was to do a new 4K scan on the director's cut, so we started with additional footage (film and audio) for the 96 minute Director's Cut. "
And then?
English is not my native language, but it seems that answer is not really an answer or I have no clue what it says exactly.
Anyway, I'm thrilled by this fully packed release! LexInHD Sep 09, 2015 This is probably rushed because of the Starz series which hits a few days after the BD release, on Halloween. I'd rather delay the BD so we can get a 4K remaster of the DC.
Catastrophe Sep 09, 2015 There's info missing from the answer to the second question. This is Scream Factory's full answer: "A: Our original intention was to do a new 4K scan on the directors cut, so we started with elements that were available in the MGM vault. Unfortunately, we could not find all of the additional footage (film and audio) for the 96 minute Directors Cut."
Catastrophe Sep 09, 2015 Either way, I'm so looking forward to this release. Not ashamed to say that Army is my favourite of the original three Evil Dead films.
Cactus Sep 09, 2015 So we are STILL going to wait for the definitive release.
madmojo Sep 09, 2015 Seriously? 4 cuts of the film, tons of extras, and their hands were tied by Universal on doing a new transfer for the theatrical cut (I guess the other cuts may be different?), and we still have complainers? Wow.
JoeBuck Sep 09, 2015 I dont know why Universal is so intent on pushing that garbage version of the theatrical cut. Still my favorite version of the film.
Still looks like a great release but agree with Cactus, it wont be definitive until this mistake is finally corrected.
Mark Smith Sep 09, 2015 Considering what is currently available now..good enough for me on day 1. More than I expected actually for bonus features.
SUPERMAN311 Sep 09, 2015 Instead of saying "This appears to be the definitive set," I should have said it's the best release yet and more than likely the version to own!!
BobbyPeru Sep 09, 2015 So are they at least going to remove the DNR from the U.S. release or am I going to have to keep the UK release? Riddler95 Sep 09, 2015 I am happy to see that the Collector's Edition of Army of Darkness will be extremely loaded with extras. I am slightly annoyed that they will be using the same transfer for the Theatrical Cut from the Screwhead Edition Blu-Ray, but I'll let it go considering how much content this new Collector's Edition will have.
I've never seen the Director's Cut so I am happy that I will finally be able to. It would have been nice if they did a 4K scan of the Director's Cut but I'm sure that they have done the best they can with the film elements they have been able to locate.
I guess I'll give away my old Screwhead Edition Blu-Ray since this new Collector's Edition annihilates it.
yoda-sama Sep 09, 2015 Even though it is only standard definition (which is a shame), I am still thrilled to see the Television Version appear for purchase in some fashion, it is easily my favorite cut (now that I think about it, hopefully it won't be stuck with TV censorship). Truly would like to see something close to the spirit of the Television Version properly cleaned up and elevated to a definitive cut status, as there is really no clear mix of all the best elements to rally around as it stands.
gjk2012 Sep 09, 2015 Not really a big fan of this sequel but with everything included I might just get this.
anomaly7 Sep 09, 2015 Will there ever be a boxset of all the films? That's what I'm waiting for.
Ray_Rogers Sep 09, 2015 Interesting.
CandyStalker Sep 09, 2015 I can hold my breath for a long time.
Poya Sep 09, 2015 Not to be a "complainer" and I do appreciate the new extras, I guess I'll have to wait on this. I don't necessarily trust Scream/Shout, after the whole Escape/Mad Max situation.
OldPangYau Sep 09, 2015 I have waited 15 years for this... well, at least 15 years to upgrade since getting the 2-disc DVD back in fall of 2000 ;-) It's also nice to see the TV cut as a bonus, considering it has footage missing from the three main cuts (Ash's full first meeting with Arthur, Ash being tricked by the reflection in the windmill house, etc). The extras alone make this worth the upgrade, IMO. Yes, the lack of a new transfer of the theatrical cut sucks, but I'll take the superior DC transfer AND the new 4K mastered international cut... especially since that's the one cut I've never seen :-P
Jonathan D Sep 09, 2015 I'll hold judgement until we see how the Theactrical cut looks here. Grindhouse took a inferior elements from the botched Arrow release of The Beyond, and with "color correction" and tweaking, made a damn fine looking disc. The extras here are stacked and make up for what might not be perfect PQ. How many Screwhead Editions hitting eBay tonite, I wonder? Thinking I'll pair mine with the early ED2 blu that I have collecting dust.
Kill Bren Sep 09, 2015 will buy based on the a/v quality of the director's cut
jradford Sep 09, 2015 I'm all in on this...can't wait! film11 Sep 09, 2015 My copy of the DC is on the standard DVD "Boomstick Edition" and isn't even 5.1 Being able to now see it in HD/DTS plus a 4K of the International (which I've never seen...anyone know the differences?) will be a treat. Scream Factory, you have my thanks for the time and effort put into this release and you will have certainly my money.
Rich65 Sep 09, 2015 Will be getting this for sure but I will still keep my Universal blu, I got it signed by Bruce Campbell. Looking forward to seeing the different cuts. uther Sep 09, 2015 Wonder if it's going to be the over sharpened US BD or the slightly better pq of the HD-DVD version?
IP scan? Pass. Gac-Man Sep 09, 2015 We are finally getting all the cuts of the film!! jeffarent Sep 09, 2015 Since Universanl owns the film, why wouldn't they have the footage? Why would MGM have it?
DrVenkman99 Sep 09, 2015 I can't seem to find anything on the international cut. Anyone know the differences between this and the director's cut? Top contributor donthitpause Sep 09, 2015 THIS
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Army-of-Darkness-Blu-ray/82960/
Top contributor MrClarke Sep 10, 2015 wow... i never even knew there WERE so many cuts of this movie... can't wait to pick this one up!
Xen11 Sep 10, 2015 HOLY SH!# THEY LISTENED
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=16986
And not only are they giving us the theatrical, directors, and television cuts, but they went one step beyond and gave us the International Cut IN 4K!!!!
Take my money and gimme some sugar, baby.
format916 Sep 10, 2015 if never seen this movie front to back, and evil dead is not my favorite series...but looks like a great package. reaperx187 Sep 10, 2015 I'm definately in for this one price might be up there due that it's 3 disc but there are always Scream Factory sale's though. jerad Sep 10, 2015 Let's just hope they do not add dnr or edge enhancement in international cut or the directors cut.
Pondosinatra Sep 10, 2015 Shop smart.....shop S-mart. omahajon Sep 10, 2015 Day 1, stop complaining.
Dylan34 Sep 10, 2015 Does anyone know if the Universal master for the theatrical cut of AoD has the DNR/EE baked in? If not, then it has a shot of looking bettter than the Screwhead Edition. Especially with the Color correction. jerad Sep 10, 2015 Dylan you must not of read this?
Q: Is the U.S. Theatrical version a new transfer?
A: Unfortunately, we were not able to do a new transfer of the theatrical cut (which was
provided by our partners at Universal). However, we did do additional color correction.
Grifter02 Sep 10, 2015 @jeffarent
Universal holds the US version, MGM holds the international version. Sounds like MGM played ball by giving them original elements, Universal didn't.
Grifter02 Sep 10, 2015 @jerad
Dylan's question is valid. Just because Universal's Blu-Ray doesn't look so good, doesn't mean that's how the source looked. It's possible the DNR is not in the source and was only added for the Blu-Ray. Unlikely, but possible.
Top contributor JackForrester Sep 10, 2015 Groovy!
Brian81 Sep 10, 2015 The HD DVD release isn't bad, so having to use Uni's master isn't a dealbreaker. It's better than a lot of the other Universal masters that have been handed over to Scream Factory (ex. Darkman). Scream might go overboard on cleaning it up, though. It's kind of dirty looking.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/150-blu-ray-software/1180060-army-darkness-dvd-uhd-mpeg-2-hd-dvd-blu-ray-comparison-pix.html
jabba359 Sep 10, 2015 @jerad
DNR is applied after the scan/transfer. So depending on if Scream Factory got the transfer straight off the film or if they got handed one with additional post-processing (DNR/EE), we could get different end results from a single "transfer".
mongojr Sep 10, 2015 Holy $#!+
Whomever commented early this year that Scream Factory was lame should eat their words! ABCABBMovie Sep 10, 2015 I'm not too knowledgeable about the Evil Dead series, but is the Theatrical Cut considered the best cut of the four? If so, why?
Either way, I already own the first two movies (the good editions of them, anyways), and I'll DEFINITELY be picking this up. One of my oldest friends, who HATED horror movies and gore, still loved this film for how funny it is. jerad Sep 10, 2015 @jabba359 scream factory is known for taking old outdated transfers and only changing the color. They never said in does not have digital noise reduction or edge enhancement so they told us the only thing that is different is the color. Sure the codec or the disk size has changed but considering the film is under 2 hours it would only help eliminate compression issues if there were any from the 2009 transfer. It does not say all new digital scan of the theatrical cut. Perfect example is escape from new York they botched the announcement saying an all new 2k scan when only the color was drastically different!
Dylan34 Sep 11, 2015 @Jared. The DNR and EE is usually done after the initial scan is made is why I was asking. Sometimes it's baked into the master though. Hopefully, that's not the case with AoD. If its not, then we have a better shot at a different looking disc than what Universal released. This Scream disc is being framed at 1.78:1 Universal's 1.85:1 framing so that's great new that they're not using their encode.
Yautja_Warrior Sep 11, 2015 Will it be Region Free or Locked? Do they normally lock their blu-rays? jerad Sep 11, 2015 @Dylan34 I understand how film is made pre and post process. What i was trying to say is that scream factory in the past has never removed dnr or ee in transfers they are given from Universal. When the Halloween box set came out they left season of the witch alone.they could of given it a new 2k scan without the dnr and upgraded the audio to 5.1.same with they live,phantasm. jerad Sep 11, 2015 All scream factory blurays are region a locked.they have said in the past it cost alot of money to make them region free
HD Canuck Sep 11, 2015 Would be awesome if Scream released the entire Ash franchise ala Halloween. Top contributor Nailwraps Sep 11, 2015 @Jerad
@Grifter02
Grifter02 is right. My theory is, for all we know, the theatrical version transfer Universal supplied to Shout! is a DNR/EE free version (not that I don't have a problem with the transfer we have now).
duke4711 Sep 11, 2015 I would have liked a 4k transfer on the director's cut, but past releases dictate (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, et al) that we can't have everything we want. We merely take what we can get. This is probably the best that we will ever see for Army of Darkness, or at least the best for probably another 15 years. Day one for me!
THGhost Sep 11, 2015 Will definitely be getting this... eventually. Costs a bit too much right now.
Morsoth Sep 11, 2015 Is the International Cut (88 min.) the same as the Region 3 Director's Cut DVD (Hong Kong) with the extra scene with Bad Ash and Sheila?
I have this DVD and I hope to finally have this version in HD!!
insomniac013 Sep 12, 2015 This could very well be the definitive version of this movie, and the best release of the year!
Yautja_Warrior Sep 12, 2015 Did the DC footage ever get cleaned up for a blu-ray release? as the drop in quality for the extended scenes on the dvd was really bad, like bootleg VHS bad.
Owning these movies multiple times on dvd and the UK Trilogy blu-ray pack (with Directors Cut in Standard Def) I never felt the need to rush out and buy it on blu-ray, seems like this will be the one to get now though, with it having all versions and lots of extras.
tvine2000 Sep 12, 2015 I think we all know by now, new transfers are not cheap,and studios pick what they consider is classic film to restore or remaster. It's a shame however during this time we had the grain haters out there that wanted smooth,clean looking movies like video games. Universal was one studio that listened to the grain haters and gave in with a bunch of shitty looking blu-rays. I doubt will ever see a good looking transfer of AOD, because right now studios are busy working on their 4k blu-rays for release later this year or the beginning of 2016. If AOD is to get a new transfer that's where it will show up. We never got new restorations of the first 6 star trek films and never will unless they show up on 4k blu-ray. OK WOK got a restoration, but the others..nothing but clean ups If a studio isn't willing to put the money into what is considered there cash cow, why would Universal put a penny into AOD.
Army of Darkness is a cult favorite, which is usually a small following compared to a classic film like for example the Wizard of oz,which was restored. So guys and gals stop thinking because we buy Blu-ray the studios are going to give in to every film we want restored. Its about money and the making of..it!!If they can get away with what we consider a shit looking movie, they will time and time again. I suspect when 4K blu-ray starts to take off (and it will) will have this debate once again,as we will when 8k comes out. accept the fact this is the way things are going to go. Unless they have come up with post production tools to clean up film elements, DNR and EE are here to stay.
luckySevens Sep 12, 2015 Saw this in a dollar theater. Have it on dvd, Blu. Now this will be hard to resist.
Jimmy James Sep 13, 2015 @luckySevens
I've lost track of how many copies/variants of this I own, but will probably end up getting this one too (either as a gift or just buying it myself).
I know that I've got at least two Laserdiscs of it though, the Japanese import and the US one.
kdo Sep 13, 2015 Once again Shout/Scream is way late to the party here, and as usual, with really nothing to offer that hasn't already been made available on previous releases, except for some new extras. My guess is that most avid Blu-ray fans have already purchased either the French or German offerings that came out almost 3 years ago now, which included the superior Director's Cut version that utilized the MGM film print used for the highly sought after Hong Kong DVD. Considering the ongoing issues Shout has continually had regarding its video transfers, if I were going to buy this, it would be only for the bonus features. Also, does anyone really care about a color-corrected Theatrical Cut for this film? The TC is so poor in comparison to the Director's Cut, I'd never even watch it again, and I think the feeling is the same for many die-hard fans of the film. The fact that the original ending was altered to the lame S-Mart sequence, still annoys me to this day. A fourth sequel with Ash fighting the Deadites of the future, post-apocalyptic England he awoke in, could have been so enjoyable. Instead, what do we get? A new, lame looking upcoming TV series...
luckySevens Sep 13, 2015 @Jimmy James
That's quite a collection you own. Seems we are all obsessed with the Trilogy and AOD.
pksmith74 Sep 14, 2015 Can't wait for this! Finally having all cuts of this film is too good to pass up. Going to have to stop by my local S-Mart and pick myself up a copy! jerad Sep 14, 2015 @HD Canuck anchor bay owns the rights to the original evil dead and lionsgate owns the rights to evil dead 2 so it won't happen considering how much money each of the films have made in the home video market!
willbfree Sep 15, 2015 "Unfortunately, we could not find all of the additional footage (film and audio) for the 96 minute Director's Cut." So they found some of it, but didn't scan it? Shouldn't that sentence end with " so we did 4K transfers of some parts of the Director's Cut, resulting in a Director's Cut is partly a new 4K scan and partly an existing scan"?
jabba359 Sep 15, 2015 @willbfree Sort of like how Star Trek: TNG couldn't find all of the film elements so did a scan of everything they did have and then up-scaled the bits they didn't. It worked pretty well there. The up-scaled parts were fairly obvious, but they were trying to match old 525 lines of resolution video masters with new 1080 film scans, a huge difference. I would think that cutting in older 2K scans of the missing parts of AOD with a new 4K scan wouldn't be nearly as dramatic as the differences on the ST: TNG material, seeing as how the old 2K AOD scan elements they'd be dropping in wouldn't need an up-scale since it already has enough resolution for Blu-ray.
Add comment
Please login to post a comment.Rome, Italy - On April 29, the Trevi Fountain, one of the most popular and emblematic tourist spots in Rome, will be dyed red in recognition of all Christians who even today give their life for the faith.
The event is being organized by Aid to the Church in Need and seeks to “call attention to the drama of anti-Christian persecution.”
In a statement posted on their website, the aid group said they hope this initiative will be “the start of a long lasting, concrete reaction everywhere so that the persecuted people of the 21st century can as soon as possible return to fully enjoying their natural right to religious freedom.”
The organizers added that “the systematic violation of the right to religious freedom, especially that of Christians, must become the central issue of the public debate.”
Speaking at the event will be the Chaldean Catholic Bishop of Aleppo, Syria, Antoine Audo, and Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the International President of Aid the Church in Need.
Iraq and Syria are two of the countries where there is a severe persecution of Christians, with the Islamic State killing, enslaving and driving people out of their homes. Christians in Nigeria are also at risk from attacks by the militant group Boko Haram, while Christianity is illegal in countries including North Korea and Somalia.
As of now, various associations have joined the initiative including Communion and Liberation, Caritas Italy, the Christian Workers Movement, the Focolare Movement and pro-life organizations.
Pope Francis has spoken frequently during his papacy on modern-day martyrs. On April 7, the Pope called martyrs “the lifeblood of the Church.”
“It is the witness of our martyrs of today – so many! – chased out of their homeland, driven away, having their throats cut, persecuted: they have the courage to confess Jesus even to the point of death,” he said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Shrink Wrap Radio #340 (March 1, 2013) – Brain Lateralization and Western Culture:
I was talking in Canada recently and a woman came up to the microphone when I had finished speaking and said “I teach 5-7 year olds and my colleagues and I have realized that in last few years - but only in the last few years - we actually have to teach children how to read the human face.” Now I don’t know how that hits you, but that seems pretty much a terrible thing for humanity if that’s the case. Until recently only autistic children would have to be taught how to read the human face. And if you put that together with other things I’ve heard from many people; teachers saying “In the last few years people were not able to do things that, until recently, all my class could do” - often sustaining attention, and other evidence that children are less empathic nowadays. Now there are three things that the right hemisphere, compared with the left, is particularly good at: reading human faces, empathizing, and sustaining attention. So it looks like it’s literally true - which is what I’m saying - that we’re actually shifting away from understanding what our right hemispheres would tell us, into a prison constructed by the way the left hemisphere looks at the world.Recently by Ron Paul: Moving Toward War in Syria
Listen to Ron Paul
As we enter the fall political season, we will hear a great deal of rhetoric from both major political parties and their many candidates for office. Its important for us to remember, however, that words can be made meaningless by misuse or overuse. And when we as citizens allow politicians to obscure the truth by distorting words, we diminish |
The evidence from our cognitive studies suggests that, even before controlling fire, early hominins understood its benefits and could reason about the outcomes of putting food on fire.”
Dr Erica van de Waal, a psychologist at the University of St Andrews, said the findings add to the growing list of parallels that have been observed between human and ape behaviours.
“The more we study our primate cousins, the more we realise that they have the bases of most of our cognitive abilities, including for language, culture and fairness,” she said.
The findings are published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.SINGAPORE - A domestic worker was seriously injured after she fell seven storeys at a Tampines condominium on Tuesday (Oct 3), reported Shin Min Daily News.
The maid was apparently cleaning the windows of the Carissa Park condominium unit when she lost her balance and fell, said the Chinese daily.
According to photos taken of the scene by an eyewitness, the domestic worker from Indonesia had fallen into a neighbour's ground floor terrace.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force told The Straits Times that it dispatched an ambulance to 2 Flora Drive at 12.05pm on Tuesday.
A woman in her 20s was sent to Changi General Hospital and the hospital was on standby to receive her, said SCDF.
Her employer, who declined to be named, told Shin Min that the maid has been working in Singapore for only a month. The employer added that no one was at home at the time of the incident, apart from an elderly woman.Republican town halls are erupting with protests as Americans fret over the future of their health insurance. But listen to Lamar Alexander for a few minutes, and you might think not a single bad thing will come of the GOP’s plan to rip apart Obamacare and stitch together a replacement.
The folksy Tennessee senator is quietly prevailing upon Republican lawmakers to take a deep breath when it comes to rewriting the health care law that controls a sixth of the American economy. His goal, in a nutshell: to reassure millions of Americans that Republicans aren’t trying to snatch away their health insurance.
Story Continued Below
His message: As long as we’re smart and deliberate, it will all be fine. It might take awhile, but we got this.
“There are a lot of generals in this administration … they’re taught in the war college to think it all the way through,” Alexander says. “We ought to do that as we try to repair the damage caused by Obamacare. We need to think all the way through to the end.”
Tamping down expectations about a quick fix — let alone delivering a solution — is a monumental task, of course. It’s one Alexander is most comfortable leading in private. If there’s a softer side to Republicans’ plans to gut the law, it’s best represented by Alexander, a lawmaker who so loves cutting a deal that he voluntarily left the top ranks of Republican leadership to better work with Democrats.
A former governor and two-time presidential candidate, Alexander stalks the halls of the Capitol with a small card filled with bullet points about the health care law, pressing it into the hands of Republicans to alert them to the scope of the problems with the nation’s insurance coverage. Just as he ran for governor by walking across the state in his trademark black-and-red checked flannel shirt, Alexander’s goal is to buttonhole enough GOP lawmakers until the whole party is on the same page.
It hasn’t been easy. Daily Senate Republican lunches regularly erupt in disagreement over strategy; it’s now mid-February without a clear path forward, after years of Republican show votes to repeal the law.
Which is fine by Alexander. Republicans came back to Washington in January ready to repeal Obamacare before Inauguration Day. The chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was one of the first lawmakers to call on Republicans not to scrap Obamacare until a replacement is ready to go.
That’s now the GOP’s mantra.
“What I’m trying to do is to make sure that we think carefully,” Alexander said. “We’re moving from a position — repeal and replace — to governing. It’s a little more complicated.”
Still, it’s unclear how the GOP will respond to Alexander's more centrist approach. Conservatives inside and outside Congress have already grown frustrated with the GOP’s plodding pace toward repealing the law.
While the knives have not yet been turned on Alexander, it’s clear the party’s right flank is eager to follow through on its years-long vow to deep-six the health care law.
“We need to move expeditiously to honor the promises we made to voters,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “This election in many ways was a referendum on Obamacare.”
But in a 30-minute interview with Alexander in his Capitol Hill office — packed with artifacts from early settlements in Appalachia, from animal pelts to Sam Houston’s walking stick — he talks instead about a “safe” approach. Implementing a replacement in full, he said, could take as long as four years.
Rather than use the GOP’s well-worn talking points, he has his own. Democrats and Republicans are fighting like the “Hatfields and McCoys,” he says, while relying on Obamacare will soon be like “having a bus ticket in a town with no buses running.”
He doesn’t throw out red meat, either, a quality that makes some Democrats open, in theory, to working with Alexander, even though the repeal vote will surely fall along party lines. They like that Alexander tried to be productive during the Obama administration and has carried his pragmatism into the Trump presidency.
“He’s one of the most thoughtful members we have,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).
While they respect Alexander’s bipartisan bona fides, Democrats say his rhetoric about “building a bridge” from Obamacare papers over the reality of stripping health insurance coverage from millions of people.
Alexander is close with both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, which along with his committee chairmanship gives him clout with both parties.
“At a time when there is such tension in the chamber, Lamar is one of those people who can disagree with you without being disagreeable,” Schumer said.
Still, there are nearly 300 Republicans in Congress who want a piece of the debate, and many are already competing for attention over their own replacement plans.
Alexander doesn’t want to go that route. He says he won’t even introduce his own bill. Instead he wants to see what Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price propose, then help craft a bill to reconcile the differences.
He also believes Republicans should focus on the biggest problems first. At the top of the list is flagging insurance exchanges, which are suffering from high premiums and low competition, even if they represent just 4 percent of those insured in the United States.
“That’s where we need to send in the rescue team,” Alexander says.
From there, he wants Republicans to turn to Medicaid expansion — which Republicans will keep and potentially even broaden, he says — before eventually addressing problems with the country’s patchwork of employer-sponsored health care plans. In essence, Alexander is trying to triangulate an approach that can become law.
One potential hurdle is Alexander’s lack of a relationship with President Donald Trump, whom he met for only the second time this month. But he has deep ties with Price and House Speaker Paul Ryan: During the interview, Alexander repeatedly stressed that the three of them are on the same page. Those relationships have given other Republicans confidence in Alexander’s role.
“That’s the key guy,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Of course, Capitol Hill is a very turf-conscious place. Alexander’s committee has jurisdiction over only a small part of health care. The Senate Finance Committee controls the major levers, such as taxes, subsidies and Medicaid. The committees and their staffs have been working together — but Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is protective of his jurisdiction.
Sen. Lamar Alexander wants to see what President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price propose, then help craft a bill to reconcile the differences. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
“He doesn’t have much to do with it,” Hatch said of Alexander. “He takes a great interest in it, and I’m glad he does, and I want to get his best ideas.”
Hatch is urging the Congress to quickly repeal Obamacare’s taxes that fund subsidies for lower-income Americans on the exchanges. But here again Alexander urges caution: If Republicans repeal taxes now, how can they be sure they’ll have the revenue needed to pay for their replacement plan?
“Most Republicans are going to be reluctant to reduce taxes now and then raise taxes later,” he said.
With enough divisions among Republicans to fill a book, the GOP is starting with almost entirely partisan tactics. Alexander and other powerful Republicans want to use budget reconciliation to repeal and replace as much of the law they can on a party-line vote in the Senate, while looking to Price to write regulations to begin changing the law.
Once Republicans have settled their own issues, eventually they’ll need the cooperation of Senate Democrats to begin passing new insurance provisions. And the Senate is fraught with tension: Many Democrats are angry at Alexander for helping Trump confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary, and there’s almost no appetite for collaboration on health care.
Alexander’s first hearing on the subject degenerated into a series of speeches. Democrats blasted Republicans for taking away peoples’ insurance. Republicans grandstanded about how bad Obamacare is.
“The witnesses were good, but the senators were not that good,” Alexander said. “It’s going to take awhile.”If you’re looking for an ideal pick-me-up after 24 hours of crying along with Adele’s new album, 25, consider watching this clip from a BBC special that aired Friday night where Adele surprises a room full of her own impersonators.
The ruse was that there was an audition for Adele impersonator, rounding up a half-dozen or so women (and at least one man) to show off their best Adele looks and sing one of her songs. With the help of host Graham Norton, Adele slapped on a false nose, some opera gloves, and the mild-mannered voice and comportment of a schoolteacher named “Jenny,” all the better to create a character who wouldn’t arouse the suspicions of her fellow auditioners … until she takes the stage and begins to sing “To Make You Feel My Love.”
The best part is watching some of the impersonators catch on quicker than others, and one by one watching them go wide-eyed. The second-best part is Graham Norton getting a little misty-eyed at the whole thing. Because what’s an Adele performance if you’re not crying?Community leaders paint a bleak picture for young Muslims living in the borough of Rochdale on the outskirts of Greater Manchester. They have grave concerns that Muslim youth are increasingly turning to anti-western sentiment and extreme interpretations of Islam.
In recent months the peace in the narrow streets sitting in the shadow of the impressive Jalalia Jaame mosque has been shattered.
Former Manchester United steward guilty of murdering imam Read more
A respected holy man, Jalal Uddin, 71, was stalked and murdered because he was a practitioner of a form of Islamic faith healing called taweez which involved the use of charms to bring good luck, good health and deter evil spirits.
Friends Mohammed Hussain Syeedy, 21, who has been convicted of Uddin’s murder and Mohammed Abdul Kadir, 24, who is the subject of an international manhunt, had been Isis supporters and believed that those who practised taweez should be killed because they considered it a form of black magic, the trial at Manchester crown court heard. The murder of “quiet, dignified and well-respected” Uddin was fuelled by “hatred and intolerance,” the court was told.
It was not the only murder in Britain this year motivated by differing interpretations of Islam. In March, a sectarian dispute in Pakistan was played out on the streets of Glasgow when a taxi driver, Tanveer Ahmed, from Bradford, drove hundreds of miles to stab a fellow Muslim to death.
The simmering hatred towards Britain’s Ahmadiyya Muslim community spilled over into violence the day before Good Friday when Ahmed Shah was brutally murdered in his shop.
Ahmed, a Sunni Muslim, was offended by Shah’s religious proclamations on social media that he was the next prophet of Islam – something some consider highly blasphemous.
New figures given to the Guardian show that sectarian attacks have nearly doubled since last year, with a surge in incidents targeting Ahmadiyya Muslims since Shah’s murder.
The number of anti-Ahmadiyya attacks more than tripled over the last year, from nine to 29, according to the monitoring group Tell Mama. In total, there have been 40 recorded incidents of sectarian violence this year, the figures show, up from 24 last year.
Fiyaz Mughal, the founder and director of Tell Mama, said vulnerable young men were being radicalised online and “absolutely destroying and cannibalising” spiritual elements of Islam, such as taweez and sufism. “Spiritual dimensions of Islam are being eradicated by Salafist, Wahhabist stuff and young mindsets are seeing that as the devil within Islam,” Mughal said.
The fatal attack in Glasgow on 24 March had echoes of events in Rochdale five weeks earlier. Community leaders say it is a signal of a growing intolerance among young Muslims of those who do not follow Islam in its most extreme and traditional sense.
They say it is a disturbing trend of young Muslims adopting more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than their parents or grandparents.
There is strong evidence of a “growing religiosity”, with an increasing minority firmly rejecting western life and anything that they consider varies from traditional, almost hardline Islamic scripture, according to local elders.
Community leaders in Rochdale say youngsters now cherrypick a narrative to suit their own agenda and even question the imam’s authority armed with information from the internet.
Teenage rebellion is nothing new. But where previous generations of British-born Asian youths were tempted by the western vices of alcohol, drugs and sex before marriage, this new way of revolting against their moderate upbringing is to experiment with extremism.
This generation are more informed about the intricacies of Islam and educated enough to seek out alternative thought and teachings.
One of those who is becoming increasingly concerned is Rochdale councillor Ali Ahmed. Ahmed a 40-year-old father of five who has lived in Rochdale all his life and became a councillor just under two years ago, has seen a change in the way that young Muslims interpret Islam.
He said: “I guess some people would say that these were nice boys from a good family who have just fallen in with the wrong crowd, but I would agree that there is something bigger at play here.
“The younger generation of Muslims are better informed about Islam and they are not shy about questioning an imam if they feel that something they are preaching is incorrect. This is very different to the older generation. We would never question an imam – it was not the done thing. Your father taught you to respect authority and we blindly followed.
“This generation follow Islam in an almost deeper way and then of course there is Google. They are much more able to seek out information about the religion and no longer take the word from an imam as gospel. These youngsters are trying to catch the ustad [religious teacher] out.
“The way the religion is being interpreted is also changing and there are also more and more divisions appearing. In Rochdale alone, there are many different mosques, catering for all these different ideologies and this can cause problems.”
It is under this fractious atmosphere that a respectable man was murdered. Some youngsters believe his practice of taweez and ruqya was akin to black magic, a practice strictly prohibited in Islam.
Ahmed added: “These practices went on when we were young but we just considered them harmless, but things are changing and the younger generation of Muslims are far more vocal about their views.
“We are worried about this. There is a sense that these young men are seeking something, whether it is the kudos or the approval of outside forces, and we need to keep our community safe.”
Ahmed tells of how nervous the community has become about its own youth and of the fears about the divisions between young Muslims which are sometimes leading to violence. On Sunday night outside his home, a group of young men gathered, dressed in traditional Islamic dress with ultra-conservative turbans. Some older members of the community were contacted and the youths were dispersed.
“That is why when we saw the young men in turbans gathered together that we all went out and told them to clear off. We feel something is brewing and we don’t want any more trouble,” he said.
“We have many youth projects in the area to try and keep them occupied but there is only so much we can do. Our biggest problem is the access to the internet – we cannot stop them if they want to seek something out.”
Meanwhile, Habibul Ahad, who runs the Bangladeshi Association and Community project in Rochdale, and who knew Uddin, Syeedy and Kadir, said Muslim youths should not be demonised for being religious.
“Yes, they follow Islam differently to the way that we did,” he said. “But that isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Sometimes it makes them better people and gives them purpose.
“I think the issues arise when they start researching on the internet and refuse to get any of their information from teachers and imams within the community. That is when we worry about radicalisation.
“We need to all join together to condemn these acts of violence. You cannot kill somebody because you do not agree with their school of thought. We need to be able to live side by side like we have in the past.”Guild of Dungeoneering is a papercraft dungeon exploration game where you don’t get to control your adventurer directly. Instead you lay out the dungeon one room at a time, placing treasure and monsters to trying to carefully guide your dungeoneer to victory.
Each turn you’re given a choice of 5 cards to lay or discard, allowing you to lay map tiles, enemies or loot. The loot can be treasure, equipment or weapons that will aid your progress. You can’t constantly just lay treasure cards though, thanks to a points system that means you have to defeat enemies before you can lay the loot cards. Fights against enemies are entirely stat based, so it’s best to obtain some better equipment before taking on the tougher baddies. It can be a little infuriating that the dungeoneer has a mind of his own, as he can be suicidal at times, but it’s a good feature and adds a some welcome randomness to the proceedings.
The Alpha Demo is still early in development, so it’s not fully featured, but it does a good job of showing off the unique gameplay and the fun papercraft visual style which adds a lot of warmth and charm to the game. An interesting idea, well implemented, watch out for those rubber duckies!
UPDATE: This Alpha Is No Longer AvailableOn Deck, “Generation Z,” the most conservative generation in 70 years. Born between 1995 -2010, they’re fiscally conservative, staunchly supportive of personal freedoms, and strong on national security including counter-terrorism and cyber-security, with a hint of isolationism. They don’t fit the mold for either political party in their current form, which is probably why data suggests they support the unconventional Donald Trump over the political status quo offered by either party.
“Digital Natives,” this generation will never experience life without the internet and interconnectivity of the landscape around them. They’ve never needed to ask another human being for directions – the world is open to them with limitless sources of information and no need to rely on one form of media. They are driven thinkers, attracted to fast-paced data, and willing to sift through the noise to find evidence backing their own ideologies and beliefs. While the September 11th attacks may not viscerally impact them like it does their elders, Gen Z has never known life without the threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism, and has had no experience of the world where the United States was not at war.
In comparison to preceding generations that had their early development shaped by naïve Disney movies and picture-postcard generalizations, Generation Z is growing up in the age of YouTube, twitter, and for better or worse, LiveLeak. This raw exposure to global events generates a more realistic, pragmatic, and a more calibrated, nuanced outlook than millennials before them. Gen Z values being challenged, contradiction, and debate, because their limitless options for information provides them with confidence.
Old mainstays of conventional politics are going to be pushed to the wayside as these “digital natives” gravitate to traditional positions from both parties. Socially both conservative and liberal, fiscally conservative, issue-based, and meritocratic, they trend towards individualism vs. collectivism while still motivated to effect social change.
This is perhaps the mechanism behind their strong support for Donald Trump. In polling data collected by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation including 50,000 high-school students aged 14-18 just prior to the election, first time voters presented a 46% – 31% divide in favor of the Republican candidate with primary concerns being education, gun rights, and health care. When expanded to reflect their generation as a whole Trump still maintained a 14-point advantage over Clinton at 34% — 20%.
Among Gen Z females we see the evaporation of a strong left/right gender divide with Trump coming out on top with by 3 points at 27% — 24%. Once again, education (50%), economy (33%), health care (24%), and gun rights (22%) most heavily weighted their opinion. Along state lines, Trump wins every state in contention except New York, South Carolina, and Florida.
Males were more typical of the general population with 42% in favor of Trump vs 17% for Clinton. Economy (43%), education (34%), gun rights (33%) and terrorism (20%) serve as chief concerns. The only state won by Clinton with this group was New Jersey.
Despite the heated language during the campaign surrounding immigration in the wake of the San Bernardino, Paris, and Nice attacks, a subsequent Presidential Pulse Study likewise conducted by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation found that individuals of Middle Eastern background supported Trump over Clinton by a 7 point margin, 29%-22%, with 32% expressing that they would choose not to vote in the election. While the sample size is small for this demographic (1094 participants of 83,298) it is reflective of Gen Z seeking information beyond traditional forms of media.
Critics of the above results repeatedly cite polling data from the “youth vote” going to Clinton 55%-37%. However, it should be noted this group includes ages 18-29, with a heavy percentage of voters falling to the latter half, outside the 18-21 block of Gen Z voters. Exit polling data specific to Gen Z is not yet available.
The trend for libertarianism is not limited to the United States. A study focused on Gen Z in Britain discovered significantly more conservative views than millennials on issues such as marijuana legalization, trans-gender rights, and same-sex marriage.
Andrew Mulholland, managing director of The Gild who conducted the British study suggests:
We need to move past the recent trend of ‘Millennial Fever,’ where the term ‘Millennial’ has become a lazy, if convenient, shorthand for some vague notion of achingly cool, social media-savvy 20-somethings who refuse stable careers and drink smoothies all day. And Gen Z may not be quite what you were expecting, as the data shows that they are more conservative than Millennials, Generation X and even Baby Boomers.
So what does this mean for the current political system?
Revision. Trump’s campaign offered an attractive platform for Gen Z via support of LGBQT issues, gun rights, reprioritizing the economy towards the American worker, education reform, health care reform, and initiatives to revitalize inner cities. It’s possible the President’s campaign will germinate more fluid political parties as both work to redesign their platform to include the incoming generation. With 84% of Gen Z identifying as fiscally moderate or conservative, 2020 is sure to be an interesting election.TAXILA: Archaeologists have discovered the largest statue ever found in Gandhara depicting the death of Buddha as well as a ‘double-halo’ Buddha statue, the first of its kind to have been found at the Bhamala Stupa site.
The rare discovery was made during excavations at the Buddhist stupa and monastery dating back to 4th century AD.
Dr Abdul Samad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa director, Department of Archaeology and Museums, told Dawn that the latest discoveries by the archaeologists have opened new chapters in the history of the ancient Taxila valley civilisation.
“This is one of the few sites in the world to have the cruciform Stupa which was reserved for Buddha himself.”
Discussing details of the new discoveries, he explained that the death of the Buddha scene is known as ‘Maha Pari Nirvana’. The statue depicting the scene, measures 14 metres in length, and is the largest ever statue of its kind found in the archaeological history of Gandhara civilisation. The image is placed on a 15 metre long platform.
Dr Samad said Buddha’s head is missing as the site appears to have been targeted by illegal treasure hunters.
“Other parts of the statue such as the left leg and arms were also found in a damaged condition,” he said.
He said other images in terracotta have been found near the Par Nirvana scene. He added that Pari Nirvana scene was exposed from a long chamber to the west of the main Stupa facing towards east. He added that access to this chamber is given through three openings at regular intervals. The chamber is made of stone in semi ashlars masonry.
Largest ‘death of Buddha’ statue and first double halo statue found in Gandhara
He explained that the statue of Buddha with double halos was unique and such a statue had never been found at this site.
In the past statues, heads of Buddha statues and coins from the Kushan period had been found at the site.
“In the first leg of this excavation, archaeologists have opened a new chapter in the archaeological history of the Taxila valley. Through the recent discoveries, it has been confirmed that the site dates back to 3rd century CE. Recently discovered Buddha heads are made in baked soil which dates to the third century, rejecting archaeologist John Marshal’s claim from 1930 that the site was from 12th century CE.”
Dr Samad said during this leg of excavations, other relics such as a carnelian seal depicting what appears to be the Gaja Lakshmi deity, one of the forms of Hindu goddess Ashta Lakshmi have been discovered.
An archaeologist examines a head of Buddha discovered during excavation. — Dawn
Other relics with Kashmiri influence have added new dimensions to what we know about these ancient civilisations.
“Several terracotta and stucco Buddha statues and copper coins were discovered at this site which date back to the Kidara-Kushan period (4 to 5 CE). This indicates that Bhamala was not isolated from main Taxila,” he said.
He said the material found in Bhamala could improve our understanding of Buddhist culture, development and contact in this region.
“The success of the Bhamala Stupa study would also encourage other archaeologists to come to Pakistan,” he said.
Dr Samad elaborated upon the importance of this site. He said the Bhamala complex was different from other sites in Taxila valley.
“The stupa, shaped like a cross, resembles Aztec Pyramids and such constructions had only been found in Kashmir, in the past. He said the main stupa was cruciform and there were about 19 small votive stupas in the courtyard surrounding the main stupa.
He further revealed that during the recent excavation, a total of 510 relics were discovered, which included terracotta, stucco sculptures as well as iron objects including nails, hooks, door fittings, hair clips, copper artifacts and 14 coins from the late Kushan period.
He said that samples of organic materials were also taken for radio carbon dating by Professor Dr Mark Kenoyer, Director of the Centre for South Asia and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the US.
Published in Dawn March 5th, 2015
On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google PlayWhile the massacre in Orlando has once again focused attention on so-called lone wolf attackers in the Western world who have pledged allegiance to ISIS, there is a well-organized chapter of the jihadist group operating in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula that continues its murderous mission far from the gaze of the international spotlight.
Originally known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem), the group changed its name to Wilayat Sinai — Sinai Province — and pledged allegiance to ISIS in November 2014. It is the most active insurgent group in Egypt, and has carried out dozens of attacks that have killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers.
Sinai Province is believed to be waging a war to take control of the Sinai Peninsula and turn it into an Islamist region loyal to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, according to experts who follow the group. They estimate as many as 1,500 fighters support the organization.
The group's militants have launched suicide attacks and gun battles mainly in the northern part of the Sinai — an underdeveloped region, largely forgotten by the country's politicians in Cairo. The marginalization that many residents feel has fuelled support for Sinai Province.
The group also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed Egypt's prosecutor general in Cairo a year ago.
The fence that runs the length of the Israeli-Egyptian border, with an Egyptian military watchtower in the distance. (Derek Stoffel/CBC)
Egypt declared a state of emergency in 2014 as its forces struggled to stop Sinai Province attacks, which focused on government forces following the overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi.
Now, security officials in Israel are keeping a close eye on their border with Egypt, concerned about possible attacks from Sinai Province.
"The enemy is Daesh," said Maj. Shachar Nachmani of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. "We believe that these terror cells will try to hit our forces in order to prove themselves."
Sinai Province has launched several rocket attacks against Israeli territory in recent years. Six months ago, according to Major Nachmani, a "terrorist cell" attacked an army patrol along the security fence that marks the Israeli-Egyptian border. Three of the attackers were killed by Israeli soldiers. "The force was able to respond and to hit back at those who tried to infiltrate the border into Israel."
Maj. Shachar Nachmani, commander of the Caracal Battalion, at an Israel Defence Forces base on the Israeli-Egyptian border. (Derek Stoffel/CBC)
Canada has 70 soldiers based in the Sinai, trying to maintain calm between Israel and Egypt as part of an international peacekeeping mission, known as the Multinational Force & Observers (MFO).
In the past two years, the MFO has had to deal with an increase in violence from Sinai Province, which has launched rocket and mortar attacks against at least one of the MFO's two bases in the Sinai.
(A request to interview the Canadian commander of the MFO mission, Maj.-Gen Denis Thompson, was denied by the organization's headquarters.)
Both the Canadian Forces and the federal government have noted the increased security risk posed by Sinai Province. "Until recently, the MFO had not been the direct target of jihadist or terrorist attacks," reads a government briefing note obtained by CBC News. "However, the threat environment has changed over the summer months of 2015."
Canada's top military commander warned recently of the "increasingly dangerous" mission in Egypt.
"Where we once had relatively benign missions conducting peace support operations, such as the MFO mission, [it is] now turning more hostile," said Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of the defence staff. "Toxic environments where, in the case of the Sinai, [ISIS] in the Sinai is now grown in strength and impedes the conduct of the mission."
Prof. Walter Dorn of Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., a leading expert on Canadian peacekeeping, said the mandate of the MFO mission "has not kept up with the changing circumstances on the ground and the threats."
"I would recommend that the peacekeeping become more robust," Dorn told CBC News. "Not become a counterterrorism mission, but try to influence the local population so that they see peace is in their interest and that they shouldn't support [Sinai Province]."
The latest ISIS propaganda videos show Sinai Province actively training fighters in the area. It also continues to make threats against the Egyptian government, and more recently Israel.
In a video from last month, the narrator in Arabic calls the Sinai the "gateway to Palestine" and promises to "liberate" Jerusalem. One fighter warns that Israeli Jews are "victims in waiting," adding they will meet the same fate as those Egyptians who collaborate with Israel: "The knives used to slice open the necks of your spies will slaughter your soldiers tomorrow."
Screengrab from an ISIS propaganda video released in May, in which the narrator calls the Sinai the 'gateway to Palestine' and promises to 'liberate' Jerusalem. (CBC)
In Israel, the country's army continues to prepare against the threat of the Sinai Province. At a training base not far from the border, young soldiers from the Caracal Battalion are learning counterterrorism techniques.
"We teach soldiers that this is not a fight against an army," said Lt.-Col. Yaron Buskila, who leads the IDF's training base in southern Israel. "It's a group that comes to attack, to try as fast as they can just to take a soldier back into Egypt or hit civilians. So we are teaching our soldiers to work very fast.""OMG I hate the holidays" tshirt
Color Leaf Kelly True Royal Red Size S M L XL 2XL 3XL 4XL Leaf / S - $25.00 Leaf / M - $25.00 Leaf / L - $25.00 Leaf / XL - $25.00 Leaf / 2XL - $28.00 Leaf / 3XL - $28.00 Leaf / 4XL - $30.00 Kelly / S - $25.00 Kelly / M - $25.00 Kelly / L - $25.00 Kelly / XL - $25.00 Kelly / 2XL - $28.00 Kelly / 4XL - $30.00 True Royal / S - $25.00 True Royal / M - $25.00 True Royal / L - $25.00 True Royal / XL - $25.00 True Royal / 2XL - $28.00 True Royal / 3XL - $28.00 True Royal / 4XL - $30.00 Red / S - $25.00 Red / M - $25.00 Red / L - $25.00 Red / XL - $25.00 Red / 2XL - $28.00 Red / 3XL - $28.00 Red / 4XL - $30.00 $25.00
{ "addToCartText": "Add", "enableHistory": true, "linkedOptions": true }
{"id":1477374148660,"title":"\"OMG I hate the holidays\" tshirt","handle":"omg-i-hate-the-holidays","description":"This unisex t-shirt is flattering for both men and women. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e • 100% combed and ring-spun cotton (heather colors contain polyester)\u003cbr\u003e • Fabric weight: 4.2 oz (142 g\/m2)\u003cbr\u003e • Shoulder-to-shoulder taping\u003cbr\u003e • Side-seamed\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The male model is wearing a size M. He's 6.2 feet (190 cm) tall, chest circumference 37.7\" (96 cm), waist circumference 33.4\" (85 cm).
\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize guide\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e
\u003cdiv class=\"table-responsive dynamic\" data-unit-system=\"imperial\"\u003e
\u003ctable cellpadding=\"5\"\u003e
\u003ctbody\u003e
\u003ctr\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e \u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eS\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eM\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eL\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eXL\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2XL\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3XL\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e4XL\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003c\/tr\u003e
\u003ctr\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLength (inches)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e28\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e29\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e30\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e31\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e32\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e33\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e34\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003c\/tr\u003e
\u003ctr\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWidth (inches)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e18\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e20\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ctd\u003e22\u003c\/td\u003e
\u003ct |
“wrong” side of a fight.Brad Muir is a designer at Double Fine, previously responsible for the likes of Iron Brigade, and now hard at work on the Kickstarter-funded Massive Chalice. He is literally incapable of feeling sadness, and can often be found on Twitter throwing out alarming quantities of enthusiasm.
It’s been a crazy year.
Giant Bomb has always been a pretty silly place, but this year I was reminded how it’s also always been a community full of earnest people coming together to share something they love. Thanks for this opportunity for me to share some silly shit I love too! :D!
10. Dota 2
Yep. It’s that bad. Dota 2’s on my list again! The hooks have been planted deep.
When I was still pretty new to the game I got to see a couple of matches from The International 2 in 2012 at PAX. Even though I didn’t know enough about the game to really follow what the hell was going on, the experience was still amazing. Just like a live sport, the energy of the crowd is infectious and it made me want to understand the game at a deeper level.
I’ve been playing a lot since then, and my Dota fever really peaked when I got to go to The International 3 this year. Understanding more of the complexity and nuance of the game made watching the pros a rewarding experience. The level of skill and teamwork exhibited by these teams is awe-inspiring, and watching the games with several hundred screaming Dota fans was a blast. Spectating live Dota comes really close to the intensity of a live college football game. That’s something I never thought I’d say about an esport, but I think this stuff is real and will only pick up more steam in years to come. So yeah… you should play Dota. :D
9. Hitman: Absolution
I’ve always been a fan of the Hitman games, even though they’re not the most polished experiences out there. Their mission design and setups have always been solid, but the mechanics were never quite there to back it up for me.
But with Absolution I feel like IO Interactive crossed the threshold of gameplay feedback that made Hitman super playable for me. They also made some harder and simpler rules for the disguise system that made the wardrobe changes more satisfying (as well as occasionally hilarious).
There are plenty of problems with Absolution: the overall narrative is pretty weak, you have to do lots of loading if you want to stay stealthy, all of the enemies respawn when you load your game(?), and of course there was the whole punching-sexy-nuns-in-the-face debacle that made my stomach flip. But overall I really enjoyed the core mechanics and the variety of individual mission scenarios that were presented and I was hooked to play it all the way to completion.
8. Nuclear Throne
Vlambeer is insanely adept at knowing the details that matter and then not giving a shit about anything else. Their latest, Nuclear Throne, is another sterling example of this. It’s got chunky pixel graphics and it’s presented in a crappy 4:3 window, but none of that matters when you start playing through this roguelike. Tight controls, great mechanical depth, weird character design, great replayability… it’s a blast.
This is the kind of game that really makes me question myself as a game dev--are we focusing on the most important thing? Will anyone really care if we do this small detail? Vlambeer’s got this stuff down to a science and I hope they keep cranking out games like Nuclear Throne! :D!
7. Mark of the Ninja
Another game that I put off playing until January, Mark of the Ninja is just an incredibly solid piece of game design. The level of constant feedback that you have while stealthing around these 2D levels is amazing and really helps build the power fantasy of being a sneaky, deadly ninja. It doesn’t hurt that Klei’s clean, readable aesthetic is really strong throughout the game. The overall story was forgettable, but when the gameplay is this tight I couldn’t care less! :D!
6. Papers, Please
I haven’t played a ton of Papers, Please, but I don’t think that matters. It’s a unique experience that deserves to be on this list!
The brand of stress created by Papers, Please is the chief reason why I have a hard time coming back to it. But I also I feel like this stress is the game’s greatest achievement. The human choices that it presents you with are incredibly anxiety-inducing--do you let a man’s wife through your checkpoint even though she doesn’t have the proper paperwork or do you detain her? And when the whole experience is timed, with your family’s health on the line, it just becomes overwhelming at times. It’s amazing that Lucas Pope was able to create such emotional weight with such a low-fi experience.
It’s also worth noting that Papers, Please is the only game I can think of that does “nonsense voice acting” in a way that’s super endearing. I love the use of the weird old school digitized voices as the characters approach your booth. Awesome. :D
5. Rogue Legacy
Rogue Legacy builds on the Spelunky-style roguelike platformer by adding tons of great features, the foremost among them being persistence. I love that every character that I took into the castle had a chance at earning a new skill point or equipment upgrade even if I wasn’t able get them to accomplish a major goal. This feeling of permadeath mixed with a throughline of persistence was really addictive. It was also super clever to wrap it in a generational theme. This context helped me feel more connected to these characters, knowing that if I could just collect a little bit more gold before I died then my kid would have a slightly better life. :D
I also loved seeing screenshots of the teams’ old games randomly hidden in the castle. I learned that the team responsible for Rogue Legacy also made the Flash classic Don’t Shit Your Pants. Mad respect! :D!
4. The Last of Us
For being such a mechanics-lover I was surprised at how interested I was in The Last of Us as it approached its release. Even though they’re beautiful and incredibly well-made I was never drawn to the Uncharted series. But something about the emotional upshot of The Last of Us was really grabbing me and I couldn’t wait to check it out.
I don’t think the game lived up to what I wanted. There was a bit too much mandatory combat, and unlike Hitman or Mark of the Ninja I felt like there wasn’t enough feedback in the stealth mechanics to allow me to really master them. I understand that this could be an intentional choice to disempower the player and lead to more chaotic combat scenarios, but overall I just found it frustrating and it led to some cheap deaths and reloading. Bummer!
As the game ramped up Joel was becoming Murder Man, which felt like it was against the tone of the game. But by the end I think that this mechanical shift really worked in the game’s favor. I really liked how they mapped Joel’s story arc to the increased mechanical competency that a player naturally gains as they play through the game. Interesting! :D!
Things went a little off the rails with the story near the end, but the final moments of The Last of Us left me speechless. I can’t think of a simpler, more powerful ending to a game narrative! Even with some of the rough parts of the game (how many floating crates did I have to manipulate?) The Last of Us still managed to be a very memorable experience.
3. Gone Home
Steve Gaynor and pals created something that’s really special. The writing and voice acting felt incredibly honest and emotional to me, and while I can’t really relate to an adolescent lesbian awakening I can certainly relate to being singled out, taunted, and bullied at school. It also helps that the game is a '90s period piece so I was able to appreciate all of the little environmental touches in the house!
I also really like what Gone Home represents at this point in the games industry. Having more mature examples of games to point to is certainly a bonus as gamers are getting older and potentially aging out of murder simulators.
All of the debate that’s circling Gone Home is also super valuable. Is it a game? Is it worthy of the praise? Is it worth your $20? I think the answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES, but in the end I hope that the discussion is just increasing the reach of the game, allowing more people to try out this cool empathic journey for themselves.
2. XCOM: Enemy Within
The follow-up to my favorite game last year, Enemy Within added a ton of strategic and tactical depth onto a really solid base. The new mech troopers and genetic modifications are cool additions that also play well into the thematics of the game--how far are you willing to go to win? I wish that they had driven home these thematics by giving the player some meaningful mechanical choice here. As it stands you kind of have to use the aliens’ weapons and technology against them in order to have a chance at fighting back.
But it’s a minor point! There are so many worthwhile additions to XCOM jammed into this expansion that it makes the game seem almost-brand-new. And as we watch the rise of Free to Play games it’s incredibly refreshing to still be able to buy a 30 dollar old school PC expansion that’s packed with value! :D!
1. Dota 2
Ok I felt like I needed to round it out to an even 10 games, so Dota 2 is is also my number one game of 2013. I’ve played so much of it that I think it’s justified. :D
So yeah… Dota 2. The lows are real low, but the highs are so extremely high that I have a full-blown Dota addiction at this point. I’m not sure how much longer it’ll last but it’s been a fun and frustrating ride! :D!
Brad Muir portrait by Michael Firman.community,
THE National Broadband Network (NBN) has finally made its way to Leeton, but not without some trouble. Residents have waited for some time to have access to the NBN, but many are still questioning whether or not it will bring them faster internet. Yanco resident and business owner Mark Norvall has been using the NBN and said he had experienced some issues with it. “It can drop in and out and still not be as fast as I’d like,” he said. “Providers need to work better wit the new system. “You need to be able to have fast internet in order to run a business, especially if you’re doing it from home. “It’s critical really.” Initially, the NBN is available to around 1200 homes and businesses in and around Leeton, with a further 1700 to go live by the end of June. The NBN first went live in the surrounding areas of Leeton, including Narrandera, Coolamon and Griffith in October, 2014. Telstra Area general manager Chris Taylor said the general feedback from customers on the NBN was they were experiencing faster speeds and more bandwidth. “The arrival of superfast broadband is great news for the Leeton community and helps keep locals at the forefront of technology in Australia,” Mr Taylor said. All home phones and internet services will eventually need to be transitioned from the familiar copper network to the NBN. “It’s important for customers to know the transition isn’t automatic, and they have to sign up to an NBN plan, even if they want to just retain a home phone,” Mr Taylor said. Leeton will be serviced by a mix of NBN technologies, including fibre to the node, fibre to the basement, hybrid fibre co-axial and fixed wireless.
https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/cMJhfEv9TADJPBxPT74Wz7/2e312e02-c76f-4fcc-9c73-140a4e917f85.jpg/r3_0_1277_720_w1200_h678_fmax.jpgThe millions of people in Oregon who want to watch the eclipse � but avoid suffering permanent eye damage � will need to be very careful come Aug. 21.
A million visitors are expected to flock to the state to join many of Oregon�s 4 million residents to glimpse the moon passing perfectly in front of the sun and completely obscuring it for a total solar eclipse � something not seen in the United States since Feb. 26, 1979.
In Oregon, the eclipse is expected to last about two minutes, depending on the viewer�s location relative to the eclipse�s �path of totality.�
Two minutes might seem quick, but it takes only about eight seconds of staring directly at the sun to permanently damage the eyes� retina, said Peter Karth, an ophthalmologist at Oregon Eye Consultants in south Eugene.
The best way for eclipse viewers � both in and outside the path of totality � to prevent eye damage is to wear glasses designed for the event. Sunglasses won�t work � not even if they�re polarized � and neither will homemade viewing devices such as X-ray film or most exposed photo film.
�People should wear the protection leading up to and immediately following complete totality,� Karth said. �When you see it go into totality, you can take off the glasses.�
In Oregon, the path of totality is a 62-mile wide strip where, weather permitting, people will be able to see the moon completely hide the sun for about two minutes, creating a spectacular corona. The path runs from Lincoln City and Newport on the Oregon Coast eastward to include Salem, Corvallis, Sweet Home, Redmond and beyond into Eastern Oregon. The closer you are to the middle of the path, the deeper the shadow and the longer the total eclipse event.
Those viewing the event within that path can safely take off their eclipse-viewing glasses only while the sun is completely hidden behind the moon, but Karth advises them to immediately put them back on when sunlight begins to peek out again from behind the moon.
Those outside of the path of totality are advised to keep their glasses on for the entire event, because the moon will not completely cover the sun from their vantage point.
All Lane County is outside the path. Residents in Eugene-Springfield that day will be able to see a near-total eclipse, with the moon covering 98 percent to 99 percent of the sun, said Jim Todd, director of space science at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland.
Danger is ultraviolet light
Normally, people instinctively avoid looking at the sun, so there is little need to warn against it.
But people feel drawn to stare at an eclipse, begging the question: What happens to a person�s eyes when they look at the sun too long?
Karth said the only part of the human eye vulnerable to sun damage is the retina, which lines the inside of the back of the eyeball.
The damage to the retina isn�t due to the sun�s heat or brightness.
�Ultraviolet light is the most common cause of retinal damage,� Karth said. �Less commonly, there are thermal effects done by infrared light.�
The retina of the eye serves as the body�s video film, turning light into electrical pulses that are sent to the brain, where a visual image is formed. When the retina is exposed to direct sunlight for more than a few seconds, ultraviolet light from the sun triggers a photochemical reaction, similar to radiation, that produces free radicals � dangerous particles � that damage the tissue of the retina.
The result is known as solar retinopothy, which can include permanent vision damage.
�It�s a chain chemical reaction that disrupts the normal structure and function of the eye,� Karth said.
Won�t feel pain,
still damaging
In an interview, Karth was initially reluctant to say how long someone could look at the sun before suffering retinal harm, but he finally said it takes about eight seconds for the damage to begin.
One of Karth�s concerns about the eclipse is that because the sun will be partially covered for extended periods of time, it will be easier � and tempting � for viewers to look at it without eclipse glasses. The sun will be partially covered in the path of totality as the moon moves into and out of position in front of the sun. Outside the path, too, the partial coverage will gradually increase as the moon moves into position.
�The real issue is when the sun starts being covered,� Karth said. �The brightness (of the sun) has been reduced, and you can look at it for a lot longer than you could on a normal day. But even if it�s more comfortable to be looking at, there�s plenty of ultraviolet light that can damage your retina.�
Another problem? People won�t know that they�re damaging their eyes because they won�t feel pain. That�s a key danger in watching a solar eclipse, he said.
�The retina has no pain receptors,� Karth said. �People will not feel this. They won�t feel a burning or sharp pain before or after. They won�t notice until the next day or later.�
Karth said the first symptoms of retinal damage occur 12 hours to 48 hours after a prolonged look into the sun. Symptoms include blurred vision with a central or near-central spot of distortion that also can appear to be black or �missing.�
�On average, people who look at the sun too long will have vision problems,� Karth said. �It�s usually minor and improves after the first 24 to 48 hours, but a lot of people are left with some damage and there�s no way to correct it.�
No medical fix
Karth said most people with eye damage from looking at the sun will naturally recover their visual clarity after the first month, but that there have been cases of permanent damage that include decreased vision, severe vision loss and partial blindness.
�It has occurred that some people have become legally blind from this,� he said. �You�re not going to have your vision go black, but you can have a blind spot that won�t allow you to see people�s faces or street signs.�
People who gazed at the sun for long periods and suffered severe eye damage usually have done so under the influence of illegal drugs such as LSD, Karth said.
Come Aug. 21 � or any time after � those who suspect they�ve burned their eyes don�t need to rush to the emergency room or hospital, according to Karth. There�s no medical fix for the damage, he said.
�Once the damage is done, it�s done,� Karth said. �It�s not something where timing matters very much, and there�s no reason to overrun the emergency room; they won�t be able to do anything about it.�
But those who think they suffered solar retinopathy still should visit an eye care provider within a few days, he said.
Wear certified
eclipse glasses
Looking at the sun through an unfiltered camera, telescope, binoculars or other optical device won�t properly protect eyes either � even if they are wearing certified eclipse glasses. That�s because such viewing devices concentrate solar rays, allowing them possibly to enter the eye and cause damage.
Those looking to photograph the event should research the best method for doing so and what filters work to safely capture images.
�The idea is just to take this seriously and realize that the damage can happen without pain or discomfort,� Karth said. �People have to take proactive steps.�
Follow Alisha on Twitter @alisharoemeling. Email alisha.roemeling@registerguard.com.NEW DELHI: Whistleblower Indian Forest Officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi has been shifted to Uttarakhand cadre from Haryana, nearly three years after he requested for the transfer claiming that he was facing "extreme hardship" for exposing corruption.Chaturvedi was recently named as one of the winners of Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2015 and was also in spotlight after being removed from the post of Chief Vigilance Officer, who act as distant arm of Central Vigilance Commission, last year at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for allegedly exposing corruption in the premier institute.He was given relief in May by Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) on his plea against the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) order to get fresh no-objection certificate for his cadre change from both Haryana and Uttarakhand governments.An order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said that the ACC has approved the proposal of inter cadre transfer of Chaturvedi, a 2002 batch Indian Forest Service officer, from Haryana to Uttarakhand.Chaturvedi, who was posted at AIIMS as Deputy Secretary, claimed he was not assigned any work."I am very thankful to the CAT. It would have been better if the government would have done this on its own and without my going to the Tribunal," he told PTI.Chaturvedi had in October, 2012 applied for cadre change on grounds of extreme hardship. As per rules, cadre transfer is allowed only on grounds of extreme hardship and marriage.He had cited 12 transfers in five years, suspension, two major penalty chargesheets issued for removal from service, false police and vigilance cases, spoiling of Annual Confidential Report (ACR) and refusal of state government for central deputation in AIIMS as instances of extreme hardship.President Obama, already the most traveled chief executive in the modern era after internationalist former President George H.W. Bush, is expected to run up an Air Force One tab of at least $24 million this year alone, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
Already Obama, just back from a trip with his family and a huge entourage of staff to several African nations, has run up a $15.2 million bill just for Air Force One in the first six months of 2013. Security and hotel costs can dwarf the jet's cost. Some estimates of the president's Africa trip alone top $100 million.
NTUF's Douglas Kellogg told Secrets that Obama's Africa Air Force One bill to taxpayers was $6,654,345.
But unlike those costs which are hard to estimate and often kept secret, Air Force One costs can be calculated based on published hourly figures provided by the Pentagon.
So far, the president has spent 18 days abroad, is on a pace to surpass is 20 days abroad in 2010 and 2011 and is approaching his high of 40 days in 2009. Total costs so far for Air Force One calculated by NTUF are $15,219,433.
NTUF said that the president's near 18-hour flight back from Tanzania Tuesday night marks his 14th overseas flight this year.
"Estimating the potential costs of additional trips the president already has planned for later this year is imprecise, however, using the median cruise speed of Air Force One applied to distances for trips to Moscow, Indonesia, and Brunei, brings the total for President Obama's 2013 Air Force One costs to over $24 million," said NTUF.
The latest estimate from NTUF provided to Secrets comes just days after the the taxpayer's watchdog group released its latest study of presidential travel, "Up in the Air." That study found that Obama has nearly caught up to Bush's travel despite a tough and long reelection campaign in 2012. "Obama nearly spent as many days abroad as the current single presidential term leader, George H.W. Bush, despite focusing for nearly half his term on the longest and most expensive campaign in history," said NTUF.
"We can only imagine how expensive these travel costs truly are, and how far President Obama will travel with no campaign this term," said the group.
Paul Bedard, The Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Consumers spent significantly less at the start of the holiday season this weekend, dimming hopes for a retail comeback that would help propel the economy early in 2010.
Jose Figueroa makes his way through a Target store in Chicago, November 27, 2009. REUTERS/John Gress
While shoppers turned out in force as early as Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, many said they had zeroed in on highly discounted items, would buy only what they needed and would walk out of a store if they did not find a good deal.
“Shoppers proved this weekend that they were willing to open their wallets for a bargain,” said National Retail Federation Chief Executive Tracy Mullin in a statement on Sunday. Retail chains “know they have their work cut out for them to keep people coming back through Christmas.”
Consumers said they will have spent nearly 8 percent less on average, or about $343 per person, over the weekend that includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and runs through Sunday, according to the NRF.
Traffic to stores and websites rose to 195 million people from 172 million in 2008, but shoppers were focused on buying low-priced items, like $10 toys and $9 books, the NRF said.
The NRF has forecast a 1 percent decline in holiday sales this year, which would mark an unprecedented drop for two straight years after a global financial crisis erupted in 2008.
Total retail sales edged up just 0.5 percent to $10.66 billion on Black Friday, which is often the single-busiest day of the holiday shopping season, ShopperTrak said on Saturday.
Online retailers, however, enjoyed an 11 percent jump in Black Friday spending to $595 million, with Amazon.com and Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Walmart.com enjoying the biggest surges in traffic, according to comScore.
Retailers had warned investors they would take a conservative view of holiday sales and have cut inventory and reduced expenses to compensate.
"You're clearly down on a two-year run rate," said Bill Taubman of mall operator Taubman Centers Inc. But he added, "margins are going to be extremely good because (retailers) have been careful about what they bought." For a graphic on U.S. holiday sales trends, click here
DEPARTMENT STORES ATTRACT
Shoppers interviewed across the country by Reuters over the weekend said they were lured by bargains, but would stick to pared-down budgets.
“If they don’t have rebates and sales before Christmas, I don’t think people are going to go back shopping after Black Friday,” said Joel Wincowski, a higher education consultant shopping at a Best Buy store in Plattsburgh, New York. He bought an Xbox 360 game console for $299.
“We’re going to cut back on everybody, even the kids.”
Discount chains like Walmart, department stores and higher-end chains like Saks Inc seemed to have lured more spending and avoided steep discounts, retail consultants and executives said on Sunday.
“The market has had a negative bias toward the state of consumer spending,” said Bill Dreher, senior analyst at Deutsche Bank. “We continue to believe that there are pockets of strength with discount retailing doing very well, with select luxury retailers doing very well, like Nordstrom and Saks, which have brought down their price points.”
Specialty apparel chains, however, may face another tough year as they relied on heavy promotions to draw shoppers.
“Going through the mall on Friday, the stores that had not been doing as well — AnnTaylor, Limited, Gap — were very aggressively promoting,” said Jeff Edelman, director of retail and consumer advisory services at RSM McGladrey.
Slideshow (17 Images)
Edelman expects holiday sales to be flat this year, but he said he expected profits for most retailers to be higher.
The NRF said shoppers’ destination of choice appeared to be department stores, with nearly half of holiday shoppers visiting at least one. A little more than 43 percent of shoppers said they went to a discount retailer this weekend.Arsene Wenger has the answer as to why Arsenal have been more convincing on the road this season.
The Gunners have started the season with 4-1 and 3-1 away wins over Hull City and Watford respectively, while also picking up a point and keeping a clean sheet against Premier League champions Leicester City.
Login or register to play video 04:26 'We had a convincing performance'
With his side now sitting fourth in the table, the boss offered an explanation for his side’s impressive form on their travels. With his side now sitting fourth in the table, the boss offered an explanation for his side’s impressive form on their travels.
“We scored three at Watford, we scored four [at Hull],” Wenger said. “We played 0-0 at Leicester but we had two or three opportunities. Away from home we look more convincing, at the moment, than at home.
“I believe that when we lost our first game [at home] it was a mental shock for us and for our supporters and straight away they had a little bit of scepticism and doubt.
“It was important for us to win the Southampton game and hopefully now we can have the same quality at home.
“The positivity comes from us and from our attitude. We have to think that we get the supporters behind us when the performances are convincing and not the other way around.”Zelda between Diddy and Pit
Ice Climbers before Dedede.
Olimar after Wario
Lucas as last of the Dojo confirmed players.
Debunking the theory:
Chronobound made up this roster and had admitted it to be fake.
False. Chronobound did compile the list of 35 characters but he didn't make the mockup. He also didn't say the list is false. He just said it as a "I called it first!" for the world to recognize he was right (if in fact this turns out to be correct). It's a theory and because it's a theory it must be false.
False. It's a theory. Also, just because it's a theory doesn't mean it can be wrong. Theories, by definition, is something that hasn't been proven wrong (yet). The picture of fake! The who thing is so obviously fake. You can tell because...
True. Yes the picture is a fake. You're completely right. Give yourself a pat on the back if you figured this out by yourself. Now smack yourself for not reading where it's said it's a mock up picture. The point of the mock up picture is to show what the list will probably look like. R.O.B. won't be a playable character because he's an SSE enemy.
False. There are plenty of games where you can play as characters that are enemies or minor characters by unlocking them. For example: Some Star Wars Games (as Sith or Storm Trooper) Devil May Cry 3, Viewtiful Joe, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. There are also games were you can unlock and play as a minor NPC. This list is fake because my favorite character, <insert favorite character>, isn't on the list
Shut up.
Marth After PikachuG&W After MarthLuigi After G&WFalco Between Dedede & P. TrainerSnake Between Ike and PeachLucario between Dedede and BowserNess between Dedede and BowserFalcon and Olimar should be switched but that's one error in a bunch of right calls.---This started out on the "Japanese Everything" thread and people agreed. It later was heavily disputed by some and it really needs a new thread.Here's the basic theory, starting from way back when. The theory starts off with, all characters are no longer jumbled as you unlocked them or have? marks. They're slid in. There's a preset character icon order.Here it's:Mario, DK, Link, Samus, Fox, Pikachu, Diddy, Pit, Metaknight, Ike, Peach, Yoshi, Sonic, BowserNow to WhobbyMario, Link, Samus, Fox, Pikachu, Diddy, Metaknight, Ike, Peach, Yoshi, Dedede, Bowser, WarioWhich leads us to:Mario, DK, Link, Samus, Fox, Pikachu, Diddy, Pit, Metaknight, Ike, Peach, Yoshi, Sonic/Dedede, Bowser, WarioWe don't know if Sonic of Dedede comes first because they were both removed at the same time.On the 21st at 12PM, this MOCK UP image was posted on GameFAQs showing what the correct order would be on the final roster:There is disagreement saying the Rob picture in the mock up would be from Star Fox not the NES accessory.All the character orders are in correct, that we know so far. Also, it says Dedede comes before Sonic.12 hours later, this image came up on 2chanAnd now this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VxrQiCz4_o There was a big dispute on the other thread saying all the above could have easily been falsified and the rest as "lucky guesses". I see this as another Dragoon prophecy (on another note, this roster doesn't conflict with the Dragoon prophet) and I think this is pretty much the roster pending full verification of the 2Chan Image.I'm making this section here because I am not saying this is 100% factual truth. This is a theory and as such it can be wrong.Here's the list:Oprah's Big Give Gets the Big Boot
Oprah felt like she got the message out there. It was not something she wanted to renew."
ABC is not renewing's Big Give for a second season this coming fall. The queen of talk shows is not upset by the news and during a conference call, a rep for Oprah had this to say:The only message we got from watching the Big Give is that the people involved didn't know how to work together. Seemed like your run of the mill reality show where everyone is fighting to get their 15 minutes of fame - good or bad. The concept was great but the contestants actions spoke volumes and not in a positive way.
Big Give wasn't the only show to get the cut. Cashmere Mafia, Men in Trees, and Women's Murder Club have all been dropped.
ABC will premiere a new, yet to be named show. Celebrities involved with the project will be Aston Kutcher and Tyra Banks. The preliminary information is billing the new offering as "a beauty pageant like no other." Kutcher and Banks seem like an unlikely match up. Time will tell.Dear PokeDiary,
There was one more thing I wanted to do before I left for Cerulean. I remembered passing a tiny patch of grass on my way into town. When I left Viridan Forest, I had been so eager to get to the Pokemon Center that I ran right by it without a second thought. But I knew I would need more team members if I hoped to challenge the stronger Gyms, so I decided that it would be worth a look to see if any of my future allies were waiting for me there.
What I got was this:
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Pidgeys were, and always would be, my bane as a Pokemon Trainer. I was about to give Chuckles the signal to dispose of this interloper when I suddenly had second thoughts.
While Pidgeys were small, common and weak, they were scrappy and surprisingly persistent fighters. And if I wanted to become a good Trainer, could I really afford to hold grudges? In order to stand a chance, I needed to put aside my personal feelings and do whatever it took to win. I called back Chuckles. He was a good fighter, but I doubted his ability to attack the Pidgey without murdering it instantly.
Instead, I sent out JitterBug, a more subtle and versatile agent for this purpose. Sometime during the confrontation with Space Kid and his Geodude she seemed to have learned a new move.
“JitterBug! Use Poison Powder to incapacitate it!”
I figured that fainting from poison would be a pretty bad way to start off our relationship, so I ran SupaFly back to the Pokemon Center as fast as I could to get her all healed up. The nurse behind the counter saw me walk in and dispensed with the usual pleasantries. “New arrival, huh?” she remarked as she saw me place four Pokeballs down in front of her, instead of the customary three. “Uh, yeah. I caught a Pidgey just outside the forest.” She scooped my Pokeballs into the tray and called “That’ll be about ten minutes, hon,” over her shoulder as she carried them into the back room. I think they were starting to recognize me. If it wasn’t for the fact that Pokemon Centers were free, I would probably be racking up a tab by now.
Finally, I decided to stop in the PokeMart to top up my supplies of potions, antidotes, and Pokeballs. Can’t be too careful. I also chatted up the locals a bit before taking my leave.
Now that all my preparations were complete, it was time to set out on my mission. No, not becoming the League Champion, my other, far more important mission: keeping tabs on G’yorp. Back in Oak’s lab, he and Bulbasaur had bonded to one another immediately through some kind of bizarre animal magnetism that I still didn’t fully understand. And during our last battle, he had also fought with a Pidgey that seemed to be doing his bidding. Which means that he had somehow convinced a formerly wild Pokemon to join his merry band. I felt an icy terror begin to grow in the pit of my stomach as the disturbing implications of this fact slowly dawned on me.
G’yorp clearly didn’t know how to operate a Pokeball. Which meant that he somehow convinced a Pokemon to fight for him without the use of a capture device. I had no idea how he did it, but if he really had some kind of extraordinary ability to make wild Pokemon into his allies, there was no telling what sort of horrifyingly destructive Pocket Monsters might fall under his sway. I could see it now: G’yorp traveling the countryside, followed by a rampaging Magmar, or a Gyarados, or a Pinsir, or a herd of Tauros, or a Dragonite, or something even worse than all these hiding deep within the bowels of the earth that had yet to be discovered, laying waste to towns and cities…it was too awful to contemplate. He had to be stopped.
The only thing I knew about G’yorp’s motivations was that apparently something had caused him to seek out and challenge Brock. What did that mean? Was he attracted to Gym leaders for some reason? Was he seeking out strong trainers to battle as a test of his power? Either way, it was a fair bet that he would turn up at another Gym sooner or later. Checking my town map, it looked like the closest Gym to Pewter City was Cerulean’s, which lay to the East through Mt. Moon. If I headed there, I might be able to find him, or someone who could tell me where he went.
But the subterranean passage beneath the mountain was not a road that I was eager to travel. There were tales about the Pokemon that dwelt deep within the endless dark of those caves…and of the trainers who caught them |
offset is 0.69 degrees (image credit: GomSpace, ESA) Figure 11 shows the results of a verification of the NovAtel GNSS receiver aboard GOMX-3. In both tests, the receiver maintained lock for a period of 20 to 30 minutes. Each of these attempts was about 12 hours away from a TLE epoch which was used to determine a relative position error between the SGP4-based (Simplified General Perturbation 4) position and the receiver's reported position. As shown, the Euclidean difference between the SGP4- and GNSS-reported positions varies from 4 to 10 km with an average of 7 km. This is in good agreement with previous nanosatellites comparing TLE-to-GPS position errors. Figure 11: The GNSS receiver position estimation as compared with the TLE/SGP4 estimation (image credit: GomSpace, ESA) ADS-B receiver: After initial communication checks to the ADS-B receiver, the next step was deployment of the helix antenna designed for data collection at 1090 MHz. Immediately after antenna deployment, the satellite recorded its first ADS-B signals. To date, the ADS-B receiver has regularly collected thousands of plane positions per day and continues to operate nominally. NanoCom SDR: On-orbit tests began by simply powering the device on and monitoring its behavior. As shown in Figure 12, the highly capable SDR maintains temperatures within operational bounds, even over long time spans. Next, the spectrum monitoring capabilities proceeded to monitor the UHF environment during GOMX-3 transmissions. With this sanity check complete, the system was used to record the spectrum in L-band while tracking specific geostationary satellites. The patch antenna used by the GOMX-3 SDR is centered at 1592 MHz with a VSWR (Voltage Standing Wave Ratio) ≤3 bandwidth of 175 MHz. Figure 12: On-orbit active-SDR temperatures over a 24-hour period (image credit: GomSpace, ESA) Mission Success: Over eight months after the deployment from the ISS, GOMX-3 is still fully operational and has fulfilled all its mission requirements. It has been a complete mission success. In fact, the operations of the satellite have been consistent enough to allow for the development of an automated experiment scheduling tool. This tool maximizes the utility of the payloads while maintaining the battery charge-level above a critical threshold. - The satellite now continues operations in its extended mission. • April 7, 2016: GomX-3's distinctive helical antenna has detected millions of signals from aircraft, building a detailed map of global aviation traffic. These signals are regularly broadcast from aircraft, giving flight information such as speed, position and altitude. All aircraft entering European airspace are envisaged to provide such automatic surveillance in the coming years. Built for ESA by GomSpace in Denmark, the GomX-3 CubeSat was ejected from the International Space Station on 5 October 2015, along with a Danish student satellite. - "This 3U GomX-3 is ESA's very first technology CubeSat to fly. We were able to make it operational within only 96 hours of its release from the Space Station, with a wide variety of tests taking place during the following months," explains Roger Walker, overseeing ESA's technology CubeSat effort. "Being small and low-cost, they make ideal platforms for rapidly flight testing experimental technologies." - GomX-3 also carries a miniaturized X-band transmitter, developed by Syrlinks in France, which has demonstrated the rapid download of data. - In addition, the CubeSat is measuring radio signals emitted by telecom satellites to assess their overall transmission efficiency and how their signal quality changes with respect to distance from their target footprints. - "GomX-3 has in contrast to many other CubeSats demonstrated three-axis control, so it can be pointed as required, whether downwards or upwards, to an accuracy of 3º," explains Roger. "A success in terms of planning, speed of development and technical achievements, GomX-3 has now completed its planned six-month technology demonstration mission and continues to operate normally. With its orbit naturally decaying from atmospheric drag, the satellite is predicted to reenter and burn up in September of this year." Meanwhile, GomSpace is developing a follow-up 6U CubeSat called GomX-4B, also supported by ESA, scheduled for launch in the second half of 2017. Figure 13: Detections of aircraft in flight made by ESA CubeSat GomX-3 during the last six months, since it was released from the International Space Station on 5 October 2015 (image credit: ESA/GomSpace) • October 16, 2015: ESA's first technology-testing CubeSat, released last on Oct. 5, 2015 from the International Space Station, is in good health and is set to start work on its six-month mission. The project is taking first steps towards putting its technology payloads through their paces. - Despite its small size of 10 x 10 x 30 cm, the nanosatellite precisely controls its orientation by spinning miniaturized ‘reaction wheels' at varying speeds. This precision is an important factor in the effectiveness of the mission's technology-testing payloads. One task will see GOMX-3 pointing up towards to detect radio signals from telecom satellites in geostationary orbit to assess their overall transmission efficiency. The processing software can be changed in flight, allowing the receiver to be reconfigured and used in extremely flexible ways, of wider interest for future ESA missions. - The CubeSat also carries a miniaturized version of a transmitter being flown on ESA's PROBA-V minisatellite for downloading data rapidly at X-band radio frequencies. Developed by the French Syrlinks company in cooperation with France's CNES space agency, the antenna will aim at X-band ground stations in the CNES network. Once the communications link has been tested over the coming months, the transmitter will be available to fly on future nanosatellites to boost their amount of downloaded data. - GOMX-3 also sports a receiver to detect navigation signals from aircraft. The satellite points its distinctive helical antenna to Earth and has already picked up a tens of thousands of ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast) signals from aircraft since the day after deployment from the ISS. - ESA's 2013-launched PROBA-V first confirmed the feasibility of ADS-B detection from orbit, opening up the prospect of a global aircraft monitoring system incorporating remote regions not covered by ground-based air traffic control. - Due to the near-ISS orbit of GOMX-3, its Aalborg, Denmark ground station has an average of 5.0 passes per day, with an average pass length of 7.4 minutes. After the first 37 minutes of communication with the on-orbit satellite, the GOMX-3 bus was confirmed to be healthy in all aspects: power, communication, and attitude determination & control. This was made possible by designing for on-orbit operation, as well as careful planning and rehearsing of critical ground passes (Ref. 15). Figure 14: The GOMX-3 spacecraft in deployed configuration (image credit: GomSpace, NASA) • Deployment of AAUSAT-5 and GOMX-3: On October 5, 2015, at 15:55 CEST (Central European Standard Time), two ESA CubeSats, the student-built AAUSAT-5 of Aalborg University in Denmark and the professional technology demonstrator GOMX-3, were deployed from the ISS Japanese Kibo module airlock using the Kibo robotic arm. Figure 15: Photo of the AAUSAT-5 and GOMX-3 CubeSats after their deployment from the ISS. The CubeSats moved away from the ISS with a relative motion of about 1 m/s (image credit: NanoRacks, NASA) Sensor complement: (ADS-B receiver payload) ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) Background: The main payload of GOMX-3 is the SDR ( Software Defined Radio) that can receive ADS-B signals from commercial aircraft. These signals represent periodic transmissions of data by an aircraft's Mode-S transponder at the 1090 MHz frequency (L-band), containing the aircraft ID, its position, altitude and intent. The ADS-B signals are used by air traffic control for areas in which a ground receiving architecture is present, but given the short range of the ADS-B signals, they are not useful over land areas with poor infrastructure and oceanic coverage is very limited. Nevertheless, ADS-B has become a significant part of air traffic control, being used in the same manner as information provided by radars. ADS-B will become mandatory for all aircraft in the near future and there is a strong desire to ultimately phase out the traditional radars and purely rely on ADS-B since the receivers are much easier to maintain. The ADS-B system is today standard equipment on new commercial aircraft and it is estimated that 70% of the current fleet is equipped. Recent decisions taken by the various aviation authorities such as Eurocontrol (Brussels) and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration, Washington DC) means that ADS-B will become mandatory equipment on all high performance aircraft from 2015 and 2020, respectively. ADS-B receiver payload: The ADS-B receiving payload on the GOMX-3 satellite consists of a helical antenna deployed after launch, providing a 10 dB gain at the desired 1090 MHz frequency. Furthermore, the payload is comprised of an RF front end interfacing with the antenna, a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) used as receiver and a Main Controller handling data acquired by the system and transmitting it for storage in the spacecraft memory. Signal decoding is provided by the FPGA, receiving and digitizing the ADS-B signal blocks that consist of a preamble for time synchronization and 112 bits of data sent at a symbol rate of 1 MHz. A top-level block diagram of the ADS-B receiver payload is provided in Figure 16. The antenna is a deployable helical antenna depicted on Figure 1, which provides 10 dB of gain at 1090 MHz. Note: The ADS-B payload was also flown on GOMX-1, launched on Nov. 21, 2013. The ADS-B payload is described in the GOMX-1 file. Figure 16: The ADS-B block diagram (image credit: GomSpace) The RF front-end provides amplification and initial down-conversion of the signal. To compensate for the increased path-loss due to the receiver location in space in contrast to the 80 NM nominal range of the system, the RF front-end has carefully been designed to provide the required sensitivity to be able to decode the signal. NanoCom ADS-B is an update of the hardware which flew aboard GOMX-1. Hardware and software updates make it more resilient to single event upsets. GOMX-3 collects the ADS-B signals using a deployable helix antenna located on the body +Z face. NanoCom SDR (aka SOFT) is a software-defined radio built around the Xilinx Zynq Z7030 FPGA. A single FPGA daughterboard may be augmented with up to 3 Front End Modules which may interface to multiple antennas each. GOMX-3 uses one Front End Module connected to an L-band patch antenna located on the -Z face of the satellite. Syrlinks EWC27 is an X-band transmitter designed and manufactured by Syrlinks and housed on GOMX-3. The transmitter is capable of up to 100 Mbit bitrate, but GOMX-3 used a set bitrate of 3 Mbit for its first on-orbit test. The X-band patch antenna was also provided by Syrlinks and is located on the +Y face of the satellite. The NanoCom SDR provides the CCSDS data stream to the transmitter. Table 4: In Figure 2, the following components are considered to be part of the payload (Ref. 15)
"GOMX-3 CubeSat," ESA, January 6, 2015, URL:
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/01/GOMX-3_CubeSat M.A. Fernandez, G. Guillois, Y. Richard, J-L. Issler, P. Lafabrie, A. Gaboriaud, D. Evans, R. Walker, O. Koudelka, P. Romano, K. T. Hansen, D. Gerhardt,"New Game-changing on cube and nanosatellites radios," Proceedings of the 66th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2015), Jerusalem, Israel, Oct.12-16, 2015, paper: IAC-15-B2.4.5 Miguel Fernandez, Anis Latiri, Thomas Dehaene, Gabrielle Michaud, Philippe Bataille, "X-band transmission evolution towards DVB-S2 for Small Satellites," Proceedings of the 30th Annual AIAA/USU SmallSat Conference, Logan UT, USA, August 6-11, 2016, paper: SSC16-VII-6, URL:
http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3386&context=smallsat Miguel Fernandez, Anis Latiri, Thomas Dehaene, Gabrielle Michaud, Philippe Bataille, Clément Dudal, Philippe Lafabrie, Alain Gaboriaud, Jean-Luc Issler, F. Rousseau, A. Ressouche, J-L. Salaun, "X-band transmission evolution towards DVB-S2 for Small Satellites," Proceedings of the 67th IAC (International Astronautical Congress), Guadalajara, Mexico, Sept. 26-30, 2016, paper: IAC-16-B4.6B,2 Jesper A. Larsen, David Gerhardt, Morten Bisgaard, Lars Alminde, Roger Walker, Miguel Fernandez, Jean-Luc Issler, "Rapid Results: The GOMX-3 CubeSat Path to Orbit," Proceedings of the 4S Symposium: `Small Satellite Systems and Services,' Valletta, Malta, 30 May – 3 June 2016 "ITU Symposium and Workshop on small satellite regulation and communication systems," Prague, Czech Republic, March 2-4, 2015, URL: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R
/space/workshops/2015-prague-small-sat/Presentations/GomSpace.pdf "GomX-3 being built," ESA, Aug. 19, 2015, URL:
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/08/GomX-3_being_built "Launch Success of H-II Transfer Vehicle Kounotori-5," JAXA Press Release, Aug. 19, 2015, URL: http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2015/08/20150819_h2bf5.html Patrick Blau, "HTV-5 Cargo Overview," Spaceflight 101, URL:
http://www.spaceflight101.com/htv-5-cargo-overview.html "Technology CubeSat hitch-hiker on today's HTV launch," ESA, Aug. 19, 2015, URL:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology
/Technology_CubeSat_hitch-hiker_on_today_s_HTV_launch Helmut W. Zaglauer, Didier Alary, Lars Alminde, Jacob Nissen, Morten Jensen, Philip Plantholt, Sean Atkinson, "Demonstration of near real-time collection of aircraft ADS-B data with the GOMX-3 CubeSat," Proceedings of the 11th IAA Symposium on Small Satellites for Earth Observation, Berlin, Germany, April 24-28, 2017, paper: IAA-B11-0904 Note: Flightradar24 is a Swedish Internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight information on a map. It includes flight tracks, origins and destinations, flight numbers, aircraft types, positions, altitudes, headings and speeds. It can also show time-lapse replays of previous tracks and historical flight data by airline, aircraft, aircraft type, area or airport. It aggregates data from multiple sources but, outside of the United States, mostly from crowdsourced information gathering by volunteers with ADS-B receivers.
The data come primarily from a proprietary, crowd-sourced network of 12,000+ terrestrial ADS-B receivers hosted by private individuals and companies all over the world and tracks in total 150,000+ flights per day. This network of ADS-B receivers is the largest in the world and in addition to ADS-B data, Flightradar24 is able to get positional data for non-ADS-B equipped aircraft through the use of Multilateration (MLAT). The ADS-B and MLAT data is merged with schedule and flight status data from airlines and airports to create a unique global flight tracking data service. - Flightradar24 continuously invests in developing its global ADS-B network and the company has a track record of bringing new technology and innovative solutions into its service. "ESA CubeSat found answers blowing in the wind," ESA, Nov. 4, 2016, URL: http://m.esa.int
/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/ESA_CubeSat_found_answers_blowing_in_the_wind "GomX-3 orbit and weather data retrievals," ESA, Nov. 4, 2016, URL: http://m.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/11/GomX-3_orbit_and_weather_data_retrievals David Germardt, Morten Bisgaard, Lars Almide, Roger Winkler, Miguel Angel Fernandez, Anis Latiri, Jean-Luc Issler, "GOMX-3: Mission Results from the Inaugural ESA In-Orbit Demonstration CubeSat," Proceedings of the 30th Annual AIAA/USU SmallSat Conference, Logan UT, USA, August 6-11, 2016, paper: SSC16-III-04, URL: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3347&context=smallsat "Tiny CubeSat tracks worldwide air traffic," ESA, April 7, 2016, URL: http://www.esa.int
/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Tiny_CubeSat_tracks_worldwide_air_traffic "Aircraft detections from GomX-3," ESA, April 7, 2016, URL: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/03/Aircraft_detections_from_GomX-3 "ESA's first technology nanosatellite reporting for duty," ESA, Oct. 16, 2015, URL:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology
/ESA_s_first_technology_nanosatellite_reporting_for_duty Lars K. Alminde, Johan Christiansen, Karl Kaas Laursen, Anders Midtgaard, Morten Bisgard, Morten Jensen, Bjarke Gosvig, Alex Birklykke, Peter Koch, Yannick Le Moullec, "GomX-1: A Nano-satellite Mission to Demonstrate Improved Situational Awareness for Air Traffic Control," Proceedings of the 26th Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, Utah, USA, August 13-16, 2012, paper: SSC12-I-6, URL of paper: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=smallsat, URL of presentation: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0&article=1019&context=smallsat&type=additional
The information compiled and edited in this article was provided by Herbert J. Kramer from his documentation of: "Observation of the Earth and Its Environment: Survey of Missions and Sensors" (Springer Verlag) as well as many other sources after the publication of the 4th edition in 2002. - Comments and corrections to this article are always welcome for further updates (herb.kramer@gmx.net). Spacecraft Launch Mission Status Sensor Complement References Back to topWACO, Texas - For the sixth time in Conference history, Baylor was selected as the 2015-16 preseason favorite to win the Big 12 women's basketball regular season title, in a vote of the league's head coaches.
The Lady Bears were also picked at the top of the preseason rankings in 2005-06 and four-consecutive seasons from 2009-13. They have won or tied for six regular season titles, including the last five, as well as captured the past five Phillips 66 Big 12 Women's Basketball Championship trophies. All told, the Lady Bears have won six regular season crowns and seven tournament titles.
Baylor received eight of 10 first-place votes (coaches are not allowed to vote for their own teams). Second-place Texas and third-place Oklahoma each also received a first-place vote and were separated by just one point. Iowa State and TCU rounded out the top five and were also a point apart. West Virginia was picked sixth, followed by K-State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Kansas.
The 2015-16 season gets underway on Friday, November 13 with a full slate of non-conference games. League action begins on Wednesday, December 30 as Baylor takes on Oklahoma State in Stillwater, Okla.
Baylor returns eight players off last season's NCAA Championship Elite Eight and Big 12 Championship squad, including Big 12 Player of the Year Nina Davis. Davis, a 5-11 junior forward, led the Big 12 in scoring at 21.1 points per game and ranked No. 4 in rebounding with 8.3 a contest. Two other starters, guards Niya Johnson and Alexis Prince, return as well. Johnson set Big 12 records for single-season assists (322) and assist/turnover ratio (4.13). Johnson ranked No. 1 nationally in assists per game (8.9) and No. 2 in assist/turnover ratio. Baylor's freshman recruiting class, which ranked No. 4 nationally, is led by posts Kalani Brown (6-7) and Beatrice Mompremier (6-4). Junior guard Alexis Jones, an All-ACC transfer from Duke, will see her first action in green and gold this season.
A Big 12 Women's Basketball Preview Show will be televised on FOX Sports affiliates prior to the beginning of the regular season. The first airing is scheduled on FOX Sports Southwest Monday, November 9 at 7:00 p.m. CT. Check local listings for additional airings on FOX Sports Midwest and FOX College Sports (FCS).
2015-16 Big 12 Conference Women's Basketball Preseason Poll
1. Baylor (8) ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" 80 points
2. Texas (1) ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" 70 points
3. Oklahoma (1) ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" 69 points
4. Iowa State ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" 48 points
5. TCU ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" 47 points
6. West Virginia ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" 40 points
7. K-State - 36 points
8. Oklahoma State - 27 points
9. Texas Tech -18 points
10. Kansas -15 points
(first place votes in parentheses; coaches not allowed to vote for their own team)Now, it’s true that the Rambam (Talmud Torah 2:2) thought we should hit children (and women) to instill fear in them.
Of course, eight hundred years have passed and it was a different time, but even so, his ruling was clear that this hitting should not be out of anger, with sticks or straps, but instead it should come from an educational motivation and with at most a small strap. The Shulchan Aruch also rules this way (Y.D. 245:10), and the Vilna Gaon seemed to take this approach as well (Ulim Litrufa).
To the Rambam’s credit, he rules that any aggressive acts that are intended to cause harm or embarrass another are forbidden (Hovel uMazik 5:1), and his approach throughout is that, rather than experiencing real anger in the moment, one should merely fake anger for the sake of the student’s character development (Deot 2:3).
Rebbe Nachman saw things differently and made clear that we should never hit children. More recently, Rav Shlomo Wolbe further argued that any type of hitting would create a long-term strained relationship between parent and child, so it should be avoided. An important halachic approach to follow is that one may not hit a young child since it is a violation of “Lifnei Iver” (causing another to err), because hitting the child will likely cause them to hit a parent or teacher back, and thus the child will have committed a sin (Moed Katan 17a, Kiddushin 30a).
A 2004 study of abusive parents found that seventy-three percent had assaulted their kids—hitting or punching them with their fists—and twenty percent had engaged in even more violent assaults, resulting in broken bones or severe lacerations. These parents tended to blame their behavior on their “bad” or “stubborn” kids: “They’ll say, ‘I had to discipline my child this way because he’s so rotten and he won’t listen,'” researcher Beverly Funderburk said, and they believed that violence was the only way to get their kids to obey.
Other scientific studies support the position taken by Rebbe Nachman and Rav Shlomo Wolbe. Catherine A. Taylor of Tulane University studied urban mothers’ use of corporal punishment on their children. She found that a quarter of mothers who spanked their 3-year-old child more than twice in the previous month reported that their children were more aggressive by their next interview two years later, independent of any other factor. These results confirm what the findings of numerous previous studies, namely that corporal punishment of children is far more likely to result in greater aggression as the child ages. It is no wonder that the American Academy of Pediatrics continues to oppose corporal punishment for children.
Today, we understand that the best approach in education is through positive reinforcement and showing love, not the “hickory stick” that dominated until the mid-20th century. It is never appropriate to use any physical aggression as punishment upon a child and abuse must be reported to the authorities. Of course, there must be rule and structure, but that should not be enforced through physical punishment. We learn best through encouragement, not fear. We must encourage our youth and offer constant positive reinforcement to help them to actualize their potentials and flourish in life.
—
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of “Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century.” Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.”Four Syrian asylum seekers were arrested by police in the German town of Löbau after they filmed and molested underage girls at a swimming pool.
Police arrested the group of Syrian asylum seekers at the Herrenmannsbad outdoor swimming pool on Friday. Two of the men, aged 31 and 27, are said to have filmed several underage girls at the facility against their permission and then tried to sexually touch them in the swimming pool, MDR reports.
“Two asylum seekers, or perhaps four, have bothered girls there. They also made videos and that is the charge. We are now awaiting the investigation of the police and the prosecution,” said the mayor of Löbau Dietmar Buchholz.
The asylum seekers are said to have used their mobile phones to film the young girls. When one tried to physically molest a girl, the lifeguard on duty told him to stop and then called the police.
Police say the 31-year-old migrant was filming the girls whilst his 27-year-old fellow countryman was the one who molested several children in the pool itself. A 19-year-old and a 21-year-old are currently being treated as witnesses to the alleged crimes.
Mayor Buchholz announced the four men would be banned from the Herrenmannsbad pool going which the town runs.
Nearby Lake Berzdorf has also seen men of a “Mediterranean appearance” film women with their smartphones. As a result, the spokesman for the town of Görlitz, which manages the lake, said they have hired security to patrol the area.
Since 2015 there have been a high number of sex attacks in swimming pools in Germany and Austria. The most notorious attack occurred in Vienna when an Iraqi asylum seeker brutally raped a young boy in the pool changing room, the migrant claiming he was having a “sexual emergency”. He recently had his sentence reduced by a judge who deemed the seven years he was meant to serve as being too harsh.
Many cities and pools have tried various methods to reduce the number of sex attacks by migrants at swimming pools. Some have tried banning asylum seekers altogether but have faced immense opposition by left-wing, pro-migrant groups.
Leaked police documents last year showed the number of migrant pool sex attacks had sharply risen. “In particular, offences of rape and sexual abuse of children in bathing establishments is significant,” the report said.me, a lesbian, mistaking a nice twink for a nice butch lesbian: [gives him the lesbian nod]
him, a twink, mistaking me for a twink: [gives me the gay once over]
me, a sensitive dyke: [calls an uber and spends the whole time misty eyed, wondering why this nice butch would look me over like i wasn’t a HUMAN BEING, like i was something to be gawked at. i ignore my Uber driver’s attempt at small talk, staring out the window and questioning everything i know about life, meaning, and the pursuit of lesbianism]
him, a confused gay: [stares at the space this twink just vacated, completely floored. a nod. does he think this is a game. does he think this is a joke. this isn’t a PTA meeting where you nod at your old friend but also secret enemy Brenda from across the room. was i not even worth the once over. have i lost my game. what does this mean]An internal investigation into what Ottawa police officers are calling “phantom” traffic warnings has grown to take in approximately 20 traffic officers, the Citizen has learned.
That is double the number of officers that were the focus of the investigation last November, multiple sources confirmed to the Citizen.
The force’s professional standards section, which investigates officer misconduct, launched a probe into officers allegedly falsifying traffic warnings to skew their internal statistics to suggest more warnings were being handed out.
Traffic warnings, or printed citations, carry no fines, but the number an officer issues is tracked for the purposes of promotion and enforcement efforts.
On Monday, Chief Charles Bordeleau sent an email to the full police service announcing the suspension of Const. Peter Dawson, the second officer to be removed from duties because of the investigation. Const. Edward Ellis, a fellow member of the traffic escort and enforcement unit, was suspended last September.
Related
Both continue to be paid in accordance with the Police Services Act.
In November when the Citizen first reported on the internal investigation, Bordeleau said he could not comment on any current investigation.
On Tuesday, asked if the expanded investigation would be handed over to an outside agency such as the Ontario Provincial Police, Bordeleau said that the Ottawa police professional standards unit was leading the ongoing investigation and that he will be in a position to comment once it is completed.
Insp. Chris Rheaume, who oversees the professional standards section, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
syogaretnam@postmedia.com
twitter.com/shaaminiwhyThe Republicans continue to 'cultivate rage'
Hate-spewing wingnuts have taken over the Republican Party. Spitting saliva, the N word and the F word at members of Congress is reprehensible. But the only Republican I have seen who gave an immediate and full-throated denunciation of the hatred allegedly hurled at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.). Here are Scarborough's unequivocal tweets from Saturday afternoon.
John Lewis is a friend, a great man and an American hero. Anyone attacking such a man with racial slurs has a dark heart and a grim soul
4:50 PM Mar 20th via UberTwitter
@gason65 It is up to both sides to call out their haters. We must speak out forcefully and without hestitation [sic].
5:05 PM Mar 20th via UberTwitter in reply to gason65
Also, the attacks against Barney Frank were hateful and outrageous. Barney and I usually disagreed in Congress but he loves his country.
5:08 PM Mar 20th via UberTwitter
As Colby King noted yesterday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's condemnation of "idiots out there saying very stupid tings" wasn't good enough. The tone and tenor of the vocal Republican opposition is getting more aggressive, and it's going to take more than calling them "idiots" to get them to heel. The Republican leaders should, well, lead by example. But they aren't interested in doing that.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) is a prime example. He opted to play to the corrosive elements of the GOP's base last night rather than preserve the dignity of the House of Representatives.
That high-pitched "hell no!" harangue plays well with the people who whip up fears of socialism and who carry signs like the one at Saturday's demonstration alluding to Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) that read "Warning: If Brown can't stop it a Browning can." (Scroll down to see the picture) This is dangerous stuff that Republican leaders must -- MUST -- snuff out sooner rather than later. Kathleen Parker issued a warning that is falling on deaf ears on the radical right and increasingly so within the mainstream of the GOP. "It's fine to be angry about bad policies; it's fine to hold politicians' (and journalists') feet to the fire," she wrote. "But it is not fine to demonize dissent and cultivate rage. We should know by now where demagoguery leads."
We do. And those who play up rather than tamp down or constructively channel that rage will be complicit in the ugly and violent denouement.This post is part of a series in which we count down the 25 best GMs in history. For an explanation, please see this post.
Not many GMs have had a career arc like Dan Duquette. Despite undeniable success in Montreal and Boston, he spent what would ordinarily be the prime of his career (ages 43-53) unemployed, or at least not employed by a Major League team. The Orioles gave him another shot after at least one other candidate had turned them down, but it should have surprised no one when he had success right away in Baltimore.
Duquette played baseball at Amherst before getting hired by fellow alum Harry Dalton as a Milwaukee scout in 1981. By 1987 he was the player personnel director for the Expos, and during his tenure the club drafted or signed Vladimir Guerrero, Javier Vazquez, Orlando Cabrera, Delino DeShields, Marquis Grissom, Cliff Floyd and Rondell White. After the 1991 season Montreal GM Dave Dombrowski left to run the expansion Marlins, and the 33-year-old Duquette took over the Expos, a last place team filled with young talent, mainly players he had helped bring into the organization.
It did not take Duquette long to make his mark. Within three years he had traded for pitchers Ken Hill, John Wetteland, and Pedro Martinez. Just a few weeks into the 1992 season he replaced embattled manager Tim Runnels with Felipe Alou, 57-years-old and languishing in the system. Alou was perfect for the young team — which now included all of the aforementioned youngsters plus Moises Alou (Felipe’s son) and Larry Walker. The team won 87 games in 1992, then 94 in 1993, just three games behind the Phillies.
In January 1994 Duquette was lured away to run the Boston Red Sox. (The team Duquette left behind in Montreal would have the game’s best record in 1994 when a player strike ended the season in August.) As a Massachusetts native, Boston was Duquette’s dream job, and the club also gave him a bigger budget and a higher salary. The Red Sox had finished seventh and fifth the previous two years.
As an early adopter of using advanced statistics to identify players, he was known for acquiring undervalued players and getting production from them — Troy O’Leary, Brian Daubach, Jeff Frye, Tim Wakefield. He also tended to look for offense-valued players while tolerating their sub-par defense — Jose Canseco, Will Cordero, Kevin Mitchell, Jose Offerman, Carl Everett — with mixed results. His 1995 team included a few stars he inherited (Roger Clemens, Mo Vaughn, John Valentin) and a lot of his own shrewd pickups. The Red Sox won the division by seven games.
Both Clemens and Vaughn left as free agents, but more stars soon took their place. Nomar Garciaparra joined the lineup in 1997, and later that year Duquette made two of the greatest trades in team history. In July he dealt mediocre reliever Heathcliff Slocumb to the Mariners for pitcher Derek Lowe and catcher Jason Varitek. After the season he dealt two minor league pitchers for a 26-year-old Pedro Martinez. Lowe and Varitek would have long careers with occasional stardom, while Martinez and Garciappara would be among the game’s best players for the next several years.
Beginning in 1998, the Red Sox finished second (always to the Yankees) for eight straight seasons. They captured the wild card in 1998 and 1999, losing the ALCS to New York in the latter season. At this point in his tenure team ownership clearly instructed Duquette to spend the money and go for the brass ring. After falling back in 2000, Duquette signed Manny Ramirez, the biggest free agent on his resume. A year later he signed |
the lead on Nos. 16 and 17 but couldn't knock them in.
Still sharing the lead, Karlsson yanked his tee shot on the par-4 No. 17 way into the rough. His 8-iron came up 42 yards short of the pin, leaving him a six-footer for par. He started it left of the hole, and it never moved off the line rolling four feet past the pin.
Frazar gave it right back on 18, taking his drop and knocking his ball to two feet to salvage bogey after Karlsson's par putt from eight feet.
"Felt more like 12 for me," Karlsson said. "Really, really big eight feet. I know that's a putt to get into the playoff. So you pick your shot and try to hit it there. Scary thing was I had quite a big spike mark right in the way, but you can't clip it. That's the way it is. You take your spot and try to hit it as good as you can, and it went in. It was great."
DIVOTS: Nine consecutive PGA Tour events have been decided by a stroke or a playoff. This marks the third time in St. Jude history that the winner has been decided in a playoff in back-to-back years. Don Whitt and Tommy Bolt won playoffs in 1959 and 1960, while Andy Bean and Gil Morgan needed extra holes to win in 1978 and 1979. Frazar's 71 in the opening round equals the high start by a winner on tour this year and is just the second over-par opening round by a champion this year. Rory Sabbatini opened the Honda Classic with 1-over 71, and Bubba Watson started the Farmers Insurance Open with the same score. Frazar is just the sixth player to make Memphis his first win in the 54-year history of the event.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.comIn a breakthrough scientific study published June 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research have shown that neural stem cell development may be linked to Autism.
The study demonstrated that mice lacking the myocyte enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C) protein in neural stem cells had smaller brains, fewer nerve cells and showed behaviors similar to those seen in humans with a form of autism known as Rett Syndrome.
This work represents the first direct link between a developmental disorder of neural stem cells and the subsequent onset of autism.
The research team was led by Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical neurologist and Professor and Director of the Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center at Burnham.
"These results give us a good hint of how to look at Rett Syndrome and potentially other forms of autism in humans," said Dr. Lipton. "Having identified a mutation that causes this defect, we can track what happens. Perhaps we can correct it in a mouse, and if so, eventually correct it in humans."
Discovered in Dr. Lipton's laboratory, MEF2C turns on specific genes which drive stem cells to become nerve cells. When MEF2C was deleted from neural stem cells in mice, there was a faulty distribution of neurons accompanied by severe developmental problems. Adult mice lacking MEF2C in their brains displayed abnormal anxiety-like behaviors, decreased cognitive function and marked paw clasping, a behavior which may be analogous to hand wringing, a notable feature in humans with Rett syndrome.
"There's a yin and yang to this MEF2C protein," said Dr. Lipton. "My laboratory recently showed that MEF2C induces embryonic stem cells to become neurons. In this new research, we show that knocking out MEFC2 in the brain results in mice with smaller brains, fewer neurons and reduced neuronal activity. The commonality is the protein's association in making new neurons."
Collaborators were Drs. Hao Li, Shu-ichi Okamoto, Nobuki Nakanishi and Scott McKercher, of Burnham, as well as Dr. Amanda Roberts from The Scripps Research Institute and Dr. John Schwarz from the Albany Medical Center.
Rett syndrome, a form of autism, afflicts more girls than boys and results in poor brain development, repetitive hand motions, altered anxiety behaviors and the inability to speak. Patients with Rett Syndrome also suffer from seizures and other debilitating neurological symptoms.Throughout New York’s history, change has been a constant feature of the city’s transportation infrastructure. Well, it used to be.
Aside from the long-delayed Second Avenue subway, civil engineers haven’t had much work to do in the past five decades. A time traveler from 1961 would find the city’s traffic patterns, street grid, highways, subway lines, river crossings and airports basically the same.
New York’s second-newest major bridge, the Throgs Neck, opened nine days before JFK delivered his “ask not what your country” inaugural address. The Verrazano came in 1964. Then that was it—unless you count the link between Rikers Island and Queens in 1966. Aside from a few extensions on the outer borders of Queens and the minor 63rd Street tunnel, the subway looks much the way it did during World War II. For many New Yorkers, getting to LaGuardia still requires a cab. Ditto for JFK, despite the half-assed AirTrain.
The Center for an Urban Future recently concluded that too much of our “essential infrastructure remains stuck in the 20th century,” posing a barrier “for a city positioning itself to compete with other global cities.”
There is little reason to believe things will improve. Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recently announced plan to add some ferry routes launching in 2017, his administration has reduced infrastructure spending from budgets under Mayor Michael Bloomberg—who devoted most of that money to new parks and schools.
New stuff? As the parking sign says, don’t even think about it.
But that’s a choice.
Crossing the Hudson River during rush hour, as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall back in the day, could become slightly less hellish by executing one or more of the numerous forgotten plans for bridges.
New York could fund big-ticket transportation projects through the imposition of a modest stock transaction tax on the $45 billion traded daily on the NYSE. Some liberal Democrats are floating a 3 basis point (.03 cent) tax on trades. That’s not enough. From 1914 to 1966—while America won two world wars and became the world’s dominant superpower—it was 10 basis points. Precedents include France, which has a 20 basis point tax and Taiwan (10-30 basis points).
A securities tax would generate an estimated $10 billion annually. Enough to pay for a slew of ambitious, and needed, projects over the next decade or two.
Let’s start using this money to expand subways.
The long-awaited extension of the 7 subway may open as early as this month. Nice start, but the old idea of running the 7 out to the Meadowlands to alleviate Lincoln Tunnel traffic and provide an alternative to Penn Station for boarding New Jersey Transit, is just as overdue.
Even after the projected 2019—yeah, right—opening of the Second Avenue line, Lower East Side residents will remain woefully underserved by subways. The MTA should add a train along the Harlem River waterfront to connect Avenue D and East End Avenue to the rest of Manhattan.
A major shortcoming of New York’s current subway configuration is its failure to adapt aspects of the efficient spiderweb or grid patterns urban planners favor in more modern systems like Paris, London, Seoul and Tokyo.
Any transit expert would look at a NYC subway map and ask with puzzlement: Why isn’t there a line running around the city’s outer perimeter along the Westchester and Nassau County borders? To get from the Jamaica section of Queens and to Flatbush, Brooklyn, you have to head halfway to Manhattan to switch subways, or endure long rides on local city buses. That’s stupid.
Huge swaths of Southern Queens, currently off the grid, should be connected via a new line arcing west-to-east through the Bronx, then north-south through Queens and Brooklyn, parallel to and east of the G.
No borough is more subwayless than the city’s redheaded stepchild, Staten Island. But it doesn’t have to be that way. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been blocking the century-old dream of running a subway line under New York Harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island to New Jersey, but half the idea would still be an improvement. Let’s revive the Staten Island-Saint George tunnel between Brooklyn, which the city abandoned in the early 1920s.
In most major metropolises, rail systems connect directly from the city-center to the terminals. Not here, mostly due to NIMBYism and highway-obsessed Robert Moses. Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently floated a proposal to build an elevated AirTrain to link LaGuardia to the subway system, but transportation blogger Ben Kabak would better fix the airport access problem by extending the N along the Grand Central Parkway.
Anyone who drives in New York knows we need to add bridges and tunnels. Crossing the Hudson River during rush hour, as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall back in the day, could become slightly less hellish by executing one or more of the numerous forgotten plans for bridges at 23rd, 57th, 70th and 125th Streets. I’d go with 70th Street, more or less splitting the distance between the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge; either bridge or tunnel would be fine.
Conventional wisdom among liberal transportation types dictates that highway construction begets increased traffic: Build them and they will come. I don’t buy it. Even old-timers who curse Robert Moses for destroying the Bronx recall with a shudder the horror of sitting for hours on Broadway in upper Manhattan, waiting to get to the Bronx as stuck cars overheated, making congestion worse.
Driving from Long Island to Western Brooklyn, and/or on to New Jersey via Staten Island, requires extremely circuitous routes: Via the congested LIE and BQE, or skirting around the bulbous outline of Brooklyn. The obvious solution is to extend the Jackie Robinson Parkway, which currently begins at the Grand Central and Van Wyck Parkways in Kew Gardens. Nowadays, it dumps that highway traffic at Jamaica Avenue in East New York (there used to be a major train station there). We should extend the Jackie Robinson west toward the BQE.
Last but not least, it’s time to replicate the success of forward-looking cities like Dallas, Seattle and Portland, Ore., by bringing back streetcars. They’re relatively cheap. They’re cute. When their tracks run in dedicated, carless lanes, they’re faster than automobiles. There are smart plans for new streetcar lines along the waterfront in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, 42nd Street in Manhattan and Astoria in Queens.
We have work to do. Let’s get New York moving again.
Ted Rall is the author of the forthcoming book Snowden by Ted Rall
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story included a sentence that was unclear about AirTrain service to area airports.More than a year after its initial announcement, MTV’s latest action-drama Eye Candy has finally been given a premiere date. (Note to cyber criminals: You’ve been warned.)
RELATED Scream Ordered to Series at MTV
Debuting Monday, Jan. 12, at 10/9c, the 10-episode series follows a New York City computer genius named Lindy (Victorious‘ Victoria Justice) who discovers that one of her online suitors might be a wanted murderer. Dun, dun, dun!
RELATED Slednecks Star Defends MTV’s ‘Crazy’ New Series — Plus: Watch Exclusive Clip
In addition to Justice, Eye Candy stars Casey Deidrick (Days of Our Lives) as Tommy, Kiersey Clemons (Austin & Ally) as Sophia, newcomer John Garet Stoker as Connor and Harvey Guillen (Huge) as George.
Will you be checking out Eye Candy in 2015? Drop a comment with your thoughts on MTV’s new series below.Progressives are increasingly preoccupied with income inequality, and their current hero, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), favors increasing the tax system’s progressivity. So, in this 103rd year of the income tax, it is timely to note that there still is no intellectually sturdy case for progressive taxation.
Arguments for it are invariably arguments for increased equality of social outcomes. Because individuals have different vocational desires and different aptitudes for adding value to the economy, inequality is inevitable. Because individuals have different social sensibilities, opinions will differ about what degrees of inequality are intolerably unlovely (more about this aesthetic metric in a moment). But inequality, even when unlovely to some, is unjust only when it arises from unjust social arrangements. So, the degree to which inequality is morally troubling depends on the degree to which the process that allocates wealth does so according to political influence and rent-seeking rather than merit and self-reliance.
Society should prevent extreme privation, no matter how far the top earners are from those near the bottom. But who is to decide, and how are they to decide, the ideal spread between the top and the bottom of income distribution? The argument for progressive taxation must demonstrate this: Such taxation does not do more harm by slowing economic growth than faster economic growth would do good by its distributive effects.
Although the argument for progressive taxation usually begins with a moral judgment about social conditions, it usually becomes a moral assertion about equitable sacrifices. It asserts that money has declining marginal utility — that $1,000 subtracted from a wealthy person’s income diminishes that person’s happiness, or society’s sum of happiness, less than would $1,000 subtracted from the income of a person with a modest income.
But this ostensibly scientific, meaning empirical, generalization about how people value money often conceals moral judgments about how people ought to value money, or — again, an essentially aesthetic judgment — about the “social value” of expenditures by the wealthy and the non-wealthy. When these moral judgments are codified in tax policy, they conflict with this idea: “It is one of the virtues of a free society that, within the widest limits, men are free to maximize their satisfactions according to their own hierarchy of preferences.”
So wrote two University of Chicago law professors, Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven Jr., in a famous 1952 essay, “The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation.” Their understanding of a free society is shared by many conservatives, including many Republican presidential aspirants, who favor a “flat” or proportionate income tax: If taxpayer A earns 20 times more than taxpayer B earns, taxpayer A pays 20 times more dollars.
Proportionate taxation always is what progressive taxation never is: simple. What justifies progressive taxation, and characterizes progressivism, is confidence that at any moment in society’s endless evolution, what is equitable can be known and society can be fine-tuned to achieve it. Which is how we got our baroque tax code.
As Blum and Kalven noted, “It is the very nature of majority rule that the majority can vote distinctive burdens for the minority.” It is, however, the nature of reality that burdens imposed on the wealthy minority can injure the majority by impairing economic incentives, thereby suppressing growth. Progressive taxation reduces the rewards of investments and the real rate of return on savings, thereby encouraging consumption over saving and hence over capital formation. When progressive taxation slows economic growth, it makes inequalities of wealth more durable by retarding the accumulation of new fortunes. And by encouraging constant tinkering with the tax code to perfect equity, progressive taxation gives a patina of altruism to rent-seeking by economic factions, whereby government enriches those sophisticated at manipulating it.
Because other arguments produce only “uneasy” cases for progressive taxation, this is the argument of last resort: All striving occurs in, and all success is conditioned by, a social context. Each individual’s achievement, like each individual, is derivative of society, which is entitled to socialize — conscript — whatever portion of each individual’s acquisition that society calculates is its rightful share. Because collective choices (provision of education, infrastructure and other public goods) facilitate individuals’ strivings, the collectivity, represented by government, can take as much of created wealth as it decides it made possible. Being judge and jury in its own case, government will generously estimate its contributions and entitlements.
The arguments for progressive taxation range from the feeble to the sinister. The case for it is not uneasy; it is nonexistent.
Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.Just a few weeks after his initial introduction to the Team Dignitas main CS:GO team, Christian 'loWel' Garcia Antoran gave us the latest inside scoop on the team, as well as his thoughts on the Spanish CS:GO scene. The team are just coming off of the back of a 2-1 win over his former team, Mousesports, in the SL i-League Invitational Shanghai EU qualifier.
So firstly, you had a couple months between your departure from Mousesports and joining Team Dignitas. What were you up to in this time?
loWel: Well, during my time in mousesports, we played a lot of tournaments and I had been away from home for more than a month, so at the beginning I wanted to take a break. After I received some offers, I took my time to think about them and see which one was the best for me.
What were your initial thoughts about your new teammates in Team Dignitas?
loWel: I knew them from before, especially RUBINO and fox and I have a really good relationship with them. That’s why I wanted to join Team Dignitas: I wanted to be happy and comfortable in a team. Together with jkaem, they are all really good players with a lot of experience, so I knew that playing with them in Team Dignitas would improve [me] as a player.
What do you feel you bring to the team be it inside, or outside, of the game?
loWel: I think I bring more firepower and good ideas from what I learned in mousesports. I also consider myself a calm player and always try to hype up my teammates and help them when things aren’t going so well.
What has been your team’s focus during practice these last few weeks?
loWel: Our focus has been on improving our map pool, come up with tactics, setups, etc. We are a new team and we [have] played in a lot of qualifers lately, so it has been kinda hard because we didn’t have the time that we wanted [to prepare] for it. But I think we are doing well, we just need time.
What kind of roles are you being asked to play? Are they roles you have played before?
loWel: My main role is the entry fragger and that’s a role I’ve played before. I think it’s the best role fitting my playstyle.
You have been playing a few online qualifiers for big events with the team, how would you rate the team's performance and what needs to improve?
loWel: I think our performance is good so far considering we've only been practicing together for three weeks. We lost to LDLC and Heroic in some important qualifers, but those teams played really well and have improved a lot lately. Just now we won against mousesports, a really good team. Our attitude was really good. If we can keep it for the future, we will improve even more, with more time to practice.
What events is the team looking to prepare for and what are your expectations in the coming months?
loWel: We are looking to qualify for every tournament possible and there are a lot of online qualifers. We also have the ASUS ROG Masters in Germany in one week with a lot of good teams, but if can go into the event with the same attitude we had against mouz, we will do some damage and I’m pretty sure we can [win] it.
Do you feel international teams can be the best in the world, like their single nationality counterparts?
loWel: It’s a hard question. I think international teams have the potential to be the best of course, like FaZe right now, but the problem is the language barrier. Even though they talk in English, the communication is not as fast as if everyone is from the same country. For those teams, everything is faster, calls, setups, especially for the ingame leader.
Which rising Spanish stars do you expect to see on new international line-ups?
loWel: In Spain we have some potential, but the players need to improve their attitude. Compromise, be humble and of course try to get experience at the top level. I would say EasTor, DeaThZ, NaOw, mopoz would be players that can reach a good international level with hard work and good attitude. But right now I think no one can play at a top level - they just need to improve on the things I said. They can definitely do it in the future.
According to Joe Cardali, you will be mixing the WESG qualifier with Mixwell among others. Should we expect to see some new Spanish talent playing with you guys?
loWel: We've been talking and we are going to try to get players without experience that we think can improve and be good players in the future. We want to give them the opportunity to play with us in an important tournament like WESG and try to help them with everything that we learned in our teams. [Nothing's] 100% sure yet, we just need to think about it and see what kind of team we can make.
ESL announced the Clash of Nations, a LAN taking place in Madrid featuring winners of their regional competitions from around Europe, as well as two extra Spanish teams. What impact do you feel it will have on the Spanish scene?
loWel: It’s really good for the Spanish scene. We need things like this, so teams from Spain have the opportunity to show their strength against good teams and get experience. That’s what we need.
Thanks for the interview, any shoutouts?
loWel: Thanks so much for the interview, [it was] my pleasure. I just want to thank everyone who supports me and my team, especially all the fans of Team Dignitas, as well as our sponsors.
Thank you loWel for the interview! Be sure to follow him below.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loWelcs/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lowelcs
Twitch: https://go.twitch.tv/lowelcsToday on La Crosse, Wisconsin's WKBT News 8 This Morning, anchor Jennifer Livingston responded to an email she received on Friday, written by a man, with the subject line "Community Responsibility." The email read:
It's unusual that I see your morning show, but I did so for a very short time today. I was surprised indeed to witness that your physical condition hasn't improved for many years. Surely you don't consider yourself a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you'll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.
Ugh. Classic. Concerntrolling at its best, and by best I mean worst. Livingston's husband (who also works as an anchor) posted the email on Facebook, causing a brouhaha — and an outpouring of support. But Livingston had an excellent, eloquent, on-air response:
The truth is: you could call me fat. And yes, even obese, on a doctor's chart. But to the person who wrote me that letter: Do you think I don't know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don't see? You don't know me. You are not a friend of mine. You are not a part of my family and you have admitted that you don't watch the show. So you know nothing about me but what you see on the outside… And I am much more than a number on a scale.
Jen went on to say:
October is is national anti-bullying month, and this is a problem that is growing every day in our schools and on the internet. It is a major issue in the lives of young people today. And as the mother of three young girls, it scares me to death. Now I am a grown woman, and luckily for me, I have a very thick skin — literally, as that email pointed out, and otherwise. That man's words mean nothing to me. But what really angers me about this is there are children who don't know better… The internet has become a weapon. Our schools have become a battleground. And this behavior is learned. It is passed down from people like the man who wrote me that email. If you are at home, and you are talking about the fat newslady, guess what? Your children are probably going to go to school and call someone fat. We need to teach our kids how to be kind, not critical, and we need to do that by example.
Advertisement
Fatphobia is rampant, and fatshaming is, somehow, the one acceptable form of bigotry we have in this society. Magazines, TV shows and movies openly mock and rail against the overweight, revere "bikini bodies" and help to spread an atmosphere of intolerance. The amount of time this man spent crafting an email — with the intention of making a working mother of three feel ashamed of herself — is a sad testament to a toxic environment. Fat does not mean lazy. Fat does not mean non-athletic. But feeling bad about your weight can make things worse. Less than four months ago, a bus driver who was bullied about her weight made both headlines and, in a show of public support, chunk of cash. It's tragic to hear kids on a bus taunting a grown woman, but it's even sadder when a grown man does the same thing and cloaks it in concern, claiming it's about the "community" and "little girls," when his real issue is that he can't tolerate looking at a fat person on TV.
Editorial: Jennifer's Message to her Bully [News 8]And it continues. More findings just popping up, even without the hard shovel of impeachment hearings. The washington post reports, in an article titled, White House Says It Routinely Overwrote E-Mail Tapes From 2001-2003:
- Advertisement -
E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were "recycled," the White House's chief information officer said in a court filing this week. During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson's name and the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed. From 2001 to October 2003, the White House's practice was to use the same backup tape each day to copy new as well as old e-mails, he said, making it possible that some of those e-mails could still be recovered even from a tape that was repeatedly overwritten. "We are continuing to analyze our systems," Fratto said last night. - Advertisement - The court filing said tapes were recycled before October 2003, and at that point, the White House "began preserving and storing all backup tapes."
Any data/information technology expert knows that this is not acceptable. Now, the history of the Bush admin is to ignore the counsel of experts and to use the opinion of neocons or partisans. I can just imagine some right wingnut washtington insider say something like, "that computer geek doesn't know sh*t about politics. We can keep erasing these damning emails on a daily basis and use the "economy" excuse as plausible deniability."
Sorry, but this is totally not plausible nor deniable. It's so screaming freaking obvious. Any tech administration who set it up knew the rules, knew the laws and went ahead and did it anyway. This is a great example of how a lower level member of the Bush admin could be leaned upon to testify against higher level Bush admin leaders. It's the kind of testimony that may only come when impeachment hearings are held and Bush and Cheney lose the right of executive privilege to block testimony.
- Advertisement -
The Wapo article reported,
Two federal statutes require presidential communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record, and some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House's actions be thoroughly probed. "There certainly could have been hugely important materials there... and of course they're not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they're owned by the public," said presidential historian and author Robert Dallek. "Given how secretive this administration has been, it of course fans the flames and suspicions about what has been destroyed here. I hope we'll get an investigation." The White House's electronic record-keeping system has been under scrutiny for months by congressional Democrats and is the subject of several lawsuits, one of which prompted the latest disclosures. The administration has previously acknowledged problems with the White House archiving system, but until Tuesday had not disclosed its practice of recycling backup tapes before 2003. Although the White House said in the filing that its practice of recording over the tapes ceased after October 2003, it added that even some e-mails transmitted through the end of 2005 might not have been fully preserved.
They're laying up an excuse to explain later missing evidence.
People say it is too late for impeachment. That's ignorance talking. It's not too late for Bush to stage more Gulf on Tonkin incidents, like he flubbed in the Strait of Hormuz. It's not too late for Bush to start a war. It's not too late for him to replace another supreme court justice, if one dies or retires. The nightmare scenarios go on and on. But the bottom line is Nancy Pelosi is failing to pursue her constitutional duty to INVESTIGATE crimes by Cheney and Bush.
- Advertisement -
This latest example is just one to be added to dozens of offenses.
Pelosi says impeachment will take up too much time. That is an outright lie. Impeachment didn't stop congress, when it was investigating Richard Nixon, according to former membe of congress, on the investigational committee, Elizabeth Holtzman.
Next Page 1 | 2Terry Joseph, who coached the Tennessee defensive backs and also served as the Vols' recruiting coordinator the last two seasons, has taken a job on the Nebraska staff.
Joseph informed Tennessee coach Derek Dooley of his decision on Friday. Joseph had coached with Dooley at Louisiana Tech and came with him to Tennessee.
With Joseph leaving, that means the Vols will have an entirely new defensive staff next season. He's also the seventh assistant coach to leave Tennessee's staff since the end of the 2011 season.
Sal Sunseri is the Vols' new defensive coordinator after coming over from Alabama. Derrick Ansley, who was a graduate assistant at Alabama and worked with the Crimson Tide's secondary, was hired in February to coach the Vols' cornerbacks. John Palermo is the Vols' new defensive line coach after spending the last two seasons at Middle Tennessee. Palermo also coached on the Washington Redskins' staff and spent 15 years coaching at Wisconsin.
Dooley said last month that he felt the program had been energized by all the new coaching blood. The only two coaches remaining from his original staff are offensive coordinator Jim Chaney and receivers coach Darin Hinshaw, who's moving over to receivers after coaching the Vols' quarterbacks the past two seasons.When it comes to running for president - at least at this early stage - a famous name sure helps.
So it is in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, in which some of the most recognizable potential candidates - Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan - lead a crowded 2016 Republican field, albeit none with anything near a clear advantage.
Moving on to a hypothetical matchup between Bush and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat leads, boosted by a huge gender gap and with a more popular clan, as well. Sixty-six percent of Americans express a favorable view of her famous family, vs. 54 percent for Bush's.
See PDF with full results and charts here.
In the GOP, each of the current leaders has name recognition: Paul's father and Huckabee ran previously for their party's nomination. Ryan was Mitt Romney's running mate in 2012. And Bush, a former Florida governor, has a father and a brother you might have heard of.
Paul, a senator from Kentucky, and Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, are backed, respectively, by 15 and 14 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who report being registered to vote. Bush and Ryan get 12 percent each in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.
All others are in the single digits, ranging from 9 percent for the better-known Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, to 1 or 2 percent for comparatively less-known John Kasich and Bobby Jindal, the governors of Ohio and Louisiana, respectively.
Some say horse race polls this early in an election cycle mean little, and in a predictive sense that may well be the case. But there's insight to gain nonetheless. An early advantage, even if based on name recognition, still is an advantage, and one that can carry through to the presidency, as in the case of George W. Bush.
Moreover, differences among groups provide useful information on support profiles. Huckabee, an ordained minister, does particularly well among evangelical white Protestants and strong conservatives, two customarily high-turnout groups in many GOP primaries and caucuses. He also does better among the party faithful - important in closed primaries - than among Republican-leaning independents, while Paul, like his father before him, has more strength among independents.
Paul may have some durability among his supporters. This poll added five names to the potential Republican lineup, compared with an ABC/Post poll in January. As a group, possible candidates on the original, shorter list lost support when others were added. Paul didn't.
CLINTON-BUSH - Matching two marquee names in a hypothetical general election contest, Clinton has 53 percent support among registered voters to Bush's 41 percent. Clinton led Christie by the same margin in the January ABC/Post poll.
Again, results among groups are telling. Notably, Clinton leads Bush by 23 percentage points among women, 59-36 percent, while men divide closely between the two. Clinton also has a 63-34 percent advantage among adults younger than 30 - a key support group for Barack Obama in his two presidential elections - and a vast 54-point lead among nonwhites, 74-20 percent. She leads by 21 points among those with incomes less than $50,000 a year.
Bush, for his part, leads Clinton by 41 points among conservatives and by 39 points among evangelical white Protestants, two GOP standbys. He runs competitively among independents, a potential swing voter group, as well as among whites, financially better-off adults and four-year college graduates.
Two-thirds of Americans in an ABC/Post poll last month said they'd at least consider supporting Clinton for president. Far fewer, 44 percent, said they'd consider Bush, while 48 percent ruled him out.
Finally, every president from 1989 through 2009 was a Bush or a Clinton, making family legacies part of the package should these two run and face each other. Both families are more liked than disliked - but Clinton's more so, as noted, by a 12-point margin. "Strongly" positive views of the Clintons are a similar 10 points more than those of the Bushes.
METHODOLOGY - This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone April 24-27, 2014, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,000 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including design effect. Partisan divisions are 32-21-38 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y.Releasers and torrent racers are the select few counted on by millions to bring the latest movies, music and video games to the wider Internet in record time. One such person, a 15-year-old school kid, eventually gained access to elite piracy sites and went on to become the top uploader on one of the world's most famous BitTorrent trackers. But how did the buzz of the elite compare to being hunted down by a Patriot Act-empowered FBI?
In the early part of the last decade when they were still the innocent side of 15-years-old, one schoolfriend showed another an Iomega ZIP drive (right) full of ‘warez’ – games and software with a big fat zero written on their price tag.
Having never seen anything like it before, James (as we shall call him for now) became hooked, and quickly began to display a trait inherent in many addicted file-sharers.
“I simply couldn’t get enough,” he told TorrentFreak. “It was more fun downloading and sharing the stuff with all my friends then actually using it or playing the actual games.”
Having become inspired by these simple beginnings, James began chatting with other like-minded people on warez sites and ICQ, going on to share warez via PUBS, FTP-enabled servers conveniently left open by companies with more bandwidth than security sense.
Sharing files wasn’t a simple process back then and James took exception when Napster began dumbing down the process.
“We hated it, simply despised it because it made a mockery of the hard work we put in to obtain all these different warez,” he recalls.
But despite these early bad feelings towards Napster, the future would eventually see James become a facilitator of even easier ways of downloading. Not for just his friends, but for more than a hundred thousand people.
After working his way up to become one of the top members on the GraveyardFXP warez board, James says he became a moderator of DelusionalFXP. It was there, on their IRC channel, that he would meet people whose new project would suck him in and change his life forever. At some point along |
Kong charges between you and certain doom with an earthshaking fury. With each thundering roar and each chest-pounding thud, one colossal truth comes clear. This is his home, his kingdom. Only he reigns.
Check out this week's full photo report below and stay tuned for more theme park updates!
Construction Photos:
That's all for this Kongstruction update. Check out the recent Jimmy Fallon update with Flying Cow for sale at Prop Shop!
See all the Kong updates here and subscribe to the feed for more continual updates!When the Chelsea and England star first played in the European Championships, she had to take an A-level the same day. As she joins the illustrious ranks of Woman’s Hour guest editors, she says her sport still has a long way to go
Two years ago, the BBC decided to hand control of what is perhaps its most beloved radio show to a series of inspiring women. Since 2014, the guest editors invited to take part in Woman’s Hour’s takeover week have included JK Rowling, Doreen Lawrence and Kim Cattrall. Next week, this prestigious line-up will be joined by a variety of stars from Angelina Jolie to Mary Berry.
Also among the latest roll-call is footballer Eniola Aluko. It would be a push to call her a household name just yet, but the 29-year-old Chelsea and England striker’s inclusion speaks volumes. After all, it took until 2011 for the FA to create the first women’s professional football league – the WSL – and it is only in the past couple of years that clubs such as Chelsea have been willing to pay their female players full-time salaries. In the UK at least, women’s football remains a teething toddler of sport.
The hype surrounding the Euro 2016 tournament is a reminder of the gulf in public perception that persists between the men’s and women’s games. And yet things are beginning to change. Whether it is the fanfare that accompanied the Great Britain women’s team at the 2012 Olympics, the England women’s team reaching the World Cup semi-final last year, or the fact that female football tournaments are now regularly held at Wembley, it seems that fans of both genders are finally sitting up and paying attention.
For Aluko, however, the real validation of her achievements came a few weeks ago. “Clare Balding invited me and my mum to go to the races with her,” she says. “It was amazing – first, because I really admire Clare, but also because five years ago something like that would never have happened. Nice invitations like that have made me realise how far things have come in the past five years – that people appreciate what you are doing.”
Sitting in Broadcasting House after recording her Woman’s Hour show, Aluko looks chuffed.
“I was just really honoured – really honoured,” she says. “I know the calibre of women that come on the show and edit, so clearly they see me in that light. To be honest, I still see myself as a bit of a baby. I’m still young, I’m still growing, so to be here … well, it’s amazing.”
Eniola Aluko makes history as first female Match of the Day pundit Read more
As with most of her teammates, Aluko’s path was not direct. In between representing England – she was part of the under-21 team before she made her senior debut – Aluko studied law at Brunel University. For three years, she balanced working as an entertainment lawyer for the likes of One Direction and Frankie Boyle with football, playing both for Chelsea and the national side. Still, it was 2014 before Aluko was finally was able to give up law and play for Chelsea full time – seven years after she first joined the club.
Nonetheless, she seems to bear no resentment over the fact that, for years, she could not pursue a full-time career in the sport she loved – even though her brother, Sone, now a striker for Hull City, was scouted for Birmingham City at the age o eight and has always played professional football.
When I ask if she was ever envious, she shrugs matter-of-factly: “It wasn’t about envy. Professional football just didn’t exist for girls back then, so it wasn’t realistic. And even now there are a lot of parts of my brother’s life – being in the public eye like that – that I just couldn’t cope with. We joke about it a lot actually, and I’m grateful that at least I can still walk into Tesco in my tracksuit without being bothered.
“I think having a back-up plan is never a bad thing. I would hate to be a male footballer and look back on 15 years of my career and think, ‘Oh well, I’ve got a lot a money but what now?’”
Aluko was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Six months later, her parents moved the family to Birmingham, where she spent her childhood playing football in the local parks with her brother and his mates. “I realised pretty quickly I was better at football than all of them,” she says, with a laugh. “Though back then, that made them all think I was so cool. The boys would all boast about having me as a friend, and it gave me a lot of confidence from a young age.”
Growing up, Aluko’s hero was Eric Cantona (“I used to pop my collar on the field, just like him”). In fact, she was so devastated when Cantona retired from Manchester United that she stopped supporting the team. But it wasn’t until she started secondary school – where she found herself surrounded by girls whose main ambition was to bunk off PE, rather than get there enthusiastically early – that Aluko realised she was “a bit of an odd one out”.
“At that point, a lot of the girls in school thought I was a bit weird, and it was difficult,” she says. “You do get to an age where you want friends who are girls, and you want girls to like you and think you’re pretty or whatever. So it was hard at times.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aluko, playing against Arsenal in the SSE Women’s FA Cup Final last month, at Wembley Stadium. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA
For Aluko, the acceptance of young girls playing football is one of the sport’s biggest achievements over the past few years. It is also something that she sees as vital for a generation whose lives are increasingly shown and viewed through the glossy sheen of an Instagram filter.
“I think nowadays, with social media, everything is about putting out your best, the most perfect image of yourself out there,” she says. “You go through life having failures and you go through life not doing everything perfectly, so for girls this trend is even more dangerous because there are all these insecurities that come with not matching up to the perfect image.”
Aluko shakes her beautiful mass of black curls a little scornfully. “What sport does is give you those experiences – which are real. You are going to fail in sport, you are going to win sometimes, you are going to be criticised sometimes, you are going to be applauded – so it gives you … well, it’s certainly given me anyway, those real-life lessons that make you bulletproof.”
It is clear that a certain toughness, or emotional armour, has been required to get Aluko where she is today. She took her history A-level on the morning before playing Denmark in the 2005 European championships. In 2012 – after returning from the US, where she had played professional football for three years – she chose to fast-track her legal practice course to enable her to qualify as a lawyer in Britain.
England’s Eniola Aluko seeks double first against Norway at World Cup Read more
That accelerated programme of study meant that Aluko could play in the London Olympics. It also meant that she was spending nine hours every day poring over her books, then several hours training on the field at night. Even Aluko, who appears to take everything in her stride, admits “it almost broke me”.
“It was just a joke in terms of the toll it took on my body,” she recalls. “I was sick a lot because I was just so stressed. And at that point my mum said to me, ‘After the Olympics maybe you should take a break from football.’ I remember those conversations because it was just too much, even for me. But after the Olympics, my love for football reached another level, so I just couldn’t quit.”
The battle for recognition and equality within the sport, in terms of funding and wages, is one fought by female footballers worldwide. The American women’s football team is embroiled in an ongoing wage discrimination complaint against the US Soccer federation after it emerged they were paid four times less than their male counterparts. That is despite their World Cup win last year against Japan being the most-watched football match in US history – and the fact that they generated $20m (£15m) more in revenue than the men’s team. The lawsuit is the strongest statement any national women’s football team has made so far, and as far as Aluko is concerned, the issue is pretty black and white.
“I think, good on ’em,” she says. “I think that lawsuit is very embarrassing for the US Soccer federation and hopefully it will prompt some action. There’s always been an argument that women’s football doesn’t bring in enough money, but in America that’s just categorically false. So on what basis were they paid so much less? It has to be because they are women. I know a lot of those girls as well and they are very strong women who know their rights and they know the current situation is just not acceptable. And that will have a knock-on effect on other teams around the world. I think it’s about time.”
Aluko is so passionate about this that one of the women she will speak about on Woman’s Hour is the veteran tennis player Billie-Jean King. The six-time Wimbledon champion was an early advocate of equal pay and prize money for sportswomen in the 1970s, and still campaigns on the same issues.
Yet when it comes to wage discrimination in the UK, Aluko wavers. The most the majority of WSL players earn is around £35,000 per year. However, she says, the sport is still young and simply is not in a position to command anything even close to the six-figure sums that premiership players demand for a week’s work. For example, Women’s Super League games draw in an average of 1,076 spectators, compared to the home crowds of 41,546 that flock to Chelsea’s Stanford Bridge each week.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We have to get to the point where people are willing to pay high ticket prices. We do that by winning world tournaments,’ says Aluko. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian
“Hmmm. Well, yes, we are paid less, but that’s because we don’t bring anywhere close to the same amount of crowds, and that’s just a fact,” she says slowly, mulling over the issue. “Look, the reality is that people will pay more for a match when Wayne Rooney is playing than when I am playing. I will never expect to be paid the same as Wayne Rooney, because I am not Wayne Rooney. And there’s no getting around that.
“We’re not women who say we should be given this amount because we are women – we have to get to that point where people are willing to pay those high ticket prices, and then we can command more money. And we do that by winning world tournaments.”
Right now, Aluko’s main priority is challenging the chaos that currently plagues the women’s football league in Britain. She believes that confusion – particularly over the limited number of games and the different days they are held each week (“Even I never know when I will be playing”) – is holding the sport back from engaging a fan base that could one day develop the kind of fanatical devotion associated with men’s football.
“There’s still a long way to go. I still think our fan base needs to grow more and I think there needs to be a lot more consistency in terms of the league and the fixtures. I don’t know who organises the league, but for me it just lacks a lot of common sense.” Criticism from players, she adds, is beginning to mount, though she is not sure whether it is falling on deaf ears.
Aluko is keen to see women’s teams start “pairing” with the men’s games – meaning that when Chelsea take on Liverpool, for example, the women’s teams play against each other, either prior to the main event or after it. Ticketholders to the men’s game would get a discount for the women’s match, as a way to draw them in.
She is also sceptical about the FA’s commitment to throwing its full financial weight behind women’s football in Britain. In fact, Aluko believes that unless the body starts to take risks with funding and promotion, the growing popularity of the sport could begin to level off.
The importance of tournaments such as the 2012 Olympics and the World Cup in bringing women’s football into the national consciousness is obvious. For Aluko, that makes the fact that Great Britain will not have a women’s football team at the Rio Olympics this year – following objection from the home nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – particularly devastating.
Denying GB women footballers a place at the Olympics is an atrocious decision | Owen Gibson Read more
“It’s a real shame because it seems that politics have really got in the way of us playing in Rio,” she sighs. “You’d think for something like the Olympics, people would be willing to side-step all those political arguments and just indulge this romantic side of sport – but no, and now a lot of people have lost out on a really amazing opportunity. And it gives all our major European competitors, who will be playing, an advantage for the Euros.”
As is to be expected from someone who has meticulously time-managed her own life since she was 12 years old, Aluko also has definite ideas of what life will hold when her football career comes to an end.
Her dream is not to coach – “I can’t think of anything worse” – but to follow in the footsteps of Karren Brady and sit on the board of a football club, “hiring and firing and all the fun stuff”. Having already negotiated all her own contracts, she also wants to help female footballers who, in their eagerness to sign to a big club, leave themselves open to exploitation.
She even hopes to start a family, though admits her sporting prowess has proved a sticking point in the past: “It is a certain type of guy who’s OK with having a girlfriend who is better at football than him.” We both laugh. Then she assures me she is far from joking. “It is actually problematic,” she says. “Some guys really can’t cope with it.”
The Woman’s Hour Takeover week begins on 13 June at 10am, on Radio 4Then-South Korean President Park Geun-hye bows in apology as she addresses the nation at the presidential office in Seoul on Nov. 4. (Yonhap news agency/European Pressphoto Agency)
South Korean prosecutors, citing concerns about destruction of evidence, asked a court Monday to order the arrest of former president Park Geun-hye, who was impeached earlier this month in connection with a corruption and influence-peddling scandal.
Prosecutors grilled Park for 14 hours last week, the first time she agreed to answer questions about her role in the scandal.
The Seoul Central District Court scheduled a hearing Thursday morning to decide whether Park, 65, should be detained for further questioning.
Usually in South Korea, subjects of such requests wait at a detention center to hear the outcome of the court hearing, so they can go straight into custody. But these are not usual times, and it is not clear whether Park will follow this practice.
Park lost her immunity from prosecution when South Korea’s Constitutional Court dismissed her from office on March 10 after concluding that she had “continuously” violated the law. Prosecutors have identified 13 charges that could be leveled against her, including bribery, abuse of power and leaking confidential information.
“A lot of evidence has been collected so far, but as the suspect denies most of the criminal allegations against her, there is a possibility of her destroying evidence,” the prosecution said in a statement Monday.
[ South Korea’s impeached president questioned for 14 hours amid corruption probe ]
However, analysts said, Park already has had plenty of time to destroy evidence. She was suspended as president in early December when the National Assembly passed a motion to impeach her and forwarded the matter to the Constitutional Court.
But she remained in the presidential Blue House throughout the three months that the court was deliberating, and then stayed on for 60 hours even after she was impeached before returning to her private home in southern Seoul.
Park also refused to allow prosecutors access to her office during their investigation and declined to talk to them or to appear before the court deciding her fate. She has denied the allegations against her.
The scandal centers on Park’s relationship with Choi Soon-sil, her lifelong friend and confidante.
Park was a notoriously reclusive president — her former chief of staff said he would go weeks without seeing her, and some of her own ministers said they had never met with her in person — but she secretly was relying on Choi, who had no policy or political experience and no security clearance.
Choi is accused of extracting a total of $70 million from major businesses on the promise that they would get favorable treatment from Park’s government. Prosecutors have said that Park colluded in the scheme.
Choi is now on trial, as is Lee Jae-yong, the de facto head of Samsung, who is alleged to have given or promised to give Choi about $37 million. Choi is said to have offered to ensure government support for the merger of two Samsung units — crucial for Lee to retain control of the huge conglomerate.
Choi and Lee have denied any wrongdoing.
[ South Korean president removed from office over corruption scandal ]
Two of Park’s former presidential aides, a prominent prosecutor and the head of South Korea’s national pension fund, the world’s third largest, also have been caught up in the investigation.
“It would be unfair not to seek a warrant considering that her accomplice Choi Soon-sil, as well as those government officials who followed her direction and the ones who gave kickbacks, have all been detained,” the prosecution said in its statement Monday, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
There is no guarantee that the arrest warrant will be granted. Prosecutors sought to detain Lee of Samsung in January, but their application was rejected. A second attempt was successful, and Lee is now being held in the same facility outside Seoul as Choi.
Still, opponents of Park were pleased at the move.
“This request for an arrest warrant for Park on bribery and other charges is a historic decision,” said Youn Kwan-suk, spokesman for the main opposition Democratic Party. “It is a reasonable conclusion under the law.”
Many of the people who rallied in the streets of Seoul over the weekend of Park’s impeachment held signs calling for her arrest. Some artists made replica jail cells with a cardboard cutout of Park inside, while vendors sold snacks including “prison bread” and “prison milk.”
But Park’s supporters were dismayed by Monday’s request. The Liberty Party, a group of Park loyalists who broke away from the ruling party after she was suspended, said it hoped the investigation could be completed without the arrest of the former president.
Read more:
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
After impeachment, South Korea may reset relations with China, North Korea
South Koreans celebrate president’s impeachment
South Korean prosecutors say president colluded in corruption scandal
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign newsSignaling that it plans a major anti-Clinton push in the upcoming presidential election year, the National Rifle Association on Thursday released a video showing Hillary Clinton laughing at "resolutions" to read the Constitution and understand firearm ownership.
The video, produced by the NRA's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, concludes with it's own message: "We have resolutions for 2016, too."
It is the first in what the NRA said will be a series of videos "devoted to exposing the hypocrisy of the gun control agenda. This one pokes fun at Hillary Clinton's ignorance of firearm issues and the Second Amendment."
The video shows a desk cluttered with $1,000 bills featuring the face of ardent anti-gunner Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, and a woman writing out her New Year's resolutions on Hillary Clinton Campaign letterhead.
New Year's Resolutions of the Rich and Anti-Gun. (Actually, just Hillary Clinton)
Stop trying to ban guns. Read the Constitution. Meet an actual gun owner. In person!
Then it shows the woman drawing a huge X through the list while laughing.
The NRA, in a fact sheet, noted:
-- Clinton wants to bring back her husband's failed ban on assault weapons.
-- Clinton wants so-called universal background checks.
-- Clinton is open to Australian-style gun confiscation.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.Managers Derek McInnes and Pedro Caixinha shook hands before Wednesday's match at Ibrox
Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha says he has cleared the air with Aberdeen counterpart Derek McInnes over a glass of Portuguese wine.
Caixinha told McInnes not to come into his office following the Dons' midweek 2-1 victory at Ibrox, after the Portuguese felt slighted at Pittodrie.
However, Caxinha says the situation has been resolved between both managers.
"With a fantastic glass of Portuguese wine, everything stays clear, that's what matters," he said.
Media playback is not supported on this device Highlights: Rangers 1-2 Aberdeen
The Rangers boss had said McInnes did not join him for a post-match drink when the teams met at Pittodrie last month.
McInnes, however, insists the Portuguese was "mistaken", adding "every manager is welcome in my office".
Speaking on Friday, Caixinha indicated that the issue between the pair had been resolved and that their relationship was respectful.
"We had a very good glass of fantastic Portuguese wine," he said. "One glass of wine clarifies everything. It's done and everything stays in my office. What's private is private."
Aberdeen's victory at Ibrox was their first at the stadium since 1991, with Graeme Shinnie and Ryan Christie scoring before Martyn Waghorn's reply for the hosts.
McInnes was, on Friday, reluctant to discuss the situation with Caixinha.
"I don't want to comment any further other than really a couple of things have been said that disappoints me," he said. "I think it's a wee bit of a sideshow.
"But other than that I just want to focus on the performance and result of the team, which were excellent."
When asked whether he had had a glass of wine with his Rangers counterpart, McInnes said: "Like I say, I will just concentrate on the result."Total War: Warhammer PC Performance Review
1440p Testing with AMD R9 Fury X and Nvidia GTX 980Ti
| Source: OC3D Price: Author: Mark Campbell
1440p Testing with AMD R9 Fury X and Nvidia GTX 980Ti
At 1440p we can see a similar story to our 1080p results, with Nvidia's GTX 980Ti outperforming the AMD R9 Fury X, but becoming a lot more comparable when the graphics are put up to Ultra.
Again we see the GPU utilization go below 99% on both GPUs, suggesting that at 1440pGPU performance is being limited by a bottleneck within the game. This performance is much better than what we have seen in other Total War Games on release, but the game is not what we would call perfect.
What must be remembered is that our testing scenario is a worst case scenario, with the game performing better than this a lot of the time, especially on the campaign map.
DirectX 12
Below is the results that we have received when using an early build of the game's DirectX 12 benchmark, which as I have said on the previous page is based on a much less demanding map. This means that our DirectX 11 results are not directly comparable, so do not expect 15 or 25 FPS gains from the upcoming API update.
1 - Total War: Warhammer PC Performance Review 2 - Graphical Options and Settings 3 - Control Options and scaling issues 4 - 4K Screenshot Graphical Comparison - The Grand Campaign Map 5 - 4K Screenshot Graphical Comparison - The Grand Campaign Map - Part 2 6 - 4K Screenshot Graphical Comparison - The Battlefield 7 - 4K Screenshot Graphical Comparison - The Battlefield - Part 2 8 - Testing Methodology and CPU usage - DirectX 12 Benchmark 9 - 1080p Testing with the GTX 960 and R9 380 10 - 1080p Testing with AMD R9 Fury X and Nvidia GTX 980Ti 11 - 1440p Testing with AMD R9 Fury X and Nvidia GTX 980Ti 12 - 4K Testing with AMD R9 Fury X and Nvidia GTX 980Ti 13 - DirectX 12 - Is the future brighter? 14 - Conclusion «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next»
Most Recent CommentsAbout
Hi all, my name is Darren Mcloughlin and I am an archaeologist. As part of a study I conducted around structural diversity in Early Medieval Ireland I constructed the shell of this early Medieval roundhouse based on evidence from an excavation at Deerpark Farms Co.Antrim. The experiment itself was aimed at testing the stability of the structure.
Given that the experiment has been conducted I have now decided to substantially finish the round house and rent it out as part of a local archaeological tour package or to cyclist/campers.
The funding will go on the labour required to construct a tradition earth and straw /cobb external wall as well as the harvesting of reed and thatching of the roof. All materials are already on site apart from the reed thatch.
The Labour required should take two people (myself included however I am not looking for funding for my own labour/skill) 3 days to complete the earthen wall. This will have to be done in blocks of 1 day as the earthen wall will need 2 weeks to set before the next layer can be applied. So for this aspect I am allowing €150 or €50 per day.
The reed thatch has to be harvested by boat and mower which bundles the reed. Including harvest, transport and storage the costing for this aspect of the project is estimated at €350.
The process of thatching itself will cost €100 per day. A local thatcher has estimated that it will take three working days to complete the five meter diameter roof.
Following on from there I shall be recreating furnishing for the roundhouse including a wattle bed.
The finished project should be water tight with a rammed earth floor and hearth making It a fully functioning dwelling.
I shall be opening the round house to the public and renting it out as a stand alone shelter.
I shall also be giving local archaeological tours and renting out the roundhouse as part of an authentic early Medieval experience.
All promotion of the Early Medieval Experience/archaeological tours will be carried out by my local tourist board as part of a rural development scheme.
For a small donation you can stay in the roundhouse and take a tour of local archaeological monuments of your choice.
Thanks for reading.Operation Gothic Serpent was a military operation conducted by United States special operations forces during the Somali Civil War with the primary mission of capturing faction leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The operation occurred in Somalia from August to October 1993 and was supervised by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
As part of the operation, the soldiers were deployed in a mission to arrest two of Aidid's lieutenants. That mission's result – executed under the command of Gothic Serpent – became known as the Battle of Mogadishu.
Background [ edit ]
In December 1992, U.S. President George H. W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to join the U.N. in a joint operation known as Operation Restore Hope, with the primary mission of restoring order in Somalia. The country was wracked by civil war and a severe famine as it was ruled by a number of faction leaders. Over the next several months, the situation deteriorated.
On 20 January 1993, Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, took office.
In May 1993, all the parties involved in the civil war agreed to a disarmament conference proposed by the leading Somali faction leader, Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The Somali National Alliance had been formed in June 1992. This alliance consisted of faction leaders across the country, operating under Aidid's authority, Aidid having declared himself Somalia's president. A great number of Somali civilians also resented the international forces, leading many, including women and children, to take up arms and actively resist U.S. forces during fighting in Mogadishu.
On 5 June 1993, one of the deadliest attacks on U.N. forces in Somalia occurred when 24 Pakistani soldiers were ambushed and killed in an Aidid-controlled area of Mogadishu.
Any hope of a peaceful resolution of the conflict quickly vanished. The next day, the U.N. Security Council issued Resolution 837, calling for the arrest and trial of those that carried out the ambush. U.S. warplanes and U.N. troops began an attack on Aidid's stronghold. Aidid remained defiant, and the violence between Somalis and U.N. forces escalated.
Task Force Ranger [ edit ]
On 8 August 1993, Aidid's militia detonated a remote controlled bomb against a U.S. Army vehicle, killing four Military Police soldiers. Two weeks later, another bomb injured seven more.[1] In response, President Clinton approved the proposal to deploy a special task force, composed of 400 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force operators.[2] This unit, named Task Force Ranger, consisted of 160 elite U.S. troops. They flew to Mogadishu and began a manhunt for Aidid.
On 22 August, the force was deployed to Somalia under the command of Major General William F. Garrison, JSOC's commander at the time.
The force consisted of:
General situation [ edit ]
In Mogadishu, the task force occupied an old hangar and construction trailers under primitive conditions. The force lacked on-site potable water and was subject to frequent mortar fire.
During September, the force conducted several successful missions to arrest sympathizers and to confiscate arms caches. The aircraft also made frequent flights over the city to desensitize the public to the presence of military aircraft and to familiarize themselves with the city's narrow streets and alleys (see PSYOPs).
On 21 September, the force captured Aidid's financier, Osman Ali Atto, when a Delta team intercepted a vehicle convoy transporting him out of the city.
At approximately 0200 on the 25th of September, Aidid's men shot down a Black Hawk with an RPG and killed three crew members at New Port near Mogadishu. Although the helicopter was not part of a Task Force Ranger mission, the Black Hawk destruction was a huge SNA psychological victory.[4][5]
Battle of Mogadishu [ edit ]
Task Force Ranger under fire in Somalia – 3 October 1993
On the afternoon of 3 October 1993, informed that two leaders of Aidid's clan were at a residence in the "Black Sea" neighborhood in Mogadishu,[6] the task force sent 19 aircraft, 12 vehicles, and 160 men to arrest them. During the mission, Private Todd Blackburn (who, contrary to the film adaptation of the events, arrived in Somalia at the same time as the rest of the 75th Ranger Regiment) missed the rope while fast-roping from an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. He fell 70 feet to the street below, badly injuring himself.
The two Somali leaders were quickly arrested. The prisoners and Blackburn were loaded on a convoy of ground vehicles. However, armed militiamen and civilians, some of them women and children, converged on the target area from all over the city. Sergeant Dominick Pilla and a Somali combatant spotted each other and fired at the same time. Both were killed. The operation's commanders were stunned to hear that a soldier had been killed, as they expected no casualties during the operation. During the battle's first hours, a MH-60 Black Hawk, Super Six One, piloted by Cliff Wolcott, was shot down by a Somali combatant using a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Both of the pilots were killed, but the crew survived the crash landing.
Later, another Black Hawk helicopter, Super Six Four, was shot down by an RPG fired from the ground. No rescue team was immediately available, and the small surviving crew, including one of the pilots, Michael Durant, couldn't move. Two Delta snipers — Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart provided cover from a helicopter, and repeatedly volunteered to secure the crash site. On their third try, they were given permission, both men aware that it would probably cost them their lives. When they arrived, they attempted to secure the site, but Gordon was killed, leaving only Durant and Shughart. Eventually, after holding off and killing more than 25 Somalis, Shughart was killed and Durant taken hostage. Shughart and Gordon were both posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions.
Meanwhile, the remaining Rangers and Delta operators fought their way to the first crash site, where they found the crew. They soon found themselves surrounded by Somali Habr Gidr militia. The Somali commander, Colonel Sharif Hassan Giumale, decided to kill the U.S. troops with mortar fire, and Somali militia prepared to bombard the besieged Americans with 60mm mortars. However, Colonel Giumale called off the mortar strike after information of possible civilian hostages arose. Repeated attempts by the Somalis to overrun U.S. positions were beaten back with heavy small arms fire accompanied by strafing and rocket fire from helicopters. A rescue convoy was organized, made up of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and Malaysian and Pakistani forces. In heavy combat with the Somalis, the rescue convoy broke through the encirclement and rescued the besieged forces.
The mission's objective of capturing Aidid's associates was accomplished, but the battle turned out to be the most difficult close combat that U.S. troopers had engaged in since the Vietnam War. In the end, two MH-60 Black Hawks were shot down, another was seriously damaged, and 18 U.S. troopers and a Malaysian soldier on the rescue convoy were killed, and 85 were wounded. Estimates of Somali fatalities are around 1,000 militiamen killed during the battle, with over 3,000 wounded.
6 October mortar attack [ edit ]
Two days after the battle's end, Somali militiamen launched a mortar strike on a U.S. compound that killed Delta operator Sergeant First Class Matt Rierson.
U.S. withdrawal [ edit ]
Following the battle, President Clinton ordered that additional troops be added to protect U.S. soldiers and aid in withdrawal. All military actions were ceased on 6 October, except in cases of self-defense.[clarification needed] Clinton called for a full withdrawal by 31 March 1994. Conforming to this request, most troops were out of the country by 25 March 1994. A few hundred U.S. Marines remained offshore, but were completely removed from the area by March 1995. The U.N. withdrew as well.[7]
Legacy [ edit ]
U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin resigned his post late in 1993. He was specifically blamed for denying the U.S. Army permission to have its own armor units in place in Somalia, units which might have been able to break through to the trapped soldiers earlier in the battle. U.S. political leaders thought the presence of tanks would spoil the peacekeeping image of the mission.[7]
Osama bin Laden, who was living in Sudan at the time, cited this operation, in particular U.S. withdrawal, as an example of American weakness and vulnerability to an attack.
In popular culture [ edit ]
References [ edit ]BERLIN — Delivering the latest stark news about climate change on Sunday, a United Nations panel warned that governments are not doing enough to avert profound risks in coming decades. But the experts found a silver lining: Not only is there still time to head off the worst, but the political will to do so seems to be rising around the world.
In a report unveiled here, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that decades of foot-dragging by political leaders had propelled humanity into a critical situation, with greenhouse emissions rising faster than ever. Though it remains technically possible to keep planetary warming to a tolerable level, only an intensive push over the next 15 years to bring those emissions under control can achieve the goal, the committee found.
“We cannot afford to lose another decade,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chairman of the committee that wrote the report. “If we lose another decade, it becomes extremely costly to achieve climate stabilization.”
The good news is that ambitious action is becoming more affordable, the committee found. It is increasingly clear that measures like tougher building codes and efficiency standards for cars and trucks can save energy and reduce emissions without harming people’s quality of life, the panel found. And the costs of renewable energy like wind and solar power are falling so fast that its deployment on a large scale is becoming practical, the report said.After her mother in law passed away, Rachel proudly told me "she wanted to talk about the fact that she was dying, but we did not let her."
Why, I wondered, though I already knew. Death, the one certainty life holds for us, is often considered too painful to discuss. We avoid the topic, at the cost of making it not just painful, but also extremely lonely. How can one make decisions regarding treatment, organ donation, and, ultimately, pulling the plug, if her loved ones are pretending these decisions are irrelevant, choosing instead to talk about the weather.
It need not be this way. The Indians, in fact, acknowledge death on a daily basis, breathing in and out their three oms - for birth, life, and, well, the end, as part of yoga practice. As for us, our rituals often make it as far as possible from down to earth. A new casket, of all things, on display at the Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, on view till January 9, 2011offers a new, demystifying approach. New Zealand's Greg Holdsworth designed a low "simple, nontoxic, biodegradable casket made of light and attractive [I swear to God, this |
3 acres (2.5 ha) in South Park, Metropolis includes three residential towers, a six-star boutique hotel, and curated, destination retail.
AEG quit its proposed NFL stadium project when two other NFL stadium-entertainment district proposals gained momentum, due to support by three NFL teams. St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke is backing the football stadium at Hollywood Park in Inglewood; and San Diego Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis are partners in competing a proposal in Carson.
“Football is going outside downtown, so this is our mothership [AEG’s collective South Park interests], and it’s a significant model for what we’re doing elsewhere in the world,” says Tanner.
AEG Goes Where Others Fail to Tread
“Our approach is to look for opportunities lacking in a core entertainment district,” Tanner continues. “We start with an arena, then add the entertainment district.” AEG’s site selection criterion is an intercity location with developable land around it and good public transit.
An example of this approach is the company’s project in the East Berlin area of the German capital. AEG acquired the franchise for the city’s Berliner Eisbären hockey team and opened the O 2 World Berlin arena, now rebranded Mercedes-Benz Arena, in 2008. The company is currently redeveloping an adjacent train yard to create the Berlin Entertainment District, a mixed-use project with 600,000 square feet (55,700 sq m) of retail-entertainment amenities, residential uses, and office space.
Tanner notes that this project is not only in a dense urban location, but also adjacent to the largest standing portion of the historic Berlin Wall, which attracts tens of thousands of tourists annually.
Proximity to Urban Amenities Key to Successful Sports-Entertainment Projects
Sports and event facilities are key demand generators for nearby retail amenities, Hunden points out, noting, “They feed off each other and create a sense of place.” He warns, however, that proximity is key in developing “packaged districts,” as people will walk only in a one-quarter-mile (0.4 km) radius of the sports or event facility. Entertainment retail services also must be “visible, walkable, and safe.”
Hunden stresses that critical mass is best achieved by locating packaged projects in urban environments where infrastructure and density are already in place. “The high cost of urban sites is forcing facilities to be developed outside the urban core, or at least providing an incentive for them to be built where land is easier to assemble and less expensive, but proximity matters,” he adds, pointing out that entertainment facilities are not generally successful as islands, and isolation limits their economic impact.
By locating Miller Park, home to the National League’s Milwaukee Brewers, outside downtown, Hunden notes that the city of Milwaukee missed the opportunity to offer fans the ability to visit restaurants before and after games and the economic impact that would have provided.
Power Plant Live! in Baltimore, for instance, is a very successful project, Hunden says, because it lies just a block from the Inner Harbor and a short walk from many other attractions, including the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens’ M&T Stadium; the Baltimore Orioles’ Oriole Park at Camden Yards; many downtown hotels; the convention center; and other local attractions.
“People want to know if there’s payoff for these districts,” he concludes. “It’s what gets developed outside the district that signifies success—walkable streets beyond the district’s six to eight blocks buzzing with activity.”New flagships running Windows 10 for phones are expected to debut later this year, but in the meantime, designers across the world don’t want to wait any longer and create their own concepts imagining the devices that Microsoft could release at some point in 2015.
This is the case of the Lumia 940 XL concept, a new design that’s based on existing speculation on the successor to Lumia 930 and that proposes not only an absolutely stunning look but also hardware specifications that would make such a device a flagship in all respects.
As you could easily guess since it has the XL moniker, this model would come with a larger screen than that of the Lumia 930, which kind of pushes it closer to the phablet range.
A 5.4-inch 2k SAMOLED LCD screen would be offered on the 940 XL, the concept designer says, which should be good enough not only to offer impressive quality but also to be energy-efficient and allow the battery to get you through the day.
Windows 10 and Intel CPU
Needless to say, the device would ship with Windows 10 for phones and would be powered by an Intel Atom x7 64-bit quad-core processor. 4 GB of RAM would also be offered, and so would be 32 GB of internal storage and microSD card support for an additional 128 GB when needed.
As far as cameras are concerned, the Lumia 940 XL would excel too, so a 24.2-megapixel rear unit with PureVIew and Carl Zeiss Optics would also be installed. For selfies and video calls, there’s a secondary 8-megapixel front camera with a LED flash.
Obviously, this is just a concept and there’s no proof that the final product (if Microsoft indeed plans to launch an XL model in addition to the standard one) can look like this, but there’s no doubt that such a design would really appeal to lots of buyers out there.Two utes at the Deniliquin Ute muster, 2002
A ute muster is an Australian festival which brings together large numbers of utes and their owners. These events typically include competitions and other side events, occur annually, and normally last several days and are held in rural and regional areas of Australia and New Zealand.
These events can be seen as a more rural version of the Summernats, a festival which promotes a wider range of car culture.
The Caboolture Urban Country Music Festival, which features a "Beaut Ute" competition, is a country music festival established in 2004.
Background [ edit ]
Often ute musters are combined with a larger festival such as a rodeo, agricultural show or music festival, and are usually sponsored by companies which are local to where the muster is being held.
Ute musters are often mis-represented as being attended by yobbos who just like to drink, this is no longer the case, but instead an outlet for enthusiastic ute owners to show off their pride and joy in their vehicles which are personalised with lights, stickers, bull bars, and various after-market add-ons. They are generally held to raise money for towns, charities and local causes, and have run in conjunction with agricultural shows or Bachelor and Spinster Balls which raise money for local charities.
The Deniliquin Ute Muster is the largest event of its kind in the world. It is a stand-alone event which began as a celebration of all things Australian and the Aussie icon of the ute, and has developed into a two-day festival, with live music concerts, ute driving competitions, the Australian National Circle Work Championships TM, show and shine arena, and bull ride.
Ute enthusiasts tend to have an obsession with bumper stickers, often covering the entire rear window of the ute with them. Accumulating the most different stickers is a sort of status symbol which is often the deciding factor in many of the Beaut Ute competitions (see below). Some of the popular stickers are Bundaberg Rum, Holden, Jim Beam, Ute Muster and the Conargo Pub.
Beaut ute [ edit ]
The event itself involves a congregation of ute enthusiasts who enter their utes in a number of competitions, sometimes referred to as a Beaut Ute Competition. Some of the typical categories are:
Best Feral Ute – the dirtiest, worst maintained, lived-in Ute
– the dirtiest, worst maintained, lived-in Ute Best B&S Ute – generally decorated with bullbars,headlights,stickers of alcohol brands or rodeo/ute musters and various pubs
– generally decorated with bullbars,headlights,stickers of alcohol brands or rodeo/ute musters and various pubs Best 4WD
Best Classic Ute – pre-1980 in most original condition.
– pre-1980 in most original condition. Best Chick's Ute – Ute owned and maintained by a woman.
– Ute owned and maintained by a woman. Best Street Ute – immaculate, gleaming condition.
– immaculate, gleaming condition. Best Trade Ute – Ute decorated with equipment from a particular trade.
– Ute decorated with equipment from a particular trade. Best Rural Ute – decorated for the rural life.
– decorated for the rural life. Best VB Ute – competition to see how many stubbies fit in the back.
– competition to see how many stubbies fit in the back. Best Holden Ute,
Best Ford Ute,
Best Work/Trade Ute
Other categories are also included and run on the day these are called novelty categories and normally take a side step from the general categories to make a bit of fun to fill in the day. some novelty categories include:
Best Dog in ute
Ute With a Boot
Furthest travelled
Most Kilometers
Records [ edit ]
Most of the ute muster events around Australia try to compete with each other by continually breaking new records of gathering the most vehicles in the one place.
However, that mantle has been claimed by Deniliquin which previously held a small ute show as part of its annual Pastoral and Agricultural Show, but developed the idea into a tourist-attracting event. In 1999 a group of community-minded people got together with the idea of celebrating all things Australian, including the Aussie icon of the ute, to attract people to the agricultural town of Deniliquin, located in the southern Riverina region of New South Wales. In its first year, the event held a Guinness Book of Records count of the largest parade of legally registered utes in the world, and each year new records are broken.
In 1999, 2839 drivers took part,[1] establishing Deniliquin as the ute capital of the world. Since that time, the event has grown in popularity and each year breaks its existing world record. As of 2010, Deniliquin's current record stands at 8,152 utes, with over 25,000 attendees in a town that normally has a population of about 8000.
The Deniliquin Ute Muster also holds a record count for most number of people wearing blue singlets - in 2010 that Guinness Book of Records count stands at 3500 people.
In 2013, a new ute record of 9,736 was set and a new blue singlet record of 3,924 was counted.[2]
Distinction from other festivals [ edit ]
The "Ute on the Pole" at Deniliquin
Ute musters are often held to help raise funds for local charities, such as raising funds for local schools or hospitals. Often the ute musters are associated with local groups such as Apex or Rotary. They are seen as a good drawcard to bring in money from participants who are not members of the local community - so all money spent is extra money for the local community, whether it goes to the local charity, or just to the local economy.
Musters are often held in conjunction with local agricultural shows. This will assists organisers in arranging advertising, insurance and other sponsorship. It can also assist in obtaining the cooperation of local emergency services such as police and ambulance, if the muster is one aspect of a larger, previously established local event.
Most ute musters charge a relatively small fee for participants, allowing them to enter any category they are qualified for. Most participants would enter between five and ten categories, as this keeps the event proceeding. Many participants travel long distances to enter and prefer activities to be held in a short timeframe to allow them to join in other parts of the festival.
Well organised events cater for camping. As this is a usual festival environment drawing participants from large distances in country areas there are limited opportunities for public transport. Both competitors and other participants often make extensive use of any bar facilities; in many events the bar provides a large portion of the funds raised. Well organised events provide for camping as often the most practical accommodation for all concerned.
Whilst larger musters can annoy some locals, this is seen as the exception rather than the rule. Most musters attract between 20-100 utes, depending upon event advertising. Commonly, musters also have maximum numbers permitted to attend - this is often a requirement in obtaining event permits.
Event committees need to liaise carefully with local law enforcement. The muster held at Deniliquin is a good example of close relationships with NSW Police. Whilst the organisers recognise that some attendees can flout the law, this is seen as a minority and the event is able to proceed in a realistic environment. This achieves the event's goals of fundraising and ensures participants are able to enjoy the event.Amsterdam might house some of the world's most beautiful canals but you probably wouldn't want to take a dip in one. Rusty bikes, plastic and raw sewage pollute the waterways. But just a short ferry ride from the city center, a green haven has bloomed in a canal once thought to be beyond repair.
For 80 years, the Van Hasselt Canal in North Amsterdam was part of a commercial shipyard. Decades of industrial use poisoned the water and land with heavy metals and chemicals. When the shipyard closed in 2000, it remained deserted for over a decade. That was until 2013 when a group of volunteers - tapping into the city's creative spirit - decided to transform the polluted area.
The result is De Ceuvel - a creative and autonomous co-working space with a focus on green technology. Now just a year after opening, the 15 office spaces and studios built into refurbished houseboats have attracted a mix of hipsters, artists, hippies and startup founders. And De Ceuvel has become a hotspot for sustainable enterprise. But how did they do it?
What was an old, polluted shipyard is now a creative co-working space with offices inside refurbished houseboats
Getting creative
As it turns out, it's not easy to build offices on contaminated soil. This called for some innovative thinking, says Guus van der Ven from Metabolic, the consulting firm behind developing and executing the site's overall sustainability plan.
"Because of the pollution of the soil, we couldn't dig deeper than 50 centimeters, so you cannot lay a foundation, you cannot make a sewer connection or a gas connection, so we had to get creative," van der Ven told DW.
To get around these problems, environmental scientists and architects used an array of clean technologies, including solar-powered air-conditioning and heating systems, compost toilets and some other surprising low-tech sustainable solutions.
Green and low-tech: Plant sewage systems
Instead of building a conventional sewage system, De Ceuvel's sustainable architects opted to harness the biofiltration powers of plants such as willow, hemp and bamboo to filter all of the community's waste water. The plants' roots create bacteria that clean up the water.
Fast growing plants, like elephant grass (pictured), replace standard sewer connections and are used to filters grey water from the offices
"It's an easy, cheap, natural alternative to a sewage system," says van der Ven. No pumps or sewer connections are necessary, all the tenants have to do is use biodegradable soap. And there's another bonus: De Ceuvel uses 75 percent less water than conventional offices.
The community uses a similarly ingenious system to scrub the polluted land. The houseboat offices are moored along a winding bamboo walkway, lined with soil-cleaning plants. They are called hyperaccumulators and absorb high concentrations of metals, while plants called excluders stabilize the earth. When the plants are harvested each year, the soil pollutants go with them.
"In the end, instead of having a hundred truck loads of polluted soil, you get a few cubic meters of concentrated pollution," says van der Ven. De Ceuvel's ground is now a lot cleaner, but van der Ven explains they're still not sure what to do with the polluted plants once they've been harvested.
Growing food with human waste
At De Ceuvel, human feces are collected in compost toilets and then used to fertilize food
Literally nothing goes to waste at De Ceuvel - not even poop, thanks to the on-site compost toilets. Fertilizer created using the composting facilities is put to work growing food in the De Ceuvel greenhouse. But that's after it's been tested in the community's lab for pathogens.
"Then we eat the food that was fertilized with our own feces, we go to the toilet again, use the feces to grow more food and we close the circle," says van der Ven. "We want to show that closing a nutrient cycle in an urban setting is possible."
The community also recovers phosphorus from pure urine collected from the waterless urinal at Café de Ceuvel, where entrepreneurs, families and tourists hang out by the waterfront. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant growth and is widely used as a fertilizer. But it will run out one day as phosphate rock minerals - the only significant global resource of the nutrient - continue to be mined heavily.
"Given how quickly we are depleting the world's phosphate stocks - why wouldn't we make use of our human waste, which contain important nutrients that can be used to grow food?” asks van der Ven.
At Cafe de Ceuvel, entrepreneurs and visitors can hang out while helping to close the nutrient cycle: the pee from the urinals is used to fertilize food grown in the greenhouse
Making sustainability social
For van der Ven, it's not just about transforming technical systems but also social systems using the green solutions they've developed at De Ceuvel.
"We think technical development is important," he says. "But we believe it's very important to also involve the people to create awareness and a conscience for sustainability."
That's why van der Ven and his team invited all of the De Ceuvel tenants to build the water filtration systems themselves before moving in. This helped create a sustainable community mindset before the co-working space had even opened.
"That way, they won't just use non-biodegradable soap in their offices and destroy the natural filters because they know how much work it is to build one," van der Ven adds, laughing.
All technologies on-site are decentralized, so every boat has its own compost toilet, its own solar panels and its own heat pump. Because they were involved in the building process, the tenants can take care of the systems themselves.
"De Ceuvel is the proof that you don't need big companies to build an elaborate and expensive sewage and heating system and monitor them from somewhere in China. It works locally and naturally if you build a sustainable and environmentally-aware community," says van der Ven.
"This is a tech playground where we are trying out different, new types of clean technologies," says Guus van der Ven
Still, there's plenty more to do at De Ceuvel - like figuring out how to deal with the contaminated plants post harvesting.
"But that's why this is a tech playground," he says. "We are trying out different, new types of clean technologies. We purposefully chose technologies that aren't established yet to test them and to see whether they can provide a solution in the future."Regular readers are likely aware of Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Soul of a New Machine, an inside look at the experience of a team of Data General engineers racing to design a next-generation minicomputer back in the 1970s. It’s an fascinating and highly enjoyable read that set me searching for similar, up-close looks at the genesis stories of the various microcomputers that I know and loved in my youth.
Books of the sort, as well as more general computing historicals that I can recommend, follow in no particular order.
Dealers of Lightning: Xero PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik — A close look at the creation of so many key computing technologies that sprang from a little research lab set in the hills of Palo Alto, back in the 1970s.
by Michael A. Hiltzik — A close look at the creation of so many key computing technologies that sprang from a little research lab set in the hills of Palo Alto, back in the 1970s. The Little Kingdom by Michael Moritz — An inside look at Apple in the early ’80s, very similar in style to Kidder’s work.
by Michael Moritz — An inside look at Apple in the early ’80s, very similar in style to Kidder’s work. On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnall — A behind-the-scenes look at the creation stories of Commodore computers, from the PET to the Amiga.
by Brian Bagnall — A behind-the-scenes look at the creation stories of Commodore computers, from the PET to the Amiga. Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made by Andy Herzfeld — A series of short anecdotes that together provide an interesting look at how the Macintosh came to be.
by Andy Herzfeld — A series of short anecdotes that together provide an interesting look at how the Macintosh came to be. CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy’s Underdog Computer by Boisy Pitre and Bill Loguidice — An in-depth look at the home computer a Fort Worth leather company brought to market, and the community that rallied around it.
by Boisy Pitre and Bill Loguidice — An in-depth look at the home computer a Fort Worth leather company brought to market, and the community that rallied around it. Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton by Markos Kounalakis and Doug Menuez (photographer) — A look at the creation of the Apple Newton, full of engineering anecdotes as well as lavish photography that helps convey the experience.
by Markos Kounalakis and Doug Menuez (photographer) — A look at the creation of the Apple Newton, full of engineering anecdotes as well as lavish photography that helps convey the experience. Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy — The author’s account of his first experiences with the prototype Macintosh and a look at its first 10 years.
by Steven Levy — The author’s account of his first experiences with the prototype Macintosh and a look at its first 10 years. Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making Of The Sony Play Station And The Visionaries Who Conquered The World Of Video Games by Reiji Asakura — The genesis story of the Sony Playstation.
by Reiji Asakura — The genesis story of the Sony Playstation. The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon–The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World by Steven L. Kent — A rather detailed look at the pinball and early arcade and home console video game scene, and the companies behind it.
by Steven L. Kent — A rather detailed look at the pinball and early arcade and home console video game scene, and the companies behind it. Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing by Randall E. Stross — A look at Steve Jobs’ creation of NeXT Computer after his ousting from Apple in 1985. The book provides a detailed look at the company but, interestingly, was published in 1993, before NeXT took over Apple and NEXTSTEP became Mac OS X.
by Randall E. Stross — A look at Steve Jobs’ creation of NeXT Computer after his ousting from Apple in 1985. The book provides a detailed look at the company but, interestingly, was published in 1993, before NeXT took over Apple and NEXTSTEP became Mac OS X. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner — A detailed account of the creation of the Internet, beginning in the 1960s with J.C.R. Licklider and his DARPA team, on through to the modern Internet we use every day.
by Katie Hafner — A detailed account of the creation of the Internet, beginning in the 1960s with J.C.R. Licklider and his DARPA team, on through to the modern Internet we use every day. Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture by Jon Stokes — A comparative look at the evolution of the Intel Pentium Pro (P6) and IBM PowerPC microarchitectures from then to now.
by Jon Stokes — A comparative look at the evolution of the Intel Pentium Pro (P6) and IBM PowerPC microarchitectures from then to now. The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman — A detailed look at Steve Jobs and NeXT’s takeover of Apple and the biggest turnaround in business history that resulted.
by Alan Deutschman — A detailed look at Steve Jobs and NeXT’s takeover of Apple and the biggest turnaround in business history that resulted. The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps — The story of the creation of the processor that powers Sony and Microsoft’s seventh-generation game consoles, told by the team leader inside IBM. (Not so vintage, but extremely interesting.)
by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps — The story of the creation of the processor that powers Sony and Microsoft’s seventh-generation game consoles, told by the team leader inside IBM. (Not so vintage, but extremely interesting.) Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner — A look at the Johns Carmack and Romero and the story of the games they created, from the Commander Keen days to Doom, Quake, and beyond.
by David Kushner — A look at the Johns Carmack and Romero and the story of the games they created, from the Commander Keen days to Doom, Quake, and beyond. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson — The highly acclaimed bio gets us closer to Jobs the man, while taking a detailed look Apple’s history (and NeXT’s) and the formative days of Silicon Valley.
by Walter Isaacson — The highly acclaimed bio gets us closer to Jobs the man, while taking a detailed look Apple’s history (and NeXT’s) and the formative days of Silicon Valley. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder — An inside look at the experience of a team of Data General engineers racing to design a next-generation minicomputer back in the 1970s.
* While the list above is indeed Apple / Steve Jobs-heavy, Apple has endured while most of its early contemporaries have not. That fact, along with Jobs’ history and notorious personality, have attracted much attention from authors over the years. I feel it’s worth mentioning that most (if not all) of the titles dealing with Apple give a wider glimpse of the industry at the time, as well, which those not particularly interested in Apple may still find worth a look.Why Parks & Recreation Is A Perfect Snapshot Of A Failing America By Doug Norrie Random Article Blend Parks and Recreation, they saw an opportunity to highlight the mundanity of government, the ridiculous nature of democracy, and the “characters” who choose civic employment. Four seasons in they’ve created the funniest show currently on television, and deftly established an expert mix of comedy, story and deeper character development.
While Schur and Daniels are primarily concerned with making a comedy, they've also developed Parks & Recreation as a commentary on American life in general, in which each character embodies something disturbingly broken in our society. It's probably not intentional on their part, but one needs only watch Parks and Recreation for a lesson in American civics, citizenship and the downward slope of a once great power. Let’s look:
Leslie Knope
The Political Machine
Aspiring to be a politician is probably a lot like aspiring to be an apple or a carbuerator. Sure they look shiny on the outside or are unexplainably vital to a bigger thing, but eventually, given enough time they turn out rotten on the inside, or just cost a ton of money to fix.
And while I think Leslie’s campaign for town council is genuine, it also highlights the “brokenness” of our systems. She, of the unflagging moral and ethical virtue, kowtows to big (Pawnee) business (unless you make salads for a living), combats birth certificate bombshells, hides a less-than-scandalous relationship because she thinks it will cost her votes, must defend said relationship in front of an ethics committee and begins compromising her core set of values to accomplish something “bigger”.
Though I'm assuming her eventual victory will come on the heels of something relatively honest and good-natured, Leslie’s foray into politics is at its core gross, corrupt, and decidedly American.
Tom Haverford
Capitalism, Branding and the Distorted American Dream
It was no secret that Tom’s venture into business with Jean Ralphio and the concept of Entertainment 720 (financed by a run-in with a Lexus) had failure written all over it. Paying Detleff Schrempf to shoot hoops in the office was just one of many signs things were going south. No, what made his foray into this business so truly American was that he actually thought it would be a success. He of no business background or real corporate knowledge believed he could take a loose conceptual “idea” and grow a business by maintaining some contrived “balla” status and hiring hot secretaries.
And while his scheme was over the top in scope and underdeveloped in plan, it highlighted a growing American sense that success is a predetermined right rather than a byproduct of ingenuity and hard work. And who, when looking at things through Tom’s baby brown eyes, could blame him? After all, a whole generation has seen the Hiltons and Kardashians of the world garner “fame” by doing little else than being themselves while sipping champagne and riding in limos (with mommy and daddy’s bankroll). Tom just wanted a little slice of it for his own.
Andy Dwyer
Liberal Arts Education and the Student Debt Crisis
It’d probably be easier to say Andy is a perfect example of a failed secondary (or probably elementary) educational system, but having no idea what this guy was like in school, its probably best not to make assumptions (though I suspect he was the most awesome high-schooler of all time). No, his slightly delayed decision to enroll in college without any real focus or predetermined discipline represents the flawed American ideal that college is the place kids can go to “figure it out”.
Though I’m not denying the dude’s right to an education (and I loved how he owned the beginner’s guitar class, yearned for real lasers in science and actually embraced women’s studies) his decision to enroll in college and pay the tuition (courtesy of the Ron Swanson Scholarship Fund) is a real indictment on how a great many youth view college as the next logical rung on the life ladder no matter the prohibitive cost. And even Andy’s realization that college is expensive and wife April’s presumed understanding that it takes you nowhere you want to go fast (she got her hated Parks job through an internship) aren’t enough for to dissuade him from jumping straight into the educational shark tank, even if he doesn’t know how to swim (or have enough money to get lessons).
April Ludgate
The Occupy Movement
Disclamer: I think April would be the last person ever to actually walk down to Zuccotti Park and camp in a tent as a statement (unless that statement was to make fun of it) but it’s also not that much of a stretch. After all, she’s a dissenter at her core, snarky enough to piss everyone off, smart enough to recognize when she’s getting screwed, confused enough to not understand how to constructively battle a system. Yet she’s motivated enough to drive to the Grand Canyon on a whim and creative enough to represent the Moon at a Model U.N. summit.
April understands her world probably better than any other character on the show (except maybe Ron, and she’s his protégé) and is just the kind of person who’d use the “let’s completely piss them off” means to justify the “until sh#$ changes” ends.
Ron Swanson
The Relative and Elusive Idea of Freedom
Ron Swanson would probably claim to be the most free man in America. He’d point to his cabin in the woods, Libertarian mindset, the fact that he buries his gold in secretive places, eats copious amounts of red meat with little concern for the coronary consequences and generally refuses to acquiesce to societal conventions at every turn (see: the mustache). Ron Swanson would most definitely claim he is a free man.
Yet he’s bogged down by the machine as much as anyone. His two ex-wives scare the crap out of him: Tammy Two with her Siren-like power over his libido and Tammy One with her puppet-master-as-dictator control over his every nuance. He lives in a litigious world where ex-wives stick around forever. And though he bemoans the sorry state of government and does his best to slow down the gears that turn it, he is nevertheless stuck behind a desk from 9-5 each day like everyone else. His case is true irony and evidence that we’ll never be completely free.
Ben Wyatt
Youthful Idealism Ground Down to a Nub
When an 18 year old kid gets elected the mayor of his small town it’s only logical to believe he’s begun the first step on the meteoric rise to political stardom. And why not elect the kid? Youthful idealism and “I can change the world just through my energy” mentality is a hallmark of the young and motivated (as evidenced by the positivity and promises of Senior Class President speeches). But getting impeached after two months in office because of some major screw ups and taking a lowly job in a lowly government system working for people you only respect on a superficial level is really how the world works. Just ask Ben.
Ben’s reserved innocence, coupled with his fall from early political grace (and aided by his fanboy love of all things Star Wars and DC Comics) make him the perfect symbol of American idealism gone awry. Hell, the dude probably believes more in the structure of Middle Earth than how our current government has taken shape. He has to quit a job he's great at, and by all accounts loves doing because of archaic rules and the corruptive nature of government. Unfortunately for him, chucking a ring into a volcano won’t solve this country’s problems and Ben is doomed to a life working for the man (even if Chris Traeger is a slightly more appealing, yet no less scary than say, Sauron).
Donna Meagle
Rampant and Ill-Advised Consumerism
She drives a pimped out Mercedes. Enjoys “treat-yo-self” days that include expensive spa treatments, designer clothes and fancy food. She’s unapologetic about her materialistic vices. And she’s most likely got a maxed out Visa, faulty credit and mountain of debt. Her salary is government public record (which is never much) and I’m sure she’s operating at a level well above her pay grade.
And though it’s not an indictment of her character, by all accounts she’s a terrific friend and confidant, her “diva” to Tom’s “balla” is a snapshot of how our spending habits have spiraled out of control.
Jerry (Garry) Gergich
Bullying, the establishment and the quiet 99%
And then there’s Jerry. Poor, miserable, picked-on, antagonized, laughed at, forgotten, ridiculed, over-looked, fat, kind, beaten down Jerry. Jerry is everyone else in America besides you.
See one thing we’re good at is passing the buck. It’s never our fault. It’s Jerry’s. We didn’t mess up the presentation. Jerry did. We didn’t lose the account. Jerry did. We’re not fat. Jerry is. We’re not lazy. Jerry is. I didn’t fart. Jerry did. And when we need a pick me up, it’s time to rip on the guy.
And here’s the thing about Jerry and about America. Jerry gets it. He knows that putting his head down and staying quiet is the best way to get through Monday and make it to Tuesday. The condemnation he receives, in his eyes, is a small price to pay for the other things he thinks are important (family, painting, etc). Isn’t that the true America? We put up with all the b#$%shit because its just a small tax to pay (just one more, we swear). When Michael Shur and Greg Daniels created, they saw an opportunity to highlight the mundanity of government, the ridiculous nature of democracy, and the “characters” who choose civic employment. Four seasons in they’ve created the funniest show currently on television, and deftly established an expert mix of comedy, story and deeper character development.While Schur and Daniels are primarily concerned with making a comedy, they've also developedas a commentary on American life in general, in which each character embodies something disturbingly broken in our society. It's probably not intentional on their part, but one needs only watchfor a lesson in American civics, citizenship and the downward slope of a once great power. Let’s look:Aspiring to be a politician is probably a lot like aspiring to be an apple or a carbuerator. Sure they look shiny on the outside or are unexplainably vital to a bigger thing, but eventually, given enough time they turn out rotten on the inside, or just cost a ton of money to fix.And while I think Leslie’s campaign for town council is genuine, it also highlights the “brokenness” of our systems. She, of the unflagging moral and ethical virtue, kowtows to big (Pawnee) business (unless you make salads for a living), combats birth certificate bombshells, hides a less-than-scandalous relationship because she thinks it will cost her votes, must defend said relationship in front of an ethics committee and begins compromising her core set of values to accomplish something “bigger”.Though I'm assuming her eventual victory will come on the heels of something relatively honest and good-natured, Leslie’s foray into politics is at its core gross, corrupt, and decidedly American.It was no secret that Tom’s venture into business with Jean Ralphio and the concept of Entertainment 720 (financed by a run-in with a Lexus) had failure written all over it. Paying Detleff Schrempf to shoot hoops in the office was just one of many signs things were going south. No, what made his foray into this business so truly American was that he actually thought it would be a success. He of no business background or real corporate knowledge believed he could take a loose conceptual “idea” and grow a business by maintaining some contrived “balla” status and hiring hot secretaries.And while his scheme was over the top in scope and underdeveloped in plan, it highlighted |
Technology Center and CrossCoin Ventures.
Both Percival and McClure have backgrounds in bitcoin and FinTech. Sean Percival was a former VP at the social network MySpace, and has carried out marketing work for bitcoin hosted wallet and information service Blockchain.
McClure was previously Director of Marketing at PayPal in the early 2000s.TWO-THIRDS of voters say they support a carbon tax if all the revenue is spent on compensation for households and business, according to a new Galaxy Poll.
The poll of 1036 people to be released today was commissioned by the Greens and reveals surprisingly strong support for the model being negotiated by the Gillard Government, the Greens and independent MPs.
Women, families and higher-income earners were the strongest supporters.
The poll, conducted a fortnight ago, found 66 per cent of voters in favour, 23 per cent were opposed and 10 per cent had no opinion.
People were asked if they supported or opposed a price on carbon that would tax the biggest polluting industries and return all the money to compensate households and business and provide investment in climate change schemes such as renewable energy.
Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said Galaxy's specific question showed people had seen through Tony Abbott's scare campaign.
"Australians clearly recognise that building a cleaner, healthier economy means we need to put a price on pollution and make clean, renewable energy cheaper rather than prop up the old polluting economy," Senator Milne said.
Galaxy found 70 per cent of women supported the plan compared with 62 per cent of men and seven out of 10 people earning over $70,000 were in favour compared with just over six out of 10 people earning less than that amount.
In Victoria 64 per cent of people were in favour while 70 per cent of people with children backed it compared with 64 per cent support among those without.
It comes as the latest Newspoll shows support for Labor and the Greens has dropped since the carbon tax plan was announced in February. The Coalition holds a 55-45 per cent two-party lead over the ALP.
For more on Prime Minister Julia Gillard's carbon tax go to the Herald Sun.The Liberal government is reinstating the mandatory long-form census that was scrapped by the Conservatives five years ago.
"We need good, reliable data," said Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains, who made the announcement on Parliament Hill.
Bains could not say what the penalty would be for refusing to fill out the compulsory questionnaire, but said there will be a "robust" communication plan. The vast majority of Canadians understand the importance of this data and want to participate in the process, he said, noting that 93.5 per cent of the population filled out the forms last time.
The data is invaluable for everyone from city planners and provincial governments to businesses and non-government organizations, Bains said.
Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos said Canadians are happy to fill out the long form because they understand it is critical to the well-being of the country.
A promise to "immediately" restore the long-form census was one of the planks in the Liberal Party's platform during the recent federal election.
Today's announcement comes a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his new cabinet was sworn in.
"We committed to a government that functions based on evidence and facts and long-form censuses are an important part of making sure we're serving constituents in our communities," Trudeau said, pausing to take a question as he sprinted up the steps to his office on Parliament Hill.
Trudeau is asked about today's decision while walking up the stairs to his office in Centre Block 0:37
New census packages must be ready to mail out by May 2.
The long-form census would have to be distributed to about 2.9 million households.
The Conservative government cancelled the mandatory long census form for the 2011 census, replacing it with a voluntary national household survey. Bains said that was a bad move based on ideology.
"We know the history of the past government and they very much focused on ideology," he said. "We're focused on sound, evidence-based policies. We want to make sure we're driving good policies based on good evidence and quality data."
'Broader review' better
Conservative MP Tony Clement, who was industry minister when the decision was made to scrap the long-form census, said in hindsight he would have done things differently. Going forward, the Liberals would have been better to carry out a "broader review" of data collection. He said there are other ways to capture data that protects the privacy and security of Canadians.
"Other countries are moving away from traditional census-taking and moving towards the data collection on a broader scale to get the data that's necessary for researchers, for businesses and academics," he said.
John Campey, who was part of the Save the Census campaign, said the detailed information is a critical "building block" for community programs. He said the cancellation was a "disaster" for gaining key demographic information to tailor services effectively.
"It's critically significant both symbolically and practically; it's one of those things that cuts both ways," he said.
Campey said there will be a "gap" from the 2011 data that can never be filled.
All Canadians were to still receive a mandatory short census form, with one in three households sent the new household survey as well. Before it was scrapped, one in five households were sent the mandatory long census form.
The cancellation was widely criticized by researchers, analysts and planners who rely on high quality, detailed data for their work.“Muslim baad mein, pehle hum Hindustani hain. Hum paida huye Hindustan mein, Hindustan hamara desh hai,”—We are Indians first, and then Muslims. We were born in India, it is our country, Shaaqir Khan, a 20-year-old man from Kadhaoli village in Haryana’s Faridabad district, told me when I met him on the morning of 24 June. “Magarpura train ka dabba bhara hua tha. Sab unki taraf they hamari taraf koi nahi tha.”—Yet, the entire compartment of that train was full of people. Everyone was siding with them [the attackers], no one was siding with us, he continued, with a vacant expression on his face. “Not just the men but every passenger in the coach shouted at us saying, ‘Mulleh, Kattale saaley. Maro sabko. Maaro. Maaro.’”—These Muslims, the circumcised ones. Kill them all. Kill them. Kill them, Shaaqir added.
Two days before I met Shaaqir, his 16-year-old brother, Junaid, had bled to death after a mob of men repeatedly stabbed him while he was aboard a local Mathura-bound passenger train. Junaid was returning home after a trip to Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar, where he had gone to shop for Eid. He was accompanied by his 17-year-old brother Hashim Khan, and two friends from the village, Mohammad Moin and Mohammad Mohsin, who are both 16 years old.
At the trauma centre of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) in Delhi, Shaaqir was lying listlessly on an angled hospital bed, with his head propped on a pillow. A saline lock was taped to his right hand and another tube, half-filled with blood, was connected to the lower half of his body. A freshly stitched tear below his left ear was covered in braided surgical sutures. Mohsin Khan, Shaaqir’s 20-year-old nephew who shares his name with one of the boys who was assaulted on the train, was present at the hospital as well. He caught my eye as I was looking at the stitches near Shaaqir’s ear. “There are more,” Mohsin said, and cautiously lifted the hospital vest that Shaaqir was wearing, revealing the multiple stitched wounds that were scattered across his body.
Shaaqir could only move his head as he spoke to me in a low voice. Hashim had sustained wounds too, Shaaqir told me, and had been discharged from AIIMS a day before I had gone to the hospital. The incident, he said, had taken place between the railway station at Okhla and Asaoti station. Shaaqir had not accompanied his brothers and their friends to Sadar Bazaar, nor was he with them when they boarded the train at around 5.30 pm. But during the commute, Hashim and Junaid placed a frantic call to Shaaqir. They told him that they were surrounded by a group of passengers who were were slapping them, calling them Pakistanis, and subjecting them to an assortment of communal slurs. Junaid and Hashim asked Shaaqir to fetch them and their friends from the station at Ballabgarh—where they were to alight to reach their homes in Kadhaoli.
When Shaaqir reached the station with his nephew Mohsin, and Mustakim, a friend of his, at around 6.40 pm, he anticipated that they would have to resolve a minor quarrel. But once he boarded the coach from which he could hear the cries of his brothers spill out, he realised that he was wrong.Students and parents now share the cost of college equally, Sallie Mae says
It's no secret that college costs are on the rise -- especially to families preparing to shell out thousands of dollars for tuition this fall. But how exactly do families manage to pay for college?
That question is at the center of "How America Pays for College 2017," a new report from student loan company Sallie Mae and market research firm Ipsos. The companies asked 800 undergraduate students and 800 parents of undergraduates about the resources they use to pay for school as well as their attitudes about college.
Among the report's most intriguing findings: Students and parents are equally sharing the burden of college costs. Students foot about 30% of the bill with income, savings and loans while parents cover 31% of the costs.
"That's somewhat of a shift," says Rick Castellano, Sallie Mae's vice president of corporate communications. "We hadn't seen that so close previously."
Student borrowing is up to 19% of college costs, an increase from 13% in 2016. Scholarships and grants account for the majority of the remaining costs at 35% of college costs, while relatives and friends chipped in 4%.
This is the second year in a row that the report has seen scholarships and grants "fund the largest portion of the 'paying for college pie,' and the largest it's been in a decade," Castellano says.
Since scholarships and grants cover the largest portion of college costs, it's no surprise that more families are receiving them. 49% of families surveyed received a scholarship for the 2016-17 school year, and 47% of them received a grant. An overwhelming majority (87%) of families who used scholarships said they obtained one from the student's school.
These statistics show how families are becoming more fluent in applying for financial aid, Castellano says.
"If you think about how families are paying, they're really becoming savvier higher education consumers," Castellano adds, noting that 86% of families reported filling out the FAFSA, compared to 74% in Sallie Mae's first report in 2008.
The report also examined regional differences in how families view and pay for college across the country.
Students attending college on the West Coast pay, on average, the least amount for college at $19,181, while students in Northeastern states are paying the highest: $35,431. Across the board, students report being more cost-conscious than their parents and eliminate schools due to cost at a higher rate.
Related: 10 states with the cheapest public college tuition
Students also assume they have more responsibility to pay for loans than parents think they do, says Marie O'Malley, Sallie Mae's senior director of consumer research. "Part of what we're talking about here is almost a communication issue rather than an underlying philosophy," she says.
Overall, more families are starting to eliminate colleges from their wishlist due to costs, the report found. 76% of families say they eliminated a college from consideration due to costs. That's a 18% jump since 2008, when 58% of families reported the same thing.
While families prioritize college attendance — 86% of families said they knew their child would go to college since the child was in preschool — families still struggle to create a financial plan to pay for it. The percentage of families who have a plan has hovered around 40% for years, Castellano says.
"The majority of families do not have a plan to pay for all years of college before the student enrolls," the report reads. "Planning has remained persistently low over time."
O'Malley says that planning includes saving for college, researching costs, budgeting, understanding financial aid eligibility and earning college credit while still in high school, among other options.
"There's no one right answer for how to do college in terms of the choices you make, whether it's the school you choose, where it's located, what your living arrangements are going to be," O'Malley says. "But there are choices that can be made and resources that can help make it affordable or doable, depending on what direction you take."
The biggest hurdle in planning to pay for college is getting started, Castellano says.
"It's those who plan that usually save more and borrow less, and that's really the name of the game when it comes to paying for college," Castellano says. "The earlier you can start a plan, the better."
Dig into more findings from "How America Pays for College 2017" here.
Related: 5 essential strategies for when you're broke and can't pay your student loans
Haley Samsel is an American University student and a USA TODAY digital producer.
This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2KUf0emBill Moyers 121313 [Moyers and Company]
Bill Moyers blasted the National Rifle Association (NRA) in a commentary released on Friday, accusing the NRA of devolving into political bullies and lamenting what he described as an increasing disregard for gun safety in Texas.
“So it goes: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,'” Moyers said on Moyers & Company. “But if you do, hide behind the Second Amendment, made holier and more sacrosanct by the NRA than God’s own commandment.”
Moyers also looked back to former NRA President Charleton Heston’s famous boast that gun safety supporters would have to wrest his rifle from his “cold, dead hands,” arguing that his rhetoric fed less into the beliefs held by Moses — who Heston played in The Ten Commandments — and more into the Wild West mythos the NRA has helped propagate.
“The good Lord seems not to have anticipated the National Rifle Association,” Moyers said. “Its conscience as cold and dead as Charlton Heston’s grip on his gun, the NRA has become the armed bully of American politics, the enabler of the gunfighter nation, whose exceptionalism includes a high tolerance for the slaughter of the innocent.”
In the year since the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut, Moyers said, at least 194 children have died in gun-related incidents, the majority of them either by self-inflicted shots or at the hands of someone they knew.
But while other states moved to tighten up their firearms regulations, a disappointed Moyers noted that his native state of Texas actually passed 10 laws loosening restrictions for gun owners, such as the likes of Open Carry Texas, who gained national attention earlier this year after staging a “peaceful assembly” outside a restaurant where members of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America were meeting.
“They said they were there not to intimidate but to make a point,” Moyers scoffed. “Sure, as if real men need guns to make a point.”
Watch Moyers’ commentary, released on Friday, below.By 2030, you probably won’t own a car, but you may get a free trip with your morning coffee. Transport-As-A-Service will use only electric vehicles and will upend two trillion-dollar industries. It’s the death spiral for cars.
A major new report predicts that by 2030, the overwhelming majority of consumers will no longer own a car – instead they will use on-demand electric autonomous vehicles.
By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs), the report says, 95 per cent of all US passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand, autonomous, electric vehicles that will be owned by fleets rather than individuals.
The provision of this service may come virtually free as part of another offering, or a corporate sponsorship. Imagine, for instance, paying a token sum for a ride into town after buying a latte for $4.50. Or getting a free ride because the local government has decided to make transport easier.
The report, by RethinkX, an independent think tank that focuses on technology-driven disruption and its implications across society, says this stunning and radical will be driven entirely by economics, and will overcome the current desire for individual car ownership, starting first in the big cities and then spreading to the suburbs and regional areas.
This disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions of dollars in investor value, not to mention the value of used cars.
At the same time it will create trillions of dollars in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.
Lead consultant and co-author Tony Seba, who specialises in disruptive technologies. His early forecasts for the enormous uptake of solar where considered crazy, but were proved right, and he has since said that new technologies will make coal, oil and gas all but redundant by 2030).
He says while the report focuses on the US, the forecasts are valid for Australia too, because the transportation industry is global. And he warns that the car you buy now may well be your last.
“This is a global technology disruption. So yes, this applies to Australia,” Seba tells RenewEconomy. “And this is going to happen despite governments, not because of governments.
“Furthermore, the disruption will start in cities with high population density and high real estate prices – think Sydney and Melbourne then Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide – and quickly radiate out to the suburbs, the smaller cities, and then rural areas.”
Indeed, there are some people who are starting to anticipate this change, considering Australian-based business models and even local manufacturing, such as those revealed on Monday by Michael Molitor, the head of a new company called A2EmCo.
Seba does not say that individual car ownership will completely disappear. By 2030, 40 per cent of cars will still be privately owned, but they will only account for 5 per cent of kilometres traveled.
Autonomous cars will be used 10 times more than internal combustion vehicles were, they will last longer – maybe one million miles (1.6 million km) – and the savings will inject an additional $1US trillion into the pockets of Americans by 2030.
Seba admits that his forecasts are hard to digest. But what he sees in the transition to autonomous EVs from privately owned petrol cars is the same he has seen for all other major transitions: what he calls the 10x opportunity cost.
It happened with the printing press, it happened with the first Model T – it cost the same as a carriage and two horses, but offered 10x the horsepower.
“Every time we have had a ten x change in technology, we had a disruption. This is going to be no different.”
And that change, he says, will happen on day one of level 5 autonomous EVs obtaining regulatory approval. “Basically, the day that autonomous vehicles are regulatory accepted, transport-as-a-service will be 10 cheaper than cost of new vehicles,” he says. And four times cheaper than the cost of already owned vehicles.
Why is this? Because everything will be cheaper.
Like his predictions on the rise of solar, and the sudden decline of fossil fuels, Seba’s calculations are driven by simple economics. Within few years, the upfront costs of AEVs will match those of petrol cars. But the depreciation costs will be minimal, because the cars, owned by fleets, will “last a lifetime”.
Maintenance costs will be significantly lower – thanks to 20 moving parts in the powertrain compared to 2,000 for petrol cars – and the miles travelled significantly higher; they will be doing 1.6 million km by 2030, more than five times more than petrol cars.
Moreover, battery technology will improve, needing to be replaced only once, and old batteries will be able to used elsewhere (in the power grid). The cost of maintenance will be one-fifth the cost of current cars, the cost of finance one tenth, and the cost of insurance also one tenth.
“The survival of car manufacturers will depend on building cars with long lifetimes and low operating costs. This means that they will optimise for minimum waste of resources in building and operating vehicles, including designing vehicle platforms with parts that are interchangeable and recyclable.”
The report outlines the huge benefits from this transformation. Unclogging city roads, removing the pollution that is choking major cities, savings millions of lives from accidents and trillions of dollars in health impacts, and freeing up parking space.
We often forget about the health impacts of fuel cars. In 2015 in the OECD alone, outdoor air pollution lead to $US1.7 trillion annual economic cost from premature deaths. According to the World Health Organisation, 1.25 million people died from road traffic accidents around the world in that year, and another 50 million were severely injured.
“Autonomous vehicles will be safer than human drivers, leading to a decrease in road traffic accidents,” the report says. Although, to be sure, any such accidents caused by faulty software rather than humans will create huge controversy
The nature of the vehicles may also change – with a range of two-person, four-person, eight-person and even bigger vehicles in heavy population areas.
It will also have an impact on geopolitics – with the world no longer dependent on oil reserves for the bulk of its transportation needs. This will benefit big transport fuel importers like Australia.
The “politics of lithium,” meanwhile, are completely different to the politics of oil. Lithium is plentiful, although it needs planning to ensure that the mines are in place to extract it, and its demand can be reduced by recycling. Alternatives can be found for cobalt, currently found mostly in countries such as Democratic republic of Congo.
Seba recognises that most people assume that the biggest impediments to this scenario are behavioral issues such as love of driving, fear of new technology, or just habit. The cost savings, the speed, the increased safety and the extra free time will be key factors.
But he says that what he calls “pre-TaaS” companies such as Uber, Lyft and Didi have also invested billions of dollars developing technologies and services to overcome these issues. In 2016, these companies drove 500,000 passengers per day in New York City alone.
“That was triple the number of passengers driven the previous year. The combination of TaaS’s dramatically lower costs compared with car ownership and exposure to successful peer experience will drive more widespread usage of the service.
“Adopting TaaS requires no investment or lock-in. Consumers can try it with ease and increase usage as their comfort level increases. Even in suburban and rural areas, where wait times and cost might be slightly higher, adoption is likely to be more extensive than generally forecast because of the greater impact of cost savings on lower incomes.
“As with any technology disruption, adoption will grow along an exponential S-curve.”Watching your favorite basketball team's games from another city no longer requires an expensive, season-long subscription package. Beginning next season, the NBA will offer individual, out-of-market games for $6.99. That price gets you streaming rights on smartphones, tablets, and PCs, but it also lets you tune in from any cable / satellite provider that currently offers NBA's League Pass.
That list probably includes whoever you're paying for cable now: Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, Verizon, AT&T, and others already participate in League Pass. So this goes beyond mere streaming and takes on a pay-per-view feel. There is one caveat, though; nationally televised games can't be purchased this way — since anyone can just watch on ESPN or whatever network they're on.
The decision to offer individual games can be seen as the NBA's realization that casual fans probably find the $199 subscription price of League Pass far too costly. Buying single games isn't the only solution that commissioner Adam Silver and league executives have come up with; a new $119 package (also new for the upcoming season) will get you all out-of-market games for a team of your choosing. $6.99 isn't exactly cheap. But if there are certain matchups you're really looking forward to, it could be worth the occasional one-off purchase and will ultimately cost a fraction of going all in on League Pass — or opening a tab at your local sports bar.A shaken coalition government today lashed itself to the mast of multi-billion spending cuts and rejected calls for a change of economic course in the face of shocking figures that showed the economy contracted by 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010.
The figures, raising fears of stagflation – high unemployment and inflation with stagnant growth – mark the first serious challenge to the coalition's political and economic edifice.
In an attempt to reassure volatile markets, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, urged the cabinet to stand firm and warned of many shocks to the economy before it settled down to a consistent pattern of growth.
The markets had been expecting growth in the final quarter of 2010 in the region of 0.3% and 0.7%. Ministers blamed the coldest weather in a century or a survey error by the Office for National Statistics.
But even if the effect of the weather is stripped out, the economy was flat in the final quarter after a year of recovery. One cabinet minister privately called for calm: "It's a flash estimate based largely on two months' data. It is best to wait and see."
Meanwhile Vince Cable, the business secretary who is seen as the cabinet figure most concerned at the pace of the cuts, insisted there was no Plan B.
In cabinet, David Cameron urged colleagues to recognise that there was no alternative and said the programme to reduce the deficit was the prerequisite for a return to growth.
But even if the figures are revised upwards in a month's time, they put pressure on the chancellor, George Osborne, to find a more coherent growth plan or examine the speed of the deficit-reduction plans set out in the June spending review.
Backbench Tories are already calling for faster deregulation of the economy or lower taxes to unleash private enterprise and create growth.
The fact that the contraction has come before the economy has begun to feel the impact of the VAT rise or the start of the spending cuts, due to bite from April, has also worried ministers. Public spending was at a record high in December.
While calling for calm, King warned of further pain ahead. The public should expect further falls in incomes this year, he said, and would need to accept that inflation would remain a factor until next year as the economy coped with the cuts and the restrictions on bank lending.
He told an audience in Newcastle: "The UK economy is well-placed to return to sustained, balanced growth over the next few years as a result of a fall in the real exchange rate combined with a credible medium-term path of fiscal consolidation.
"Of course, there will be ups and downs as the squalls from the world economy blow us around. But the right course has been set, and it is important we maintain it."
However, King studiously avoided endorsing the speed and severity of the Tory-led coalition's strategy.
Government officials acknowledged that the 0.5% contraction means 2011 growth forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility, due to be published on the day of the budget in March, will have to be revised downwards, putting further pressure on the public finances.
Facing the first serious challenge of his chancellorship, Osborne insisted that the economy could withstand the contraction. He said: "These are obviously disappointing numbers, but the ONS has made it clear that the fall in GDP was driven by the weather.
"There is no question of changing a fiscal plan that has established international credibility on the back of one very cold month. That would plunge Britain back into a financial crisis. We will not be blown off course by bad weather.
"You wouldn't give up a fitness programme because it rained when you went for your first run. We have to keep focused on the big picture."
However, Osborne knows the entire political foundation of the coalition rests on its judgment that £81bn had to be cut from public spending – and taxes increased by £30bn – to restore confidence in the UK economy.
The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, said the figures were a matter of "great concern" and due largely to the speed and scope of the coalition government's deficit-reduction programme.
"Simply slamming on the brakes will never work. It is not a strategy. Don't make up excuses when you need to make a change of policy. Do it quickly, Don't get dug in.
"We have inflation going up, unemployment rising, now the economy not growing. And all those boasts from George Osborne and David Cameron that the economy is out of the danger zone – it seems as though the opposite has happened."
Balls refused to predict a double-dip recession. Even some Labour-orientated economists thought the figures were too bad to be true.
But the numbers shook the Tory backbenches. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury select committee, said: "What we need is some very, very careful thinking about this.
"What we don't want is a string of little initiatives all pointing in different directions. We want a clear coherent programme, starting with a reform of the tax system."
In the short-term the figures end speculation the Bank of England would raise interest rates in response to inflation. King, who has come under attack from some City economists for his refusal to raise rates, said prices would peak at about 5% in the next few months before falling back next year to the target of 2%.
He said pushing up base rates would simply depress the economy further. Most inflation was imported through higher oil prices and commodities, which higher domestic rates would do little to dampen, he said.
"The headlines will inevitably focus on the immediate effect of shocks on CPI inflation rather than the outlook ahead. Central banks, though, do not set policy or react according to headlines," he said.Shale development helped push total U.S. natural gas reserves higher last year even as production increased, according to the Energy Information Administration.
An EIA report yesterday charted U.S. proved reserves of oil and natural gas, a measure of what is recoverable from known reservoirs under current economic and operating conditions.
Proved natural gas reserves at the end of last year were 244.7 trillion cubic feet (tcf), the highest level since EIA began reporting them in 1977. New discoveries outpaced production to provide a nearly 3 percent overall increase in reserves over the previous year.
Proved reserves of shale gas grew by 8.9 tcf to reach 32.8 tcf at year's end, according to EIA.
"Today, increases in shale gas proved reserves reflect the industry's rapidly maturing ability to apply two technologies to shale formations: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing," the report states.
And there is more to come, the report says, because development of the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast has only recently begun, and hence did not lead to substantial proved reserves increases last year.
Texas accounted for more than 70 percent of shale gas production last year, followed by Arkansas.
Production of shale gas last year, at slightly more than 2 tcf, was just slightly higher than production levels of another unconventional source, coalbed methane. But discoveries of coalbed methane were below production, and total reserves fell slightly to 20.8 tcf.
Production of onshore conventional and tight gas in the lower 48 states was 13.9 tcf last year, and discoveries outpaced production, boosting proved reserves at year's end to 169.9 tcf.
Oil
Turning to oil, the report shows that discoveries -- while increasing for the third consecutive year -- failed to outpace production. Proved oil reserves at the end of 2008 were 19.1 billion barrels, compared to 21.3 billion barrels at the end of 2007, a 10 percent drop. Production was 1.7 billion barrels, and total discoveries were 1.1 billion barrels.
However, the report points out that much of the drop in proved reserves was due to so-called net revisions, which totaled 1.6 billion barrels of downward reserve estimates last year. These revisions were based on changes in the price that companies use to estimate how much they can economically produce.
Current Securities and Exchange Commission rules require that operators use oil prices on the last trading day of the year to estimate proved reserves. The report notes that in a volatile year like 2008, this can have misleading effects.
Last year, the spot price for West Texas Intermediate was almost $100 per barrel at the beginning of the year, rose to more than $145 per barrel in July, then slid all the way to under $45 per barrel at year's end.
New SEC reporting rules that will cover the 2009 and future reporting years are designed to make reserve estimates less vulnerable to the short-term price volatility, the report notes. The new rules, if already in effect, would have yielded a smaller downward revision, or maybe even an increase, the report states.
"While the effect of the new methodology cannot be precisely estimated for past years, it seems certain that net revisions for 2008 would have been substantially less negative, or perhaps even positive, under the new reporting method," it states. "In any case, EIA's 2009 proved reserves estimates will reflect operators' reports based on the new regulations."In an IAC13 paper the dynamic operation of a second generation superconducting EmDrive thruster was described. A mathematical model was developed and, in this paper, that model is used to extend the performance envelope of the technology. Three engine designs are evaluated. One is used as a lift engine for a launch vehicle, another as an orbital engine for the launcher and a third as the main engine for an interstellar probe.
The engines are based on YBCO superconducting cavities, and performance is predicted on the basis of the test data obtained in earlier experimental programmes. The Q values range from 8×107 to 2×108 and provide high values of specific force over a range of accelerations from 0.4 m/s/s to 6 m/s/s.
The launch vehicle is an “all-electric” single stage to orbit (SSTO) spaceplane, using a 900 MHz, eight cavities, fully gimballed lift engine. A 1.5 GHz fixed orbital engine provides the horizontal velocity component. Both engines use total loss liquid hydrogen cooling. Electrical power is provided by fuel cells, fed with gaseous hydrogen from the cooling system and liquid oxygen. A 2 ton payload, externally mounted, can be flown to Low Earth Orbit in a time of 27 min. The total launch mass is 10 ton, with an airframe styled on the X37B, which allows aerobraking and a glide approach and landing.
The full potential of EmDrive propulsion for deep space missions is illustrated by the performance of the interstellar probe. A multi-cavity, fixed 500 MHz engine is cooled by a closed cycle liquid nitrogen system. The refrigeration is carried out in a two stage reverse Brayton Cycle. Electrical power is provided by a 200 kWe nuclear generator. The 9 ton spacecraft, which includes a 1 ton science payload, will achieve a terminal velocity of 0.67c, (where c is the speed of light), and cover a distance of 4 light years, over the 10 year propulsion period.
The work reported in this paper has resulted in design studies for two Demonstrator spacecrafts. The launcher will demonstrate the long-sought-for, low cost access to space, and also meet the mission requirements of the proposed DARPA XS-1 Spaceplane. The probe will enable the dream of an interstellar mission to be achieved within the next 20 years.The southwestern Japanese city of Fukuoka is experiencing its first “yellow dust” day of the season, three months earlier than in past years. This is also the first time in five years South Korea has issued a yellow dust alert so early in the spring.
Yellow dust, or kosa (黄砂), is a traditional harbinger of spring in east Asia. Powerful spring westerly winds pick up sand, dust and sediment from arid regions of the Asian continent, including the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and the Loess Plateau in China.
The dust is transported throughout northeast Asia, including to the Korean Peninsula, Japan, and even the Russian Far East.
ANN broadcast news reports on the early arrival of the dust in Fukuoka, and how the dust is obscuring visibility in the normally clear skies of the season:
In Japan, yellow dust traditionally announces its arrival by leaving cars, windows, and clothes hung out to dry coated with a noticeable layer of grime. The wind-blow dust also creates a blue or yellowish haze that can obstruct the sun.
It's possible that the yellow dust has already struck some cities in Japan earlier this month. This Twitter user reports a coating of the stuff on his car (although the dusting may be from cryptomeria pollen, another bane of early spring in Japan):
It's the yellow dust! Time for PM 2.5 and pollen countermeasures! (somewhere in Hiroshima)
Even further east, a Hankyu train rider somewhere near Osaka has also noticed the arrival of the continental dust:
Agh! This must be yellow dust!
In recent years, yellow dust has also been responsible for a spike in reported respiratory ailments in Japan in spring.
The storms, thought to have once be a natural phenomenon, are now considered to be worsening in frequency and intensity as a result of overgrazing, deforestation, soil degradation and desertification in Central Asia and parts of China.
The fine particles of sediment that make up the yellow sand, as it is also known, act as an aerosol that collects industrial pollutants in China's heavily industrialized northeast.
The result is poor air quality and clouds of “PM 2.5 smog” all over northeast Asia. PM 2.5 fine particles are too small to be seen and are generally generated by industrial pollution. PM 2.5 particulate pollution is generally thought to be harmful to human health because these particles can be easily |
through a filter imprinted with information about the scattering experienced by a previous beam can be made to focus at a single point, deep within a highly scattering medium.... Show more
R. Horstmeyer et al., Nat. Photon. 9, 563 (2015). Staying Focused. As part of optical phase conjugation imaging, light going through a filter imprinted with information about the scattering experienced by a previous beam can be made to focus at a single point, deep within a highly scattering medium. ×
It’s tricky to see inside a turbid medium like biological tissue using visible light, as most of the illuminating photons will get randomly scattered. Now researchers have pushed the limits of a previously studied technique for reversing the effects of strong scattering and shown that it works even when relatively few photons are detected. The team sent a light beam through a thin but highly scattering material and showed that they could reproduce an image of the original beam, even though they only detected about 1000 of the scattered photons. They found that, in theory, there is no lower limit on the number of photons that could lead to useful imaging.
Optical phase conjugation (OPC) is a decades-old technique for reversing the effects of a nearly opaque medium, and it involves two steps. In one version of the method used for imaging, the “recording” step starts with a probe beam sent through the sample to be imaged, with one small point in the sample specially “labeled” by a so-called guide star. For example, one labeling technique uses a focused ultrasound beam to frequency-shift the light that propagates through the guide star point. The guide-star-influenced light that emerges from the sample then interferes with a second light source called the reference. The interference produces a quasirandom array of bright and dark patches—a hologram that contains information about the scattering paths of the light in the sample.
In the “playback” step, another beam goes through the sample in the opposite direction after first passing through a filter that is imprinted with the hologram. This filtering causes the playback beam to undergo the exact reverse of all of the complicated scattering experienced by the original probe light, so that it focuses to a bright spot at the guide star location. This bright light is enough to image that region, for example by conventional fluorescence microscopy. To produce a complete 3D image of a sample, the guide star is moved around from point to point, and in principle the technique could probe several millimeters into a mouse brain, for example.
The trouble is, in highly turbid media, not much light emerges during the recording step. For biological samples, moreover, one can’t compensate by collecting data for a long time, because things are constantly moving. So researchers have assumed that deep-tissue imaging wouldn’t be possible with OPC. However, optical physicists Mooseok Jang and Changhuei Yang at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, collaborating with biomedical imaging specialist Ivo Vellekoop of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, have now shown that OPC can work for signals previously thought much too weak to be useful.
The researchers used a very weak probe beam to test the intensity limits of the approach. For their experiments they used a 0.45-mm-thick layer of synthetic opal, a highly scattering material. The team sent their probe beam through the opal and created an interference pattern between the resulting scattered light and a reference beam, to produce the hologram for the playback beam. When the playback beam was shone back through the opal and hit a detector, it recreated an image of the probe beam, the equivalent of lighting up the guide star location.
Jang and colleagues could produce such an image even when the scattered probe beam contained only about 1000 photons. This is so weak that there were far fewer scattered photons than detector pixels recording the interference pattern, perhaps as few as 0.004 photons per pixel. Paradoxically, however, these photons make their presence felt throughout the entire interference pattern, so that every detector pixel records information needed for making the phase-conjugated playback beam.
“Phase conjugation-based approaches currently provide light focusing capability only for tissue thicknesses of no more than 5 mm or so,” says Jang. “Our study implies that we can significantly extend this range,” because so few photons are required.
It’s not just imaging that might benefit, adds Vellekoop. Combined with the technique of optogenetics, in which genetic and thus cell activity can be controlled by light, it might be possible to focus light and thus optically control the activity of individual neurons, deep within brain tissue.
“This is convincing work with results that could affect applications,” says Yaron Silberberg, an optical physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. He says the research shows that “even when there are fewer photons than there are resolution elements in the phase-conjugating setup, the technique can still be used effectively.”
This research is published in Physical Review Letters.
–Philip Ball
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer in London and author of Beyond Weird, a survey of quantum mechanics (University of Chicago Press, 2018).Indian parents got the shock of their life after they saw their six-day-old baby boy bursting into flames.
The boy's mother, who gave her name as K Rajeswari, said her baby caught fire six days after he was born. The child was immediately rushed to hospital where a team of doctors are running a series of tests on the boy.
The child is given day-and-night care as doctors are waiting for the results of the tests to decide on his treatment. This is not the first time that Ms Rajeswari has claimed that one of her children has spontaneously caught fire.
In August 2013 she brought her three-month-old son Rahul to the hospital claiming that her boy suffers from spontaneous human combustion. Doctors ran tests on the boy and did not find any signs indicating a rare condition.
At that time the village community ostracised Rajeswari and her family as their neigbours suspected them of deliberately putting the baby on fire. Meanwhile scientists are still searching for explanation to spontaneous human combustion.
READ ALSO: Spontaneous Human Combustion - Reality or Myth?
There is theory is that the human body can become an ‘inside out’ candle. The person’s clothes are the wick, while their body fat is the wax or flammable substance, that keeps the blaze going.
Limbs may be left intact because of the temperature gradient, with the bottom half of the body being cooler than the top. Some have postulated that static electricity could cause the needed spark.Just two weeks ago, Square Enix and gumi, Inc. (publisher) released the next Final Fantasy title for mobile, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. After a soft launch in European territories back in May, the game is out for most audiences and for Square Enix, it’s a great title to fill in the gaps while players wait for the anticipated Final Fantasy XV. Well, we can also add the new Mobius Final Fantasy to the list as well, coming August 3.
I’ve played a number of titles that gumi has brought to the mobile platform; these titles I’ve played include Chain Chronicle, Phantom of the Kill thanks to Anime Expo, and Brave Frontier. For Brave Frontier, I became somewhat of a “whale,” and got decently invested into the title’s collection element and its addictive, on-the-go gameplay. However, with the release of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Brave Frontier has since run its course and in a way feels much like a beta for the much more polished Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. This review will be comparing the two, side by side.
Brave Frontier was a title that had quite the vocal community. With dubious rate up events and ample server issues during its prime, I sometimes wondered why I stuck so long with the game. Seeing a lot of community backlash, it was kind of tough to still remain impartial for Brave Frontier, especially with the game going down a dubious path with the recently released Dream/Omni Evolutions. Brave Exvius took all of those mistakes and for the most part learned from them. The level of polish that Brave Exvius has in comparison to Brave Frontier is shocking, despite the games having incredibly similar elements.
What admittedly did not go away are the rate ups and their kind of disappointingly low chances to summon the classic Final Fantasy characters we’ve grown to love. Even so, there’s over a hundred units in the summon pool. However, everything else, from the music direction to the battle system, is much more involved. The music is orchestrated, and has the distinct familiarity of Final Fantasy music. From battle music to the serenity of the towns, the game has it all.
A lot of people have dissenting feelings towards the mobile gaming platform, citing that mobile gaming is weak and not the “proper” way to game. Thankfully, with the release of Pokémon GO and the cultural phenomenon that’s come from it, mobile may have a chance after all. Side note: I am not saying I agree or disagree with either side. I think that both sides have their merits based on the situation at hand. With Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, the battle system is addicting and goes a little more in-depth than the standard tap/slide characteristics that Brave Frontier adopted. While Brave Frontier contained monsters that were complex but needed simple interactions, Brave Exvius turned it around by making monsters a bit simpler but added the Final Fantasy charm of turn-based battles. From skills to equipment, there’s a lot more depth than meets the eye. With skills themselves having levels that can be reached, there’s tons of things to do in the meantime.
Brave Exvius brings the world map zones of Brave Frontier to the forefront, but melds them together with RPG dungeon crawler elements from the old retro Final Fantasy days, in the omni-directional plane. No grids! Players can purchase gear at the town/city armorers and weapon smiths. Gear can also be crafted using the Forging system; the same applies for Abilities and Items such as potions, provided the player has the recipe and the materials to complete them. Also brought in from Brave Frontier, slightly modified, is the Arena, christened as the Colosseum. Instead of fighting battles where dubious quantities of Arena points are provided, players proceed through ranked tiers, from Beginner to Advanced, from D rank to S rank. Each rank consists of five rounds that are ten matches apiece. Of course, the difficulty ramps up, but remains entirely manageable even in this point that the global version has provided. Players of Brave Frontier will also note the return of the Vortex dungeons, where limited time dungeons exist, as well as several locked dungeons that require the premium Lapis currency to access. These locked dungeons include crafting material, evolution material, experience, and gold dungeons. Friend sending and gifting makes an appearance, and can be used to summon lower units via Friend Points. When Brave Frontier introduced trials, Brave Exvius introduced the Farplane, which brought boss monsters out to yield good rewards.
Free to play mobile games such as these thrive on the in-game premium currency, Lapis. While gil can be used in the overworld, for major functions, the Lapis is the “gold standard.” From increasing unit space to summoning for units, even on a free to play budget the game is surprisingly manageable. For players who pre-registered, Square Enix provided almost a dozen summon tickets worth. The rewards are incredibly solid, and with the rate ups for new units, it’s a huge draw. Interestingly enough, I never felt as restricted playing this when compared to Brave Frontier, where the pay wall felt readily apparent without the powerful and meta units. I was able to stomp through story content with mostly free summon units provided in the initial launch ticket promotion.
The real bread and butter of Brave Exvius are in the units themselves, whom as mentioned above have abilities. The best part, and the most rewarding aspect, is in the Trust Mastery system, which often grants a very powerful ability. The trust master system can be leveled by repeatedly grinding quests, which provide a chance for a 0.1% increase. Yep, you read that right. Further methods include feeding duplicates which increase it by 5%. In Japan, other methods exist, but have not made their way stateside. These rewards can be equipment, or innate skills that can be attached to anybody. Raising units takes dedication; simply maxing them out is just the beginning. As units have limit breaks, an exclusive to Brave Exvius, said limit breaks can level up… only after hundreds or thousands of repetitions in battle.
Speaking of battles, there’s quite a lot going on. Tapping units attacks; sliding on the portrait lists out abilities, guards, or uses items. Brave Frontier had Brave Crystals and Heart Crystals that dropped; Brave Exvius has Limit Break crystals that fill a red limit gauge. Once filled, the unit can unleash a powerful skill. Battling waves of monsters is hopelessly addicting; combined with the exploration missions and quests, it’s a great formula going forward. While Brave Frontier was kept on rails, Brave Exvius diverges from the path and brings exploration at the player’s pace, save for the story which takes place over multiple zones on various continents in the Lapis kingdom.
At this point, the only downside is the story line. Following main protagonists Rain and Laswell, the story is fairly generic albeit mindlessly enjoyable. It has its moments, and spans across several continents in the Lapis kingdom as the two ally with a White Mage girl, Fina, and attempt to save the kingdom. In other words, it’s pretty standard Final Fantasy stuff from back in the earlier days, but perfect for mobile titles.
Brave Exvius was a title I had been looking forward to since it was announced; now that it’s actually here, it’s a superior product compared to its older brother Brave Frontier in pretty much every way. This is speculated to be due to the fact that Square Enix themselves are backing and developing this game; Brave Frontier was developed by Alim. The music and game play are on point and go above and beyond the majority of mobile titles, which are becoming increasingly restricted due to their pay to win nature. For those seeking an on-the-go Final Fantasy adventure but found disappointment in Record Keeper, this is the game for you.The state agency in charge of managing development in Kakaako held a public hearing Tuesday to take testimony on highly criticized proposed rule changes that seek to make housing in the urban district more affordable.
There was just one problem: Not a single board member showed up.
Instead, the hearing was led by Curtis Tabata, an attorney at a Mililani-based firm and a hearings officer paid $150 per hour to oversee the meeting and write up a report.
After the hearing, a clearly upset Stanford Carr confronted Deepak Neupane, Hawaii Community Development Authority‘s planning and development director.
Why was Tabata running the hearing, the well-known developer wanted to know. Why weren’t any of the agency’s 10 board members there to listen to testifiers or ask questions?
“You’d better tell the governor, this is not the way,” Carr told Neupane.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
Carr wasn’t the only one who was unhappy.
“Everybody was shocked that they weren’t there. We got emails using all kinds of adjectives that we don’t want to repeat,” Marshall Hung, developer of two towers at 801 South Street, told Civil Beat after the hearing. “This is a low point for Hawaii democracy.”
Developers, landowners and construction industry experts have been hoping to convince HCDA not to enact a slew of changes to the rules regulating development in Kakaako. Meanwhile, housing advocates and local residents have been pushing the agency to make its proposed rules even more stringent.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
Kakaako has changed a lot over the past four years. Drivers heading makai down Ward Avenue are greeted by the reflective light shining off of the tall Symphony tower, complete with a luxury car dealership on the ground floor.
Across the street from the Star-Advertiser is a new high rise and townhomes, now selling for as much as $1.8 million. Blue and green glass towers are common along Auahi Street, along with trendy shops and restaurants. Parking has gotten harder to find.
A previous version of this story incorrectly said a high rise and townhomes replaced the old Star Advertiser building.
There’s no doubt HCDA’s efforts are revitalizing the neighborhood and boosting the state’s economy. But the agency has been highly criticized for permitting the construction of high-end homes that most Hawaii residents can’t afford. Meanwhile, Honolulu home prices have been steadily rising and the city has struggled with how to reduce homelessness when there are so few affordable homes available.
Former Gov. John Waihee says Kakaako was originally envisioned as a place where young couples could buy starter units before upgrading to single-family homes.
“This idea of high-end housing is an abomination,” he says, adding that they’re all subsidized by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that went into upgrading the area’s infrastructure.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
Concerns about the rapid gentrification of the district reached peak fervor four years ago when residents protested on the street and in the state Capitol, convincing the Legislature to get rid of HCDA’s board and replace it with new members.
That’s when HCDA’s board created an investigative committee to review its affordable housing rules and figure out if they needed to be changed. In November 2014, the HCDA executive director presented a report to the board proposing the amendment.
Jesse Souki, executive director of the authority, says that over the past three years there’s been a lot of back and forth and the proposed rules have evolved.
The 2014 report recommended keeping housing affordable longer by extending the regulated period for reserved housing units up to 30 years. The report also suggested that HCDA encourage more rental housing in Kakaako, and require that developers of commercial projects that pay employees less than 60 percent of area median income ($34,692 or less) provide low-income housing units or cash in lieu.
The latest draft of the rules is significantly less stringent. Developers of most large projects still must set aside 20 percent of their buildings for reserved housing and would still be able to build homes affordable to someone earning up to about $86,000 or $123,000 for a family of four. But they would have to build enough less expensive homes that the average unit would be affordable to someone earning no more than about $78,000, or $105,000 for a family of four.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
The rules for workforce housing projects, where 75 percent of units are affordable to people earning less than $86,000, would be changed to give HCDA the first right of refusal to buy a unit when it’s sold. Developers would still receive benefits like density bonuses and park fee waivers.
“The overall concept is that the board wants to keep these units affordable for a long period of time,” Souki said. “Without the buyback, without the shared equity, it’s more of a likelihood they’ll become investment properties or sold for more than they should.”
Developers Push To Stop Regulations
But developers aren’t happy, particularly Hung and his business partners. At HCDA’s last hearing, 801 South Street project manager Derek Lock waited six hours to testify. Some unit owners had left by the time the issue came on the agenda.
He had been looking forward to the opportunity to try to persuade the board on Tuesday — with an agenda dedicated entirely to the issue — and encouraged industry experts, developers and 801 South Street owners to attend.
“They all wanted to voice these opinions on how these rules would affect them and their businesses and they’re speaking to empty chairs,” Lock said.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
Garett Kamemoto, spokesman for HCDA, said that at a public meeting in October, the board voted to hire a hearings officer to conduct the meeting. He said it can be difficult for volunteer board members to make quorum, and that a hearings officer led a public hearing on proposed park rules in December.
Tabata, the hearings officer, will write up a report and give it to the board, which will review the testimony before a decision-making hearing in May.
Tuesday’s meeting aside, Hung says that the agency’s new rules will prevent him from building more workforce housing projects.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
“You can talk to anyone in the industry and I believe they will tell you they have no faith in the government solution and that’s what’s really at play here,” he said, adding that the new rules would “shut down the market opportunity” to build more units.
That’s similar to what Carr said at Tuesday’s hearing when he referred to the proposed rules as “socialized housing.”
“The unintended consequence is that no projects will actually be built,” he said.
A previous version of this story incorrectly quoted Dan Nishikawa from OliverMcMillan instead of Carr.
“Kakaako is thriving,” said Lisa Eveleth, the owner of Coral Commercial Center in Kakaako. “It would be a shame to see the development stop before the vision has been met.”
Not Enough Affordable Units
But many like Waihee believe that Kakaako is heading the opposite direction of its vision. Waihee hasn’t read HCDA’s proposed rules, but supports the idea of a buyback provision.
Still, he argues that the changes won’t be meaningful if the authority doesn’t demand developers set aside more than 20 percent of their units at below-market prices.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
Galen Fox, a Kakaako resident and member of the community group Kakaako United, pointed out Tuesday that the law creating the Kakaako redevelopment agency specifies that the area should have low and moderate income housing.
“140 percent of area median income is not affordable,” Fox said.
George Massengale, who works at the local Habitat for Humanity, says the rules don’t go far enough.
He says that the amount required for a down payment for a reserved or workforce housing unit shouldn’t exceed 5 percent; the rules would allow up to 10 percent. He thinks that the proposed fee that developers could pay in lieu of producing a unit should be tripled.
Anita Hofschneider/Civil Beat
He says that that maximum allowable sales price for a workforce housing unit should be no more than 100 percent of the area median income, which is $61,550 for an individual or $87,900 for a family of four. To him, the maximum rental price shouldn’t exceed 80 percent of area median income, which is where most of the city’s rental demand comes from.
The proposed rules also give HCDA the right to suspend the rules if they “negatively impact the primary objective of the authority to promote redevelopment” in Kakaako. The lack of clarity is worrisome to Massengale.
He thinks that even if the rules overcome developers’ opposition, they probably won’t make much of a difference in making the neighborhood more accessible to low-income and moderate-income Hawaii residents.
“None of this stuff is affordable. It just isn’t affordable,” he said.Viruses are extremely efficient at targeting and delivering cargo to cells. In the journal ACS Nano, researchers report they have harnessed this well-honed ability -- minus the part that makes us sick -- to develop virus-like nanoparticles to deliver drugs straight to affected cells. In lab tests, they show that one such particle can be produced in plants and it ferries small molecules to cancer cells.
For this work, Frank Sainsbury and colleagues copied the core protein shell of the Bluetongue virus, a pathogen that affects ruminant animals. Previous research has shown that the capsid is stable, has a large cavity for small molecules or proteins to pack into, and is easy to produce with high purity. The researchers wanted to try making the virus-shell nanoparticles using plants. This is an increasingly popular approach to producing pharmaceuticals as it minimizes possible contamination by human pathogens, which plants don't carry. But first they needed to understand the structure of the shells.
Using single particle cryo-electron microscopy, the team showed for the first time that the recombinant shell nanoparticles produced by plants were different from the natural virus capsid. With the nanoparticles' detailed structure in hand, the researchers then genetically and chemically engineered them to their specifications, and loaded proteins and small molecules inside the shells. Lab testing showed that the plant-made virus particles, which naturally bind to receptors on cancer cells, were taken in by human breast cancer cells. The findings suggest the nanoparticles can potentially be used for the targeted delivery of drugs.Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk. (Anonymous)
Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. (Silas Strawn, 1935)
Pure socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need. (Anonymous)
Bureaucratic socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need. (Anonymous)
Communism: You have two cows. You give them to the Government, and the Government then gives you some milk. (Silas Strawn, 1935)
Pure communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk. (Anonymous)
Applied communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
Fascism: You have two cows. You give them to the Government, and the Government then sells you some milk. (Silas Strawn, 1935)
Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you. (Anonymous)
Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. (Silas Strawn, 1935) Then put both of them in your wife’s name and declare bankruptcy. (Pat Paulsen, 1968)
Nazism (dictatorship): You have two cows. The Government takes both and shoots you. (Silas Strawn, 1935)
New Dealism: You have two cows. The Government takes both, shoots one, buys milk from the other cow, then pours the milk down the drain. (Silas Strawn, 1935)
Environmentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them. (Anonymous)
Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. (Anonymous)
Pure democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk. (Anonymous)
Representative democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk. (Anonymous)
American democracy: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”. (Anonymous)
British democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything. (Anonymous)
Singapore democracy: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. (Anonymous)
Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows. (Anonymous)
Political correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallocentric, warmongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of nonspecified gender. (Anonymous)
Counterculture: Wow, dude, there’s like… these two cows, man. You have got to have some of this milk. I mean totally. (Anonymous)
Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons. (Anonymous)
Therapyism: You have two cows. One is a metaphor for your inner child. The other is the manifestation of anger toward a parental figure. You take one of the cows on walks through grassy fields by the gentle ocean waves. The other you beat with an anger bat. (©2007 Mike McLoughlin, Executive Director, Memphis Recovery Centers)
Recoveryism: You have twelve cows … and a sponsor. (©2007 Mike McLoughlin, Executive Director, Memphis Recovery Centers)
Insurancism: You have two cows. The Federal regulator requires you to hold one cow in reserve because they predict a shortage of milk. The Provincial/State regulator requires you to drop the price of milk because they predict a surplus of milk. The courts deem your cows inherently dangerous and order you to provide free milk to anyone who has ever been frightened by a farm animal. The marketing people are promising chocolate milk at an enhanced commission and you discover your own actuaries have been building pricing models assuming goats instead to save on the expense line. (©2002 Saskia Oltheten Matheson)
Russian company: You have two cows. You drink some vodka and count them again. You have five cows. The Russian Mafia shows up and takes however many cows you have.
Californian company: You have a million cows. Most of them are undocumented immigrants.
US Company: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why
the cow has dropped dead.
Greek company: You have two cows. You borrow lots of euros to build barns, milking sheds, hay stores, feed sheds, dairies, cold stores, abattoir, cheese unit and packing sheds. You still only have two cows.
French company: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
Japanese company: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market it worldwide.
Italian company: You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You decide to have lunch.
Swiss company: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.
Chinese company: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
Indian company: You have two cows. You worship them.
British company: You have two cows. Both are mad.
Iraqi company: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the ** out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.
Australian company: You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
New Zealand company: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive…
United nationism: You have two cows. France vetoes you from milking them. The United States and Britain veto the cows from milking you. New Zealand abstains.
Frisbeetarianism: You have two cows. One of them flies up on the roof and gets stuck. You hope the government provides cow ladders.
Intel Pentium 60 – A80501-60: You have 2.0000000056987983 cows.
In the marketing department: Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of two thousand millicows!
Political philosophy / Wikipedia / Lillic0rr
Argentina’s INTA governmental research body has developed cow backpacks that use a tube from the cattle’s rumen leading to a bag, to trap the methane they produce in order to turn it into green energy. You’d think this a joke, till you realize its 250 liters of methane a day. Question. At some point do they float away? Or by accident rocket away?Chris and Piers are together again in Biohazard: The Stage
From video games to novels to movies, the Resident Evil franchise has a vast umbrella of multimedia. But there’s never been a stage play based on the series. Well, that’s about to change.
Capcom will be working with Avex Live Creative and Ace Crew Entertainment to bring Biohazard: The Stage to life. The stage play will premiere towards the end of October at Tokyo’s EX Theater Roppongi.
Whether canon to the series’ lore or not, the stage play will give us a brand new story revolving around Chris Redfield, Piers Nivans, and Rebecca Chambers. As expected, an outbreak has occurred at a university in western Australia. Chris and Piers are sent to investigate and eventually meet up with Rebecca, who is a professor at the school and also a consultant to the BSAA. The central mystery will revolve around a young man named Tyler Howard, and his potential role with the outbreak.
We’ll keep you updated on this! Now, where can I sign up to play Chris?
[Source]Former Seattle Seahawks kicker Steven (Stephen) Hauschka finds it “interesting” the Seahawks chose to let him walk in free agency, moving forward with Blair Walsh instead.
Hauschka signed a multi-year deal with the Bills, agreeing to terms on the first day of the new league year.
“I thought it was interesting that direction that they would go in,” Hauschka said of the Seahawks, according to Vic Carucci of The Buffalo News. “But I’m not really concerned about that anymore because my job’s just to go out there and kick and that really doesn’t have anything to do with me now.
“But, yeah, it was definitely an interesting move.”
The Seahawks added former Minnesota kicker Blair Walsh to the roster in February, in anticipation of Hauschka’s free agency. In 2016, Walsh missed a 27-yard field goal attempt in the Vikings’ wild card game against the Seahawks, assisting Seattle in its 10-9 victory.
“I just think that at the end of the day, football is a business and teams are going to do what they need to do to get victories,” Hauschka said. “And if that means maybe saving a little money on that position, then so be it.”
Walsh will save the Seahawks over $1 million this season, but will still have to compete for the starting position. General manager John Schneider spoke at the combine and said the Seahawks would be adding another kicker to the roster.
“We had an opportunity to kind of check a box in free agency with Blair,” Schneider said. “We’ll be looking at somebody else to come in and compete, as well, too.”
Interesting indeed.
Related Veteran tackle Ryan Clady pays Seahawks a visitMy Kickstarter page for “James – Journey of Existence” (http://kck.st/19wTNSh) is doing lousy, and probably won’t succeed unless a mob of backers comes in during the last week. But I did get some attention, especially from Russian indie gamers on youtube. I also got a lot of interested people hoping I would hire them onto the project (see previous posts). One interesting person making his own indie game contacted me, which is what inspired this post…
I won’t say who he is, but he contacted me about worrying that his game’s story and themes were similar to mine. After emailing, he suggested that the two projects could be connected somehow through a collaboration. We found each other on Skype to continue the conversation, and it turned out he really just wanted an animator for his small indie team working on their game. Flattered as I was (I haven’t taken any real serious effort in visual arts outside a few classes, I am a programmer first and foremost, or an artist in a general hobbyist sense), I listened as he talked about his hopes and dreams for the game to become a huge success, and how a friend of a friend might get him the press he needed to get there.
Sadly, my schedule fluctuates and I tentatively backed out of the project out of fear of what my commitments will be later in the year (outside the chances of my own indie games ever being completed). That’s a shame, because there were good ideas in his project, and it could very well turn out to be a success. But I thought I should take the time to point out flaws in dreaming so early on, for the sake of any hopeful indie devs out there (I’ve seen similar issues from people in many fields).
First, MAKE THE DAMN GAME!
Like this one person on Skype, I know several other people with great ideas for games. I also happen to know several other people with no ideas at all, who just like to introduce themselves in case they want to work for the company you start years later. The problem is, as many other sites will tell you, ideas are easy to come by. Millions of people have ideas. Only a very select few of them ever get far enough to actually show off the idea, and that tends to get people’s attention, moreso than the idea itself.
“But I don’t know how to make a game!” you might say, to which I would shake my head. Most indie game developers don’t know how to make games either. Have you noticed how the majority of indie games feature pixel art and really basic gameplay? That’s usually because that’s all the developer knows how to do. To date, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone who can program, paint, and write music with the Godly talent required for a great product. But you can at least get started proving that the game is possible. And if you’re clever, you can take what you are able to do, however limited your skills are, and make it unique enough to stand out.
Thankfully, programming is the most important part to just make the game exist, and is also the easiest developer skill for someone to learn. The majority of students who take a programming class will understand all of it within days. And programmer or not, there are dozens of great, free software tools to make that game demo as polished as possible. If you know what you are doing, you can program an entire game within a month. Yes, the art and music are kind-of important to show this off, but getting this far helps prove to yourself that it is possible.
Don’t rely on others where possible.
Some people might disagree with this one, but I stand strongly by it. In your mind, when you have a great idea, only you can accurately make that idea come to life. Most people claim they can’t program, or paint, or compose music, and get scared to make the game themselves. If that describes you, you shouldn’t be making games.
“… Basically, you need to be the project’s director and main programmer at the very least…”
Yes, games require a lot of work. |
to throw in the towel, Airgo wasn't.
Airgo fought on with such tactics as adding more than 12,000 comments (count them, twelve thousand) into the "final" 2005 Wi-Fi standard draft. As Bill McFarland, Atheros' CTO and one of the draft’s editors and writers, said at the time, "There were a lot of duplicate comments, and three people filed comments for each and every blank line in the document. The physical process of dealing with so many comments is tedious and time-consuming."
What finally brought this stage of the fight to an end was Qualcomm buying Airgo in December 2006. With Airgo's management out of the picture by 2008, a true unified standard was ready for approval.
It would be smooth sailing from here right? Wrong.
Before the IEEE approves a given standard, everyone with a patent that touches that standard must sign a Letter of Agreement (LoA). The LoA states that the patent holder won't sue anyone using its patent in a standard-compatible device. All it takes is one holdout: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), an Australian government research group that held a patent that concerning the development of a wireless LAN, refused to sign the 802.11n LoA.
Cue a patent war. Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and 11 other companies tried to get CSIRO’s patents overturned. They failed. In April 2009, the tech giants and 802.11n companies surrendered and signed a patent agreement.
Finally, on September 11, 2009, 802.11n was approved. It had taken "only" six years. For a tech standard that everyone agreed was of vital importance.
The Standard Sausage Factory
Why did it take so long? Because the stakes are so high. As Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian wrote in The Art of Standards Wars, "The outcome of a standards war can determine the very survival of the companies involved."
That's why, ultimately, technology wars are not about technology. They are about business. Yes, you want a great technology that delivers the goods. But even if your tech is the best, if you can't turn it into a standard, your innovation is unlikely to make it to market or succeed once it gets there.
Because the stakes are so high, the players can, and do, fight over every tiny issue. Each side seeks an advantage to make sure the resulting software or hardware works best with its “version” of the proposed standard. (For example, Microsoft wanted its finger in the XML pie, and used Microsoft Office formats to try to control it. So today we have two popular office document standards: Microsoft's OpenXML and the ODF (Open Document Format). In the end, Microsoft finally, albeit very quietly, supports ODF.) The arguments are conducted in technical details, but money is the real driver.
These standards wars are painful, ugly, and can be incredibly petty from the outside looking in. Each participant wants the biggest possible pie.
These fights can be expensive in both engineering and legal costs, so some companies are moving away from standard wars. That’s supported by the realization of the virtue of compromises. That's always been true: Sony and Phillips realized in 1982 that fighting over CD formats would do neither company any good.
More recently, we've been seeing an interesting blend of open-source development and standards. The Linux Foundation brought together fierce rivals to work together on technologies and standards in such consortiums as AllSeen Alliance for the Internet of things; OpenBEL for open-source biological research; OpenDaylight, for almost all the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) companies; and Open Virtualization Alliance and Xen Project for KVM and Xen virtualization. Perhaps it’s the collaborative nature of open-source projects to which we can credit such successes. Facebook's Open Compute Project brought open-source methodology to the data center. Apache continues to bring competitors’ projects such as Big Data's Hadoop and Solr for search.
Open-source software and its business and development methodologies have shown that working together to create common software and standards is more affordable. In short, rather than take a chance on one small, late to market, and expensive pie, it's better to get a share of one bigger, timely, and affordable pie.
Maybe, thanks to open source, the sausage days of standard making will be behind us. I hope so.
See also:
[dfads params='groups=937&limit=1&orderby=random']Colorado is leaving 52 years of roaming the Great Plains of the Big 8 and Big 12 for the Pac-10 Conference, and Colorado president Bruce Benson says it’s a fit long overdue.
“I have the same reaction I’ve had for a long time. It’s a fabulous conference,” Benson said Thursday after the Pac-10 announced it would expand for the first time since 1978. “The schools in it are great. They’re the kind of schools we need to be around.”
The feeling is apparently mutual. Last July, the Pac-10 hired commissioner Larry Scott from the World Tennis Association with the charge of increasing revenue. Expansion became an obvious option, in order to build a mega-conference more valuable to TV networks, and Colorado is the first brick of what is expected to be a massive addition, possibly up to a Pac-16.
Colorado, which joined the Big Eight Conference in 1948 and was a member of the Big 12 since 1996, will begin Pac-10 play with the 2012 football season.
The Big 12 has a buyout clause that is expected to cost CU around $9 million to leave. That figure is uncertain due to the fact the entire Big 12 might be dissolved if other teams leave. Colorado couldn’t afford to pay football coach Dan Hawkins’ $3.1 million buyout last fall but Benson said the Big 12 buyout may be easier. The Pac-10 may also help with the financing.
“It’ll come out of the future revenue from a much better TV deal — if we have to pay it,” Benson said. “We’re not sure. What’s the Big 12 going to look like next week?”
While the rest of the country waited for Nebraska or Texas to make the first move in what is projected as a consolidation of super conferences, Colorado beat them both to the punch by working behind the scenes in recent days to secure its future. The next big move is expected today when Nebraska announces it’ll join the Big Ten.
“We’re thrilled that Colorado is joining us as a result of the exhaustive process we’ve been going through,” Scott said Thursday. “I can’t think of a better fit academically, as well as athletically. It’s a very exciting time.”
Who else will join Colorado in the Pac-10 isn’t known, but Benson isn’t worried. He wanted to make sure Colorado was in a proactive mode rather than being left behind.
Benson said the Pac-10 contacted him about 11 days ago. He had discussed the move internally with CU administrators since October and became more concerned in recent weeks with the buzz about the Big 12’s possible demise. He was on the phone with the Pac-10 until 10 p.m. Wednesday and finalized the deal Thursday morning.
“We worried about what the Texas schools might do,” Benson said. “We think it’s a great fit. We’re really excited.”
In Boulder, the winds of change have already left a positive vibe on campus and in the Dal Ward Center.
“I love it. I love it,” said Jashon Sykes, a Los Angeles native, a former Colorado linebacker and now the school’s coordinator of football relations. “I just think of it from an alumni standpoint, from a recruiting standpoint. I think it’s a great deal for CU. When you talk about recruiting, the bulk of our guys have always come from the West Coast. We can use that as a positive spin, recruiting wise, when we talk to kids’ families.”
CU wide receiver Scotty McKnight is a senior, so he won’t get to play in the new conference, but said the Buffs will love their new home.
“For recruiting, it could be huge,” McKnight said. “I know in Orange County, there’s a lot of Colorado supporters. The Buff Club is big there. When you’re from California, Colorado is a very attractive school to come to. I was looking at different schools, and the day I came up here there was snow on the ground and it was 80 degrees outside. I thought, ‘This is the place I want to be.”‘
Buff fans were excited Thursday, too, lighting up the message boards with congratulations.
“I’d be more inclined to go to a road game in California (than Big 12 cities),” said Matt Tavenner, founder of the CU fansite AllBuffs.com. “Now, there are better cities to travel to.”
CU athletic director Mike Bohn and football coach Dan Hawkins declined comment until a news conference today in Boulder to officially accept the invitation.
The Pac-10 is considering adding five more teams with the possible addition of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech. If that happened, Colorado would likely would go into an eastern division with their former Big 12 rivals, along with Arizona and Arizona State.
Benson said CU would have joined the Pac-10 regardless of whether Nebraska moved to the Big Ten. As it turns out, the Pac-10 felt the same way about Colorado.
“We’ve been looking at Colorado for quite some time,” Scott said. “We felt, through a very exhausting and deliberate study, any (expansion) scenario would consider Colorado. It’s a great fit.”
The biggest driving force behind the move is money. Scott will soon go to Fox to negotiate a TV package he hopes will compare with that of the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences. Both leagues guarantee their schools $20-22 million per year in TV revenue. Last month the Atlantic Coast Conference signed a $1.87 billion, 12-year deal, giving its 12 schools nearly $13 million.
Last year, Colorado received about $8 million in TV revenue from the Big 12. With half the Big 12 probably headed to the Pac-10, Benson saw the timing as right.
“It’s a significant increase of revenue,” Benson said. “Not the first day, but we’ll start building a media presence.”
As for who else the Pac-10 will go after, Scott said no other invitations have been issued and different conference models are being studied.
It’s clear Texas and its huge following, which translates to high TV ratings, is next on the Pac-10’s wish list. When Nebraska accepts an invitation from the Big Ten, the Pac-10 will likely go after the rest of the Big 12 South minus Baylor.
However, Texas and Texas A&M officials met Thursday to discuss their future together. The schools’ respective athletic directors, DeLoss Dodds and Bill Byrne, said at the Big 12 Spring Meetings last week they were reluctant to join a conference two time zones away.
The Southeastern Conference could be an option but moreso for Texas A&M than Texas. If the Pac-10 keeps the Texas schools in one division, their travel problems will be minimal.
Still, Scott said it’s possible the Pac-10 may only be a Pac-11 in 2012. He is holding off renaming the conference and deciding on a football championship game until membership is determined.
Staff writer Tom Kensler contributed to this report
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.Outdoor retail REI to open S.A. store
National retailer Recreational Equipment Inc. has announced it will open its first location San Antonio this fall.
The company, which offers outdoor gear and apparel, will open a 27,500-square-foot store at the Huebner Oaks shopping center, a news release states. The REI store will move into the space previously occupied by Borders, a spokeswomen for the company said.
It's expected that the company will look to fill about 50 positions for the new store, according to the release. The San Antonio location will be the company's eighth store in Texas.
REI, which is the nation's largest consumer cooperative, is expected to open a store later this month in Indianapolis and three other stores in Oregon, Ohio and Virginia this fall, the release states. Florida's first store is expected to open early next year in Jacksonville.New research reveals that actor Benedict Cumberbatch is related to revolutionary codebreaker Alan Turing, whom he portrays in the newly released biographical thriller, The Imitation Game.
Researchers from Ancestry were able to crack Cumberbatch’s ancestral cipher and identify that both men share a common ancestor in John Beaufort, the Earl of Somerset, making them 17x cousins on Cumberbatch’s paternal side.
Turing played a crucial role in World War II, when he devised a number of revolutionary techniques for breaking German codes and was credited by then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill as “making the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war.”
Turing was not the only Cumberbatch relative who helped Britain win the war; his third cousin twice removed has been identified as WWII soldier Noel Carlisle Rees. Military records reveal that Rees was stationed in Greece with British Military Intelligence and was responsible for smuggling thousands of Allied soldiers out of the country during the conflict.
Along with these war heroes, the records also revealed some rather unusual occupations in the Cumberbatch family tree. These include links to John Paul Ferguson, Benedict’s paternal 2nd great-grandfather, who was a tea planter in India, as well as a connection to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, identified as his sixth cousin.
A kingly ancestor
Cumberbatch’s relatives haven’t always come out on the winning side, however. He recently finished filming his role as Richard III on The Hollow Crown. Around the same time, Professor Kevin Schurer of the University of Leicester announced that Cumberbatch and Richard are third cousins 16 times removed. While Cumberbatch has acknowledged the honor it is to be related to Turing, he joked with another reporter that his distant connection to Richard was ‘close enough for me’.
What’s next? Learning that Benedict Cumberbatch is the great-great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes? OK, Holmes is a fictional character, but at this rate, someone’s bound to find a way.
Search for your own family connections for free on Ancestry.com today.But how do you define “affordable”? That’s where it gets complicated. The law says health insurance is affordable if you can pay the premiums for less than 9.5 percent of your household income. But the law doesn’t specify whether the premiums are for individual coverage or for family coverage. For some families, that's going to be a big difference.
Imagine you’re the chief breadwinner in a couple with about $30,000 a year in total income. Now imagine that annual premiums for a family policy from your employer are $5,000, which is more than 9.5 percent of household income, but annual premiums for an individual policy are just $2,000, which is less than 9.5 percent of household income. If the basis for the affordability calculation were individual premiums, rather than family premiums, then neither you nor your spouse could get subsidized coverage. You’d probably end up taking the individual policy from your employer, but not the family policy, which could very well leave your spouse with no coverage at all. (Yes, this is the exact same issue I wrote about a few weeks ago, after that infamous anti-Romney ad about the former steelworker whose uninsured wife died from cancer.)
The Obama Administration will settle this issue when it writes the final regulation on affordability. And writing the regulation in a way that makes these people eligible for assistance won't be easy, because of the law’s many moving parts. The best response would probably be the one the Times editorial mentions: Writing the regulation in such a way that, in these sorts of situations, employees got coverage from employers but spouses were eligible for subsidies. But some administration lawyers are reluctant to interpret the law that way. And if those lawyers prevail, between 2 and 4 million people lower-income people would lose out on government assistance, at least according to a pair of independent estimates.
So what does Romney have to say about this? Is he urging the Administration to write the regulation so that people in this situation have access to subsidies? Of course not. Is he proposing to replace the Affordable Care Act with a plan that would provide these people with some alternative source of widely available coverage? Of course not. Instead, his campaign is simply attacking the administration, arguing that “Confusing Language In Obamacare Has Jeopardized The Availability Of Insurance Coverage For Millions Of Americans.”
That line is doubly hypocritical because it implies that, because of Obamacare, people will lose health insurance. That’s not the case. These are people who for the most part, can’t get coverage now. The issue here is whether they’ll remain uninsured or whether, come 2014, they'll be among the millions who benefit from Obamacare.Sure, he’s got one heck of a challenge ahead of him first, but if all goes to plan, Irishman Conor McGregor could be fighting in his home country later this year.
Earlier today, the UFC announced an Oct. 24 show at 3Arena in Dublin, likely to be UFC Fight Night 77. Although it’s expected to be one of the organization’s smaller UFC Fight Pass-streamed events, McGregor wants a spot on the lineup.
Up first, though, is next week’s interim title fight. With featherweight champion Jose Aldo (25-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) recently forced off the card with a rib injury, McGregor (17-2 MMA, 5-0 UFC) meets replacement Chad Mendes (17-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) for an interim belt at UFC 189, which takes place July 11 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena and airs on pay-per-view.
However, McGregor said his upcoming title shot should be for the primary belt and that Aldo should be stripped of it.
“I don’t know whether he’ll be back,” McGregor said today during a UFC 189 media call. “Like I said, he’s gone running, and I don’t think he’ll be back.
“If a man pussies out, and he’s pussied out time and time again, (then he should be stripped). He’s pulled out of contests time and time again. I mean, the medical reports state he is fit to fight, so there’s no more questions. If you’re fit to fight and you’re not going to fight, the belt rightfully should be stripped, and this (should be) for the regular featherweight belt.”
As for plans after UFC 189? McGregor said he recently spoke to UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Feritta. Originally, the UFC had hoped the fall show in Dublin would be at a major stadium, not a smaller arena.
“He wants me on a bigger one,” McGregor said. “But I’m saying, you don’t have a show in my hometown and not have me on it. Most certainly I want to be on that card, so we will see which way it plays out.”
Unfortunately for McGregor, who could help UFC 189 be one of the bigger PPV shows of the year, he’s unlikely to be fighting on UFC Fight Pass cards, especially if he wins the interim belt and sets up a potential title-unification bout with Aldo later this year.
However, if he comes up short against Mendes, perhaps a rebound fight in a UFC Fight Pass headliner would make more sense, though it remains a long shot.
For more on UFC Fight Night 77 and UFC 189, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site."Unfortunately, the senator's response was anything but acceptable. It certainly did not condemn the supporters for the violence and added more fuel to the fire," Debbie Wasserman Schultz said. | Getty Wasserman Schultz on Sanders' response to Nevada chaos: 'Anything but acceptable'
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz panned Bernie Sanders' response to reports of violence at the Nevada Democratic state convention over the weekend, calling it "anything but acceptable."
Wasserman Schultz was speaking on CNN on Tuesday night, after a day in which the Sanders campaign exchanged pointed public statements with the DNC and the Nevada Democratic Party over allegations that the campaign encouraged "extra-parliamentary behavior — indeed, actual violence" at the convention, in the words of the state Democratic Party.
The DNC chairwoman was asked whether she had spoken with Sanders on Tuesday about the convention. She said she had not but that Sanders' 10-minute discussion with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was sufficient.
"I was comfortable that one conversation was enough," Wasserman Schultz said during the interview. "Unfortunately, the senator's response was anything but acceptable. It certainly did not condemn the supporters for the violence and added more fuel to the fire."
After the DNC and the Nevada Democratic Party said that Sanders needed to publicly denounce his supporters' conduct at the convention, the Vermont senator accused party leaders of favoring Clinton's campaign over his.
"If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned," Sanders said in his statement.
Chaos ensued Saturday in Nevada after Sanders supporters became incensed at the idea that the senator was being treated unfairly in the delegate allocation process.An idiotic new study has shown that when seeking a woman for a one-time fun time, men look for certain qualities — namely, is she stupid enough to have sex with me? Because the study (and the men involved) have conveniently ignored the fact that ladies sometimes want one night stands, too (also ignored: the idea that women sometimes have sex without being tricked into it), we've broken down the list of 88 traits that researchers found influenced men in their quest for sex to bring you a definitive guide to tricking dudes into thinking that they're tricking you into having sex with them.
Sexual exploitability: observable cues and their link to sexual attraction will be published in this month's issue of Evolution and Human Behavior, which looks to be the sort of publication that pats men on the head for being assholes and tells them that it's not their fault that they're dicks — that's evolution, baby! — and this sexual exploitability study is no exception. It postulates that because reproduction requires less parental investment for men than it does for women (an expulsion of spooj followed by an indefinite trip to the store to pick up some cigarettes versus 9 months of pregnancy followed by childbirth followed by having a baby yelling at you all the time for, like, several years), women must therefore be exploited if men ever hope to get them to have sex with them. The study not only assumes that women are reluctant to have sex because of babies (the Pill never happened, apparently), every high-stakes sexual encounter that a woman has with a man is the result of the man overcoming some resistance in the woman — either via seduction or by force.
Advertisement
So, the weirdos who thought that this sort of thing would make a good, solid study looked to test their sexual exploitability hypothesis on a group of men and determine if a woman's perceived vulnerability made her hotter — and they were right! But first, they had to determine what, exactly, made a woman look DTBTIF (Down To Be Tricked Into Fucking). Lucky for you, horny women of the world, most of these traits are easy to fake. So let's have at it — remember, this is all scientific.
DO: look immature, act drunk and reckless, hang out with sluts, glance over your shoulder, appear sleepy, touch your boob
All of these traits were strongly correlated with being vulnerable and therefore exploitable and therefore more likely to trip over something and accidentally fall onto some dude's cock. So wear your hair in pigtails, shop at Forever 21, yell TOTALLY WOOOO! a lot (this makes you sound both younger and more reckless), make out with your friends, and always keep your neck craned so you're glancing over your shoulder at all times. Even if it leads to muscle spasms. You want to get laid, don't you?
Advertisement
If that fails, start sending signals to men around you that you're very tired. Yawn dramatically, lean over to your slutty friend and say, loudly enough for people around you to hear, "I'm so exhausted that I could just fuck myself to sleep." And then give your boob a honk.
DO NOT: appear intelligent, be old, act shy or anxious, suck on a straw, stand near men
Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses, unless those girls are playing librarians in a porn. Do ditch any vestiges of intelligence — institute a 3 syllable max and only talk half as much as he talks. But don't be all shy about it, or act nervous — those things indicate to men that you may be aware of the fact that they're constantly trying to assess whether or not you can be tricked into fucking.
Advertisement
Surprisingly, straw sucking was negatively correlated vulnerability and therefore attractiveness, possibly because the sort of man who believes that the key to sexiness is vulnerability is the sort of guy who might be sexually intimidated by the size of a drinking straw. Look at that monster schlong she's drinking from. I could never satisfy her!
DO: wear an engagement or wedding band, attend a wedding, wear tight clothing, be a punk, have tattoos, be short, be fat
You'd think that it would scare men off, but wearing an engagement ring is a great way to let them know that some dude has probably been able to trick you into fucking him over and over and over, and then trick you into committing yourself legally to fucking only him for the remainder of your life. Weddings are obvious places for vulnerable people, as women are automatically insecure attending an event where another woman is the center of attention.
Advertisement
If you're not hearing any wedding bells, you can up your Fuck Me; I'm Stupid factor by wearing tight clothing or dressing like a punk. These things indicate daddy issues, according to jokes written by people who are not punks or women who wear tight clothing, and daddy issues equals crazy sex. Same goes for tattoos.
DO NOT: be skinny, have a flushed face, be tall, dance, be a prostitute, have piercings
Piercings are indicative of the fact that you are pointy, and pointy is not vulnerable. Skinny women have had their self worth reinforced endlessly by society, and they're likely too confident to fuck a creep. Tall women have a long enough stride to escape quickly on foot, so if you're taller than 5'6" in stature, sit down.
Advertisement
For some reason, men don't find prostitutes sexy; if you're a hooker, try to hide that fact. I guess.
So, there you have it! Foolproof ways to trick men into thinking that they're tricking you into having sex with them.
If the lead researchers on this paper weren't themselves women, I'd think that scientists who assume that every woman needs to be duped into sex haven't yet discovered the clitoris.
Advertisement
[Slate]To Play the Fool
Prologue
"Jenny, your sister's missing."
I dropped my chemistry homework on the floor and collapsed into my chair. Mom was near hysteria. "What happened? Where did she go? Did someone see something?"
"We don't know. She just vanished. The school says she was there for all her classes, and a bus driver remembers seeing her get off the bus, but after that... Jackie's just gone. No one saw anything."
"She didn't leave a note or anything?"
"Jackie didn't run away. Something terrible has happened to her. I can't get this feeling of dread out of my stomach."
Mom's gut rarely lied to her. As much as I was inclined to disbelieve it, I had to admit that we'd been saved on more than one occasion by Mom's intuition. "Have you called the police?"
"Of course we did. They're trying to find her, but they haven't turned up a thing."
"They'll find something. People always leave evidence of their presence behind."
"Right. They'll find her. It's just... I'm not sure they'll find her soon enough."
"Look, Mom, I'm going to come home tonight."
"It's past midnight!"
"Well it's not like I'll be getting any sleep tonight. I'm catching the first flight home. I'll call you when I get back to New York. Love you."
I hung up and took a deep breath. I would have expected something like this in Gotham City, where girls go missing left and right. Not so in Syracuse. If anything, I was the one that should have gone missing by now.
I started throwing a few things into a backpack, just the stuff I didn't want my roommate to steal and everything essential for getting onto an airplane. Within three minutes, I was ready to leave everything behind.
"Jenny, you need to go to bed," said Dad groggily.
I myself was absolutely wired, and not from caffeine. I had a map pinned to the wall in Jackie's room, a laptop open on the local sex offenders list, and a white board with a rudimentary time line propped against the bed. "Can't. Jackie's not home yet."
"If you go to sleep, you'll be able to think better." He's tried this tactic on me before, and it doesn't work.
"I'm thinking just fine. You can go to bed, though."
He sighed and took a look at my map. "Have you been hacking the FBI Database again?" he asked.
"You need to use something other than Mom's favorite plays as your passwords. I've also put together a list of our possible enemies." I handed him a legal pad with a short list on it. "Those are mine," I turned the page over to reveal three full columns of names, "and these are yours. I decided that Jackie doesn't have any."
"You keep an updated list?" He noticed that I had used a few different pens over some time.
"You don't?" I continued with my map. "I think something happened in the neighborhood. Most everyone would have been at work or taking a nap at the time. We should be looking in backyards in case she cut through them."
"The police won't have warrants for that."
"Then ask around. Someone has to have seen something. All the witnesses we have are from school or the bus drivers. For at least an hour a day until Mom gets home, Jackie is all on her own. How would someone know about and use that time to their advantage?"
"You think someone kidnapped her?"
"I'm trying to entertain all possibilities, Dad, but this one seems more likely. She wouldn't have run away. There aren't any serial killers or rapists nearby. She's not staying the night with a friend. And the lack of evidence of any foul play right now is just making me think she ceased to exist altogether. I need to retrace Jackie's route home for myself." I started looking for a good Teenage Hoodlum disguise in Jackie's clothes.
"If you get caught, I'm not bailing you out," he warned.
"I'm finding Jackie," I snapped. "End of story."
Day Fourteen. Two weeks, and not a word. Not a scrap of clothing or stray hair to tell us what happened. We knew that she had not run away, but the evidence, or lack thereof, had convinced the police that she had. They moved on to bigger cases, and the media followed. We couldn't sit still because Jackie was still gone, and Mom just felt worse and worse.
At six that evening, someone knocked on the door. Eager for some sort of message of hope, Dad and I abandoned watching the news to answer the door. We tore it open, half hoping we'd find a policeman with his hat in his hands and a solemn expression on his face. We just needed to know something.
And there she was. Red hair braided over her left shoulder, Doctor Who t-shirt, boots 'n' jeans with a heavy backpack slung over her shoulder. Looking just like she would have any other day of the week apart from
"I'm sorry I'm late. I got lost on my way home from school," she said.
Before I knew what was coming out of my mouth, I said, "For two weeks?"
Mom pushed past the two of us and then just froze in place with her mouth wide open. Then, crying, she pulled Jackie inside the house and hugged her like if she let go, she'd lose Jackie again.
Dad didn't know what to make of all this. After working on hundreds of missing persons cases, he'd never seen one end like this. When Mom finally let go of her, Dad took Jackie by her shoulders, looking her in the eye to make sure the girl in front of him was really her. He decided she was, and enveloped her in a hug. "Where have you been?" he demanded.
"I don't know."
"How can you not know?" I exclaimed.
"I just don't," Jackie said simply, her voice muffled by Dad's shoulder. "I wish I could tell you, but I can't."
"I thought you were dead."
"Not yet." She smiled like she was joking, but her eyes weren't. There was something she wasn't telling us. There was a lot of stuff she wasn't telling us. So many questions were filling my head all about her. My little sister had turned into a mystery, an enigma, with a distinct air of authority. She straightened up to look at me, and she towered over me without actually being taller.
She noticed my confused stare. "What happened to you, Jackie?" I said.
Then she wrapped me in a hug and my questions and the mysteries didn't matter anymore. Jackie came home, and she still needed me to be a big sister.
"What is this?" I demanded.
Jackie's head popped out of the closet with her arms full of clothes. "A bedroom?"
I pointed to the half-full suitcase on her bed. The big kind, not the overnight kind. "What do you think you're doing? You can't just leave."
"Jenny, how do I put this?" She dropped her pile of clothes in the suitcase. "I don't want to go, but I have to leave. People are counting on me."
"We're counting on you! We need you!"
"No, you don't. You want to keep me close because you're scared of losing me."
"It's a valid concern. You disappeared for two weeks without a word, and you act like it didn't matter. Do you have any idea how horrible that was for us?"
"Better two weeks than four years." She turned away from me to go through some things in her dresser.
"I cannot believe you. You don't care about any of us, and now you're just going to abandon Mom and Dad. This is going to tear them apart."
"It's my choice this time," she snapped. Her hands clenched in painful memory. "My choice. Believe me, I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about this. How heartless do you think I am?"
"Incredibly. And I think you're selfish, self-centered, egotistical–"
"That was rhetorical," she grumbled.
"You can't pretend that everything's gone back to normal after two months and just go traipsing off to Europe."
She slammed a drawer shut. "No, things aren't normal anymore, Jenny. Our dynamic has been altered and I can't fix it. There are so many things that I can fix, but I can't fix us." Jackie turned around with a stony expression. "I hate to be so vague, but there are lots of things out there that are a lot bigger than you and Mom and Dad. Earthquakes, murders, assassinations, explosions, tsunamis, volcanoes, riots, wars, big things that I can't sum up in one word, and I am capable of helping people and saving lives now."
"You don't have superpowers, Jackie. You disappeared for a couple of weeks and came back with some new tricks. You're not special, you're not psychic, you're not smart, you're not talented, you're not helpful! You are going to get yourself killed!" I shrieked.
She didn't react to anything I threw at her. Nothing. She took a deep breath and replied calmly, "I'm sorry I didn't consult you or ask for your sage advice. I'm leaving for Egypt today. I'll write you and I'll have my cell phone so you can call if you want to yell at me some more."
That snapped the last string holding me together. With what little strength I had, I grabbed the handle of Jackie's suitcase and flung it off the side of the bed, spilling the contents everywhere. Jackie started picking it up, not surprised at all and without an ounce of hurt or anger in her at all.
That night, I left for Gotham once more.Devotees threaten'movement' in UP after Sai Baba idol disappears
Tempers are running high at Uttar Pradesh's Deoria town after a Sai Baba idol was removed from the famous Deorahi temple.
Sai followers allege that the local administration removed the idol under the pressure from the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.
The followers have now threatened to raise a "movement" to protest against the removal of the idol.
Removed: The Sai Baba idol that was placed at the Deorahi temple was allegedly removed from its rightful place on the orders of a local party recently
Caught in the middle is the administration as the Hindu Mahasabha members - who say they are unaware about who removed the idol - are allegedly on a dharna at the district collectorate against the administration trying to locate and reinstall the idol.
The problem started on July 7 when some Hindu Mahasabha members, led by Indresh Singh Amethiya, barged into the temple and tried to remove the idol, reportedly in support of the Shankaracharya of Dwarka Peeth, Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati's orders. However, they met resistance from Sai followers at the temple.
Sensing trouble, the police launched a lathi-charge on the Hindu Mahasabha activists and detained some of them from the spot.
The next day, Singh, along with over a half-dozen Hindu Mahasabha members, started the ongoing dharna at the collector's office to demand removal of the idol.
While the protest was on, the Sai idol went missing from the temple on June 11 evening.
"Senior priests Katru Tiwari and Reoti Rama Tiwari had brought the idol over a decade ago... Only they know what happened to the idol.
"They have left for Haridwar and cannot be contacted at the moment," another priest Paras Das claimed. The Hindu Mahasabha members, clearly, are unhappy.
"We don't know who removed the statue of Sai Baba. But we have come to know that the administration is conspiring to install it again. We will continue our dharna... We want the government to suspend the sub |
also said the concept collects traffic data in real-time to aid its autonomous efforts. Automakers are ramping up their data collection efforts to advance their self-driving tech. Cars compare real-time data on traffic flow to high-definition maps of roadways so they can detect obstacles or potential hazards easier. The more data there is to pull from, the better the cars can navigate complex roadways or intersections.
The steering wheel can retract into the instrument panel when autonomous mode is activated. The driver can turn the self-driving mode off by touching the steering wheel or pressing the brake or gas pedals.
The concept also comes with a heads-up display to project information on the windshield. The center console offers traditional navigation and entertainment functions, but it can also be removed and used as a tablet outside the vehicle.
The I.D. Buzz name is meant to highlight Volkswagen's artificial intelligence efforts for its cars. The car's AI, called I.D., can tell who the driver is and change the internal settings, from the seat position to the music that plays, accordingly. Toyota unveiled a concept car at this year's CES showing its AI efforts. The car came with an AI assistant named Yui that Toyota says can read human emotions.
I.D. can also sync up to the driver's smartphone to create a digital key. Once I.D. picks up that digital key, the doors will open and ambient lighting will turn on.
From a design perspective, Volkswagen said it purposely stepped away from the microbus' retro roots to create something with a smooth and integrated exterior.
The bus comes with slender lights instead of the classic oval ones.
It also has wraparound LED tail lights, integrated bumpers, and cameras instead of sideview mirrors.
As mentioned before, the interior is extremely spacious at 194.6 inches long and 77.8 inches wide. The seats can move on a rail system attached to the wood floors, opening up space for a fold out table for people in the back.
Volkswagen says the concept comes with two electric motors with 369 hp. The vehicle is capable of accelerating from 0-60 mph in 5 seconds and has a top speed of 99 mph.by Shafique Khokhar
The arrests took place on the anniversary of the death of Punjab’s governor, murdered because he had defended a Christian, Asia Bibi. Activists and ordinary people braved death threats and attended the memorial service.
Lahore (AsiaNews) – Lahore Police arrested a group of 110 imams yesterday whilst celebrating the murder of Salman Taseer.
The arrest of the Islamic clerics took place on the sixth anniversary of the death of the Governor of Punjab, who was "punished" because he had defended a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, and had spoken out against the "black law" on blasphemy.
Speaking to AsiaNews, some activists slammed a climate of religious fanaticism and the country’s deep contradictions.
"On the one hand,” said Rana Kashif Javed, “the Government of Pakistan loudly expressed its intention of implementing the National Action Plan and reiterated the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law; on the other, religious extremists take to the streets and block the capital of Punjab province, violating fundamental human rights." According to the activist, "all this is a constant threat to our country."
The imams were detained and arrested on Main Boulevard Gulberg, where they were staging a rally to celebrate the death of the murdered governor. Their goal was to block the city and prevent the memorial service.
Defying the threats by radicals, activists and ordinary Pakistanis gathered a few tens of kilometres away, in the Lalik Chowk area. Syeda Deep, the organiser of the vigil, said that the participants waved placards, chanted slogans and lit candles against terrorism and religious fundamentalism.
"They came here,” she said, “despite the death threats and reiterated that they would not be terrified by fear of the neo-fascist mullahs."
“In Lahore, religious intolerance has reached the highest levels,” said Samson Salamat, the Christian chairman of the Rawadari Tehreek, a movement for tolerance. “Islamists tried to block the memorial. This is ridiculous considering that Mumtaz Qadri, the Salman Taseer’s self-confessed murderer, was found guilty by the law and hanged."
“What the imams tried to do is a serious violation of freedom and fundamental rights,” Salamat added. “What is even more serious is that all this has happened event though the National Action Plan clearly calls on the government and institutions to stop such activities."
Salamat believes that Pakistan "will not be a peaceful country until the State itself does not take decisive action against militant groups that commit 'hate crimes' and spread intolerance in society."
For Kashif Javed, Salman Taseer "was an honest ruler. The way his family and other supporters – who defend the law, peace, tolerance and equality – are targeted is unconstitutional."
Taseer’s son Shaan was recently the subject of a fatwa because he called for prayers for people unfairly accused of blasphemy.Wal-Mart to raise entry wage to at least $9/hour 9:22 AM ET Thu, 19 Feb 2015 | 02:10
A White House spokesperson called the news "another example of businesses along with cities and states taking action on their own to raise wages for their workers, recognizing that doing so can raise productivity, reduce turnover and improve morale."
For the holiday quarter, the retailer delivered mixed results with earnings that beat estimates and revenue that fell short.
It reported adjusted earnings of $1.61 per share, compared to $1.60 a share last year. Revenue rose to $131.57 billion from $129.71 billion a year ago.
Analysts forecast Wal-Mart would report earnings of $1.53 per share on revenue of $132.36 billion, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
Wal-Mart stock was down more than 2 percent in morning trading. (Click here to track the latest price.)
Last quarter, Wal-Mart posted its first positive comp in its U.S. business in seven quarters, reflecting a consumer that remains pressured despite the recovering economy.
It continued the momentum during the fourth quarter, delivering a 1.2 percent rise in total U.S. comparable store sales.
The retail behemoth's same-store sales were expected to tick up just 0.7 percent including gas and a foreign exchange impact, according to an estimate from Consensus Metrix estimate.Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. By Stephen Sackur
Presenter, BBC HARDtalk
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez intends to inject new urgency into his socialist and anti-imperialist revolution, claiming "capitalism is destroying the world". In a combative 60-minute interview with the BBC HARDtalk programme in the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Mr Chavez blamed Venezuela's deepening recession on the irresponsible economic policies of the United States. He also expressed disappointment with President Barack Obama's "very negative signals" towards Latin America. "In Colombia (the Americans) are building seven military bases; that is one of the very negative signals that Obama sent just after taking office," Mr Chavez said. "Bush decided to reactivate the US Fourth Fleet to operate in Latin America. Obama, instead of suspending or getting rid of the Fourth Fleet has seven military bases planned in Colombia. What for? Is it to go to war, to dominate the Latin American continent?" Colombia has signed a deal to give the US military access to seven Colombian bases with the aim to combat drug trafficking and rebels. It caused alarm among some of Colombia's neighbours, including Venezuela, who object to an increased US military presence. "I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions," Mr Chavez said. While there was no repeat of the insults he hurled at George W Bush, such as "donkey," "devil" and "terrorist", President Chavez indicated that the high-profile handshake he and Obama shared at an Americas summit last year had not resolved fundamental differences. Red carpet The 55-year-old Venezuelan president rarely grants extended interviews to the Western media. This one was arranged to coincide with the premiere in Caracas of a new documentary by Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone. The film, South of the Border, portrays Latin America being transformed by Leftist radicalism. The leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador all get walk-on parts, but it is to Mr Chavez that Stone gives the starring role. The director and the president shared a limousine to the red carpet launch of the film in Caracas's national theatre. President Chavez is a key figure in Oliver Stone's film South of the Border "What's been going on in Venezuela for the last 10 years is amazing - a piece of history. The least I can do is introduce this man and this movement to the American people," said Stone, with a beaming Chavez by his side. Whether many Venezuelans will ever see South of the Border remains unclear. The premiere was full of Socialist party bigwigs and activists who hooted with delight as their president was seen lambasting Bush, beating off a coup attempt in 2002 and generally adopting the mantle of a 21st Century Castro. But no amount of support from the American filmmaker can disguise a simple truth; domestic support for President Chavez's "Bolivarian" socialism (named in homage to Latin America's 19th Century liberator Simon Bolivar) is being sorely tested by a second consecutive year of economic recession. Venezuela possesses the biggest reserves of oil outside the Middle East and supplies more than one-tenth of US oil imports, but still the economy has woefully underperformed against others in Latin America in the last two years. Inflation has leapt to 30% and seems likely to rise further. The Venezuelan currency has been devalued and is still sinking amongst Caracas's black market money changers. 'Road to hell' In the capital's sprawling hillside neighbourhoods, jobs are scarce and Mr Chavez's Socialist party is looking electorally vulnerable just three months before National Assembly elections. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. In his HARDtalk interview, the president blamed his country's economic woes squarely on America's "rampant, irresponsible capitalism" which was taking the world "on the road to hell". "In England and in Europe you should know this," Mr Chavez went on. "'You have more problems than we do." He quoted a stream of economic statistics to illustrate his claim that 11 years of socialism had "begun to redress the balance between a very rich Venezuelan minority and a very poor majority." He said unemployment had been halved, extreme poverty was down from 25% to just 5%. Domestic critics of Mr Chavez's nationalisation programme - which has turned the oil, power and agriculture sectors into vast state bureaucracies - accuse him of creating a "Bolivarian bourgeoisie" of corrupt officials and cronies. But Mr Chavez emphasised he intended to go further with his socialist model. Privately owned enterprises are now being expropriated with increasing frequency - a recent controversial example involved the French-owned Exito supermarket chain after allegations of profiteering and currency manipulation. "Eleven years ago I was quite gullible," the president said. "I even believed in a 'third way'. I thought it was possible to put a human face on capitalism. But I was wrong. "The only way to save the world is through socialism, but a socialism that exists within a democracy. There's no dictatorship here." Angry exchanges Mr Chavez became visibly agitated when faced with a set of specific questions about his government's respect for the independence of the judiciary, the freedom of the press and the rights of political opponents. Baduel has become a rallying point for Venezuela's opposition He was asked about the imprisonment of one of his fiercest critics, former defence minister Raul Baduel, and the pending charges filed against former opposition candidate Oswaldo Alvarez Paz. The Venezuelan president responded: "You don't know what you're saying. Wow, does the BBC in London defend corruption. You are being used. You really don't know what you're saying." As the tension in the presidential palace rose, Oliver Stone who was seated in a corner listening intently to the exchanges - along with a host of presidential aides and one of the president's daughters - gestured to the president with both hands. The message was easy to read: Calm down. Venezuelans are used to seeing an angry president. Last week he went on television to vent his fury on a judge who ruled that a wealthy businessman should be freed from detention after three years of imprisonment without trial. Mr Chavez accused the judge, Maria Afiuni, of behaving worse than an assassin and he demanded that she be jailed for 30 years. Judge Afiuni is now in prison facing corruption charges. 'Axis of unity' It is not President Chavez's domestic record that most concerns Western governments, it's his determination to create an "axis of unity" with countries he sees as fellow strugglers against American and Western imperialism. He lists the leaders of China, Russia, Syria and Belarus as "good friends", along with President Ahmedinejad of Iran. I am not Obama's enemy but it's difficult not to see imperialism in Washington. Those who don't see it, don't want to see it
President Chavez In the last three years Tehran and Caracas have strengthened military and intelligence cooperation while deepening their trade ties, and Mr Chavez responded indignantly to the latest round of UN sanctions on Tehran. "Venezuela is a free country and we will not be blackmailed by anyone," he said. "We will not accept being told what to do over Iran, we will not accept being anyone's colony". But he categorically denied claims frequently aired in the US that Venezuela is supplying Iran with uranium. His disappointment with Barack Obama was expressed in highly personal terms. "I shook Obama's hand and I said, 'I want to be your friend'. My hand is still outstretched. "I am not Obama's enemy but it's difficult not to see imperialism in Washington. Those who don't see it, don't want to see it, like the ostrich." The Venezuelan President did have a dialogue with the last Democrat in the White House, and that memory seems to have sharpened his disillusion with Obama. "I said to Hillary Clinton in front of President Obama, 'I wish I could enjoy the same relationship with a US president that I had when your husband was in power.'" President Chavez refused to say whether he would seek another term in elections scheduled for 2012. Though few doubt that he will, having pushed through the abolition of term-limits in a hard-fought referendum. "Fidel has spent his whole life on his (revolution)," Chavez reflected. "Whatever life I have left I will dedicate to this peaceful democratic revolution in Venezuela." You can watch HARDtalk from Venezuela on Monday 14 June and the interview with President Chavez on Tuesday 15 June on the BBC News Channel at 0230, 0430 and 2330 BST and on BBC World News at 0330, 0830, 1530 and 2030 GMT.
Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionWASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump is weighing naming as Food and Drug Administration commissioner a staunch libertarian who has called for eliminating the agency’s mandate to determine whether new medicines are effective before approving them for sale.
“Let people start using them, at their own risk,” the candidate, Jim O’Neill, said in a 2014 speech to a biotech group.
O’Neill, has also called for paying organ donors and setting up libertarian societies at sea—and has said he was surprised to discover that FDA regulators actually enjoy science and like working to fight disease.
A source close to the Trump transition team told STAT that Peter Thiel, the billionaire Trump donor who is helping shape the new administration, is pushing for the FDA appointment for O’Neill, his managing director at Mithril Capital Management.
Trump’s focus on O’Neill was first reported Wednesday morning by Bloomberg.
O’Neill would be an unusual choice. He is not a physician, and lacks the strong science background that nearly all former commissioners have had in recent years.
A graduate of Yale University, with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, O’Neill went to work at the Department of Health and Human Services in 2002, after a stint as speechwriter at the Department of Education. He worked his way up to principal associate deputy secretary, where he advised the HHS Secretary on all areas of policy, according to his LinkedIn page.
O’Neill first worked with Thiel at Clarium Capital Management, and also ran the Thiel Foundation and Breakout Labs, which funds early-stage companies in areas ranging from food science to biomedicine to clean energy. He is a promoter of anti-aging treatments and technology.
O’Neill also serves on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aims to create its own sea-based floating communities, on the theory that existing governments are woefully ineffective. “Obsolete political systems conceived in previous centuries are ill-equipped to unleash the enormous opportunities in twenty-first century innovation,” the Seasteading website notes.
O’Neill is not well known in Washington, but has been a frequent speaker on the biotech circuit.
In 2014, in a talk to a group gathered to discuss regenerative medicine, he recalled his days at HHS and expressed disdain for the FDA’s process.
“As a libertarian, I was inclined to believe that the regulatory costs that the FDA impose kill a lot of people and provide a lot of harm to the economy, and I don’t deny that… but one thing that surprised me is that the actual human beings at the Food and Drug Administration like science; they like curing disease and they actually like approving drugs and devices and biologics.”
The problem, O’Neill told the group, is the overall structure and incentives of the regulatory system.
“Every time the FDA commissioner approves something and someone gets sick who used it, the commissioner is summoned to a congressional committee that also controls his budget and forced to testify under oath, why he made this rash decision…It’s a miserable process,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill has proposed that the FDA only require companies to prove drugs are safe before they are sold – not that they actually work.
O’Neill has also said that organ donors should be allowed to be paid. “There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused,” he said in a speech at a 2009 Seasteading conference.
His participation in the Seasteading movement might be a sensitive topic, too. The video of his speech was available on The Seasteading Institute’s website in the afternoon, but by evening, it had disappeared.
In the speech, which is still available elsewhere, O’Neill said that “we can all wish that existing governments will somehow stumble into freedom, but if we want to achieve freedom, seasteads are by far the best prospect.”
Neither O’Neill, Thiel or Trump transition team staffers returned calls seeking comment.
Also under consideration for the FDA job: Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA deputy commissioner.
Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. A clinical assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, he is a venture partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, and a senior principal at TR Winston, a healthcare focused merchant and investment bank. He has testified before Congress 18 times on health and regulatory issues.
Gottlieb was recently named to the transition team.
Republished with permission from STAT. This article originally appeared on December 7, 2016This creation represents rey's home in the Star Wars Episode 7 The Force Awakens. Rey has made her home in the downed remains of an AT-AT. I have built this home inside the ATAT's foot rather than inside the body so that this project stay reasonable. This project is inspired by the Giant ATAT's model.
There is multiple gameplay possibilities. There is a hatch in back, sufficiently large to put a lego minifigure or other stuffs. The front of the sand dune can be removed to give access to the home's door. This front part of the dune, when detached, can represent som random wreck ready to be scavaged. Once the door opens, we can access the inside of the home. There is a retractable bed and many accessories from the movie : the rebel fighter pilot doll and helmet, rey's staff, her calendar, cooking stuffs, wilted flowers...In the wake of Donald Trump’s unexpected victory last week, tech reporters and commentators have been spinning wildly trying to predict the new Administration’s innovation agenda--especially as it relates to the FCC's 2015 "net neutrality" rules.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
The truth is we know almost nothing. Unlike Sec. Clinton, the Trump transition team never issued a specific technology plan. What little the campaign did say doesn’t suggest an overall approach, or, for that matter, much guidance on specific issues.
Trump, for example, took the FBI’s side in its fight with Apple over decrypting a telephone used by the San Bernardino terrorists. He threatened to block the AT&T/Time Warner merger, and to somehow unravel Comcast’s 2009 merger with NBCUniversal.
And long before the Republican primaries, Trump posted a single dismissive tweet in 2014 regarding a call from President Obama to “reclassify” broadband ISPs as public utilities. (More about that tweet in a moment.)
So far, that’s about it.
But the lack of information hasn’t stopped anyone and everyone from rushing to fill a vacuum of actual facts, and in particular to repeat the warning that whatever the next Administration’ s plans, the open Internet, and specifically the net neutrality rules, are certainly dead.
Citing “analysts,” The Washington Post concluded that Trump “could eviscerate some of the most significant tech policies of the 21st century, all but erasing President Obama's Internet agenda.” Ars Technica reported glumly that the 2015 rules “don’t seem likely to survive Donald Trump’s administration,” while CNET speculated that it’s “possible that an FCC led by Republicans could eliminate all or part of the rules and strip the FCC of some of its authority.” Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow assumes, based on nothing, that Trump will “gut” the rules in his first days in office. And so on.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of net neutrality's death have been greatly exaggerated. And in many cases, the hyperbole is intentional. The “analysts” that tech reporters are relying on are the same advocates who have pushed for the rules for a decade, often misrepresenting technical and legal realities in efforts to whip Internet users into a frenzy. No matter what happens, they keep insisting that without radical and immediate intervention, the Internet “as we know it” is always on the verge of disappearing.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Take a breath.
The basic net neutrality principles—that broadband providers can’t block access to lawful content, can’t intentionally slow network traffic for anti-competitive purposes, or otherwise discriminate against some content providers for non-technical reasons--are perfectly safe, regardless of what policies the Trump Administration ultimately adopts, or who the new President appoints to Chair the FCC.
Indeed, these principles have never been in any real danger, even without any FCC rules at all. For one thing, until the Commission exercised its nuclear option and transformed broadband into a public utility, policing anti-consumer and anti-competitive behavior had long been the job of a very active Federal Trade Commission, which aggressively pursued ISPs along with other players in the Internet ecosystem.
Perhaps that’s why the FCC was never able to find any substantial violations of net neutrality in a decade of investigations and despite the absence of rules enforceable by the agency, an inconvenient truth that forced the Commission to repeatedly characterize its net neutrality efforts as “prophylactic.”
That reality is what worries the advocacy groups, who have been using net neutrality to fight a proxy war over Internet governance. Net neutrality rules were always a cover for the real goal of transforming the Internet into a government-run utility, subject to the same kind of oversight that has long applied to gas, electric and water companies, including government-approved rates, permission to offer new products and services, and control over how and where infrastructure is deployed.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Consumers already suffering from the failures of a century of public utility experimentation in traditional fields would have been much harder to convince about the virtues of such a radical transformation of the fast-evolving broadband ecosystem. So the media-friendly net neutrality shorthand became their meme.
Any remaining doubt about the bait-and-switch strategy disappeared soon after a three-judge panel gave initial approval to the public utility gambit in June.
A celebratory blog post from Lori McGlinchey, Program Officer for Internet Freedom at the Ford Foundation, began by making explicit what close observers of the withering debate had known all along: the Ford Foundation had long been the source of funding, training and coordination for a range of different groups that had only appeared to be operating independently to promote net neutrality. (A call to the Ford Foundation for comment was not immediately returned.)
“For more than a decade,” McGlinchey wrote, “the organizations we support have been working tirelessly on what has until recently been a fairly obscure topic, even as the Internet has assumed an increasingly central role in our lives.”
That “fairly obscure topic,” the post explains, had never been enforceable net neutrality rules. It had always been about reclassifying broadband service “under Title II of the Communications Act,” allowing the FCC sole authority to regulate ISPs as “an essential public utility.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
The FCC's vote to reclassify, rather than the rules themselves, is the decision most likely to be overturned in the next Administration. So it's worth reviewing just how tacit advocacy for relatively straightforward rules became an all-out battle to wedge net neutrality into full public utility regulation.
The shift in tactics came in early 2014, after a federal appellate court rejected a previous effort to pass net neutrality rules, scolding the FCC in the process for having failed to identify its source of its authority to regulate broadband providers.
The same court had reached the same conclusion in 2010, but this time the three-judge panel provided what incoming (and now outgoing) FCC Chairman Wheeler himself referred to as a “roadmap” for getting the job done on the third try.
But months after starting a rulemaking process that followed the court’s instructions, Wheeler suddenly changed course late that year. Bowing to an overwhelming public campaign orchestrated by Ford-funded groups and a very public demand from the White House, Wheeler agreed to rewrite his proposal from scratch,rejecting the court's instructions.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Instead, an unpublished new version of the order transformed both wired and mobile broadband providers into public utilities, reversing decades of agency and Congressional policy going back to the dawn of the Internet age.
Wheeler’s final order, approved by a bare majority of Commissioners in early 2015, begins by subjecting ISPs to a century of common carrier rules that had been designed to manage the legal monopoly of the former Bell system.
Now with nearly unlimited authority, the Commission then proceeded to re-enact its net neutrality rules for the third time—but almost as an after-thought in the 400-page order.
The 2015 rules reiterate the earlier versions, prohibiting ISPs from blocking users from accessing lawful content, throttling traffic for reasons other than network management, or otherwise unreasonably discriminating against some content or services.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
The 2015 version also added a preemptive ban against “paid prioritization,” a theoretical service in which an ISP would agree to speed up the traffic of some content providers for a price, similar in effect to widely-used (and still legal) Content Delivery Networks and co-located servers.
Then, against the recommendation of even some net neutrality advocates, notably the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Commission at the last minute added what it called its “general conduct rule,” which allows the Commission to prohibit any future technology, service or business arrangement the agency decides after the fact “unreasonably disadvantages” end users or edge providers.
With the exception of those late additions, there had been little substantive objection to the rules themselves. At the time of the earlier effort in 2010, AT&T praised then-Chairman Julius Genachowski, saying his version provided “certainty while taking steps to preserve flexibility for investment and innovation.”
Comcast, as part of its 2009 merger with NBC Universal, had already voluntarily agreed to abide by the rules even if, as turned out to be the case, the courts ultimately rejected them for lack of legal authority.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
And Verizon, the only ISP to challenge the 2010 rules, did so on the grounds that the FCC lacked legal authority to regulate broadband services (the argument of all three legal challenges).
Even so, Verizon's business model has changed substantially since, and the company now says even the stricter 2015 version of the rules are a good idea—including the nebulous “general conduct” rule.
Republican leaders in Congress also made clear their general agreement with the principle that ISPs shouldn’t discriminate against traffic for anti-competitive reasons and expressed a willingness to give the FCC authority to enforce it.
In early 2015, before Wheeler caved to White House pressure to go down the public utility rabbit hole, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairs, respectively, of the Senate and House committees that oversee the FCC, circulated legislation that would have made the 2010 version of the rules a matter of federal law.
Wheeler and Democrats in Congress quickly rejected the legislation without any effort to negotiate on the specifics. Still, it’s worth noting that the rules would have been far more secure and harder to reverse as a statute than as an agency rulemaking.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
No matter. Though the Ford Foundation’s advocates are at pains to paint a picture of partisan resistance to any version of net neutrality, the only serious objection all along--from both Republicans and Democrats as well as industry groups--has been about the process by which the FCC kept trying to enact the rules without Congressional authority.
And that objection has come from the courts, from ISPs, from other FCC Commissioners, from the Federal Trade Commission, from leading Internet engineers, and at one point from a bi-partisan majority of Congress.
Specifically, technical and legal experts continue to reject the FCC’s unprecedented efforts to grant itself new and broad authority to regulate broadband carriers that Congress intentionally withheld, including through reclassification.
That was the thrust of three different lawsuits (including one challenging the 2015 rules that is still pending a possible rehearing), of Congressional resolutions, and of common sense.
Rather than work with Congress and other affected agencies to change the law, however, the FCC simply authorized itself to rewrite its own governing law, as dangerous a precedent for those who think net neutrality is a good idea as it may now prove to be for those who don’t.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Though it’s impossible to know for sure, the FCC's untethered rulemakings rather than the actual rules were almost surely the source of Trump’s cryptic 2014 objection.
Trump does refer to net neutrality as a return of the “Fairness Doctrine,” to be sure, but the November 12th tweet only mentions it in condemning “Obama’s attack on the internet” which Trump calls “another top down power grab.”
In other words, it wasn’t the FCC’s proposed new rules--which at that point Wheeler was refusing to disclose--that bothered then-candidate Trump. It was something the White House had done.
The reference to “Obama’s attack” is clearly aimed at the surprise announcement and video from the White House issued just two days earlier, which unveiled “President Obama’s plan for a free and open Internet.”
The self-styled “Obama plan,” unlike the proposal FCC Chairman Wheeler had originally circulated months before, was centered on transforming ISPs, by hook or by crook, into public utilities.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Net neutrality rules were secondary at best. Defending his call for reclassification, Obama said plainly that “The time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do.”
If that was Trump's real objection, he was right to raise it. As later revealed in a widely-read investigation by the Wall Street Journal’s Gautham Nagesh, public utility advocates had during the summer of 2014 staged a coup, convening a rump FCC operating within the White House to pressure Obama and, in turn the FCC, to change course and swallow the reclassification pill rather than follow the court's less risky "roadmap."
The public utility reclassification, and the White House’s unprecedented interference with an independent regulatory agency, accounts in any case for nearly all of the arguments made by the parties in the on-going litigation challenging Wheeler’s decision to switch course.
It’s also, for what it’s worth, the actual objection of the Republicans' 2016 Presidential platform—the closest we have so far to an actual policy statement from the President-elect.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
The platform document makes no mention at all of net neutrality. Rather, it objects to the White House-led decision by the FCC “to impose upon the internet rules devised in the 1930’s for the telephone monopoly.”
That is, for the public utility reclassification.
It seems likely now that either Congress, the White House, a future Trump-appointed FCC Chairman or some combination of the three will reverse Wheeler’s reluctant public utility order.
But the core principles of enforceable net neutrality are in relatively little danger. For one thing, ISPs have repeatedly pledged, sometimes in legally-binding settlements, to follow them no matter what.
And if the FCC's 2015 order is revised, the FTC's authority to police broadband providers will likely return. A provision of the FTC's governing statute denies the agency authority over any enterprise otherwise designated a "common carrier." So in granting itself authority, the FCC unintentionally or otherwise cut off its sister agency.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
Indeed, if the Thune/Upton bill is resurrected, Republicans and Democrats may finally agree not only on the specific rules but which government agencies are best-suited to enforce them, ending the net neutrality fight once and for all.
And that, ironically, is what really terrifies the advocates.
Why? The Ford Foundation, at least, which takes pride in having financed and coordinated the campaign all along, has acknowledged that its ultimate goal was never the preservation of an open Internet but rather its transformation, for better or worse, into a government-regulated utility.
Banking on the likelihood of a Democratic victory in 2016, the organization and its subsidiaries believed they could accomplish and maintain their real objective through a combination of deferential courts, a compliant White House and a supine FCC--bypassing Congress completely.
But in betting the house on the public utility end-result they wanted, they risked losing net neutrality rules they promised consumers they were ensuring.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s surprising victory last week, that gamble now seems a serious strategic error.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT
And that's likely why so-called consumer advocates are yelling more hysterically than ever that the Internet as we know it is, yet again, about to end.
The most likely outcome of last week’s election, however, is just the opposite. The advocates may wind up with the result they campaigned for, but not the one they really wanted.
For consumers, at least, that's been the best possible solution all along.As excerpts from Margaret Alva’s book ‘Courage and Commitment – An Autobiography’ are making headlines, one after another, the fears of millions of Bharatiya citizens are coming true – that Sonia Gandhi functions in an absolutely arbitrary manner and supports corrupt, anti-national activities and nexuses. Alva is not the first to spill the beans on the political mafia kind of management that Sonia has adopted. Tavleen Singh, Sanjaya Baru, Natwar Singh, Jayanti Natarajan, Vinay Sitapati have all come out with similar accounts.
Complete Subservience – the Congress code
In 2008, Alva said that Congress seats for the elections in Karnataka were open to bidders rather than subject to meritocratic appointment. Congress denied her claims and a meeting with the party president, Sonia Gandhi resulted in Alva’s expulsion from her numerous official responsibilities. AK Antony seemed to have a hand in her expulsion as per what she claims.
Quoting a news piece :
“Alva reproduces in her autobiography, a letter she had written when she was asked to resign from the post of All India Congress Committee General Secretary, sometime in 2009.
She writes: “Times have changed and for the first time I have come to feel like a misfit in an organisation that I considered as precious as my own home. A look at our recent candidates lists show a distinct pattern of patronages to the wealthy and rich lobbies like mining, education and real-estate…
It is hard to function through intermediaries because we never seem to know when and which message is yours and what you want done. I have now come to realize that I am out of tune with the decision-makers around you.”
She further writes about how a call from Sonia lasting a few seconds sealed her fate, and marked her exit from Delhi, something she claimed her opponents within the party wanted all along. She was made the Governor of Uttarakhand, without her consent”.
Alva’s Book also reveals that Gandhis had connections with Christian Michel’s father Wolfgang, as per this report. Christian Michel is the main middleman in the controversial Rs 3600 crore Agusta Westland VVIP chopper scam.
According to Alva’s autobiography, the case dates back to 1980s while Sanjay Gandhi was alive. Quoting the news report:
“Sanjay Gandhi, CPN Singh and tank scam
It was known as the tank scam where Sanjay Gandhi and CPN Singh had allegedly connived to sell second hand Indian army tanks to SA. CPN Singh, who was a known key aide and confidante of Sanjay Gandhi, was removed from his position because of Alva’s allegations then. Moreover, Alva in her autobiography has alleged that she was being targeted by CPN Singh as she was about to blow the lid off his connections with Michel.”
Alva’s book also quotes Sonia as saying during PV Narasimha Rao government, “What has the Congress government done for me? This house was allotted to me by the Chandra Shekhar government”.
Alva has worked with Congress for 45 years, and one bout of candid feedback marked her expulsion from all party positions. She also accused her boss Sonia Gandhi of running the party “arbitrarily”.
“The decision making in the Congress is very centralised,” Alva said on a TV show.
Sonia, the vengeful
Tavleen Singh has also written 2 books, ‘Durbar’ and her latest ‘India’s Broken Tryst’ which throws a lot of light on Lutyen |
is clearly geared toward similar use cases and that Google offers a version of its Chrome browser with the Dart virtual machine built-in. Google also offers a Dart-to-JavaScript compiler and plenty of tools for web developers. The ambition behind Dart is much bigger, though, so it maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise that the team is bringing its runtime to App Engine and other servers, as well.
I was able to sit down with Lars Bak and Kasper Lund, the two Danes who together invented Dart (Bak also developed Google’s V8 JavaScript engine), to chat about the news and the state of Dart — and its future — in general.
They noted that the original idea behind Dart was always to create a general purpose programming language. When they started the project, they didn’t just want to create some variant of JavaScript. The idea was to create a dynamically typed language that developers could pick up pretty easily and that would increase developer productivity.
Because of this, the team always focused not just on making the language accessible, but also on the other tools that developer need to be productive in a language. These include the Dart Editor, the main IDE for Dart and a large number libraries that extend the language. In addition, the team also recently launched a developer version of the Chrome browser for Android that has built-in Dart support. Lund also noted that the Dart Editor comes with a number of tools that help developers monitor their programs during runtime. At I/O, the team also showed how Dart can play nicely with Google’s Polymer web components project and its new Material Design user interface language.
At I/O, Google announced that developers can now also deploy Dart on its Compute Engine infrastructure using Docker, but by also soon supporting it on App Engine, developers get easier access to Google’s Data Store, cloud monitoring services and caching services.
The other thing Dart developers have long been asking for is built-in Dart support in Chrome. When I asked Bak about this, he gave me a knowing smile and said that the team would have more to announce about this soon. Built-in support in Chrome would obviously give Dart a major boost. While the Dart-to-JavaScript compiler works very well, the Dart VM can execute the code significantly faster. It would also give developers a bigger incentive to pick up Dart, given that Google isn’t likely to remove Dart support from its browser once it has included it.
Looking ahead, Bak told me that the team is also looking at how it can bring asynchronous code to Dart through concepts similar to JavaScript’s asyn/await.
Since the team launched Dart 1.0, it has also worked on creating an Ecma standard for Dart (just like JavaScript is based on the EcmaScript standard). As Bak argued, no good programming language has ever been created by committee, so it was important for Google to get Dart to the 1.0 milestone before it started this process. Now, however, it wants to involve other industry players, too, and the team hopes that other browser will integrate it.
Being able to write both the front-end and back-end code in the same language is something the Dart team believes will make for more stable code and will make it easier for developer teams to work together.Prince and I did not get off, so to speak, on the good foot. While he would ultimately influence me — both personally and musically — as much as Bowie or The Beatles (my Trinity), his presence initially challenged the most important friendship of my life. Then, it cemented that friendship, and led to funk n’ roll adventures alongside a superstar-in-exile named RuPaul. My life radiated outward from there.
Todd and I had been tight since age seven. When hormones hit, we decided to become musicians, as both of our fathers had been. We spent the summer of our fourteenth year – 1979 – huddled over Led Zeppelin records in Todd’s family’s suburban bungalow in Atlanta. Todd, the better player, was the alpha. He took on the guitar parts, and patiently showed me the rudiments of bass. The plan was to make music together, form a band, and be rock stars. Like you do.
All was going well until 1980, when rec room metal band Iqee Phudj offered me a seat on their rocket to fame. Todd, a shy, overweight redhead, loathed the rich, heart-throbby kids of Iqee Phudj, and they had no time for him. They’d had no time for me, either, until they discovered I could sort of navigate some Zeppelin songs. But Iqee Phudj was, by far, the best way for me, a bespectacled beanpole, to meet girls. So I joined, and practiced along to Rush, Pink Floyd, and Black Sabbath records. I was an avid pupil of the metal. I enjoyed new popularity with the affluent, cool kids, and affection from the Bonne Bell lip-glossed honeys.
Todd and I drifted apart. He resented my defection, I felt guilty, and we saw much less of each other. Each of us stayed busy on our points of the spectrum. While I partook of run-of-the-mill adolescent kicks, Todd lost a lot of weight, and became that rare punk rocker with knowledge of chord theory. He wore a biker jacket emblazoned with KILLING JOKE across the back. Bullies tormented him at school, so he cut the word FEAR into his arm. They let him be.
Despite the cooling in our friendship, I dropped by Todd’s house when his new best friend, our classmate, Stephen, was visiting. (Todd lived on the same street as me, mere minutes away.) My tiny mutt, Pee Wee, accompanied me.
As soon as we arrived, Stephen launched into a tirade about how he hated dogs. He was aloof at school, holding his books to his chest, but at Todd’s, he was an extrovert. I protectively petted Pee Wee’s head while Stephen and Todd worked themselves into an ecstasy of hatred, citing various stupidities of the world.
“Oh, my mom was sooooo dumb last night,” Stephen said to Todd as if I wasn’t there. “So dumb! She got lost trying to find the Omni! She’s retarded!”
“Todd and I saw Kiss at the Omni a couple years ago,” I said meekly. Todd cringed. “Yeah, and Rush, and Aerosmith, too. At the Omni.”
“Oh,” Stephen barked a nasty laugh. “So awesome.”
“Who’d you see at the Omni?” I asked.
“Rick James and Prince.”
Prince. I’d seen a poster of Prince’s eponymous sophomore album in Peaches record store. I was standing in line to meet Ted Nugent. (He gave me a signature pick and mussed my mullet.) Prince loomed over the cash register behind the Nuge, beaming freaky sex; androgynous face haloed by a relaxed Afro, thinly muscled torso; insolent doe eyes. In my memory, he’s a god of love disapproving of the Nuge’s belligerent hyper masculinity. But I did not clock that then. I was just confused. (I was easily confused.)
All I knew of Prince was that arresting photo. I knew even less about Rick James. This was 1980, and although the soundtrack to my early 70s childhood was colorblind AM radio, the Ohio Players alongside The Sweet, I was now listening exclusively to white, disco hating, FM rock radio, and playing carports and such with Iqee Phudj. If you needed to know anything about, say, the new Kansas album, I could tell you.
“Wow,” Todd said. “Rick James and Prince.”
“Oo!” I said in a fey voice, like John Ritter’s character Jack Tripper on Three’s Company. “Prince! Oo! How was that?”
I may have done a limp-wrist thing, may have lisped. I’d never had a problem with gay people, but faux gay got a laugh with the fratty Iqee Phudj guys. Todd, in fact, could rock the faux gay. In any case, being faux gay to Stephen was a mistake if I wanted him to like me. But maybe I didn’t want him to like me.
Stephen’s eyes burned into me. “It was an incredible show,” he said.
“Yeah,” Todd jumped in. “I’ve heard Rick James is, like, the best shit around.”
“He was great, yeah,” Stephen nodded. “But Prince. Oh my god. Oh my God.”
At that point, Pee Wee jumped onto the bed next to Stephen, and he pushed her to the floor. “Damn dog!” he shouted.
“Hey!” I said, scooping up my startled pet.
“She’s OK, she’s OK,” Todd tried to reassure me, his eyes apologetic.
Indeed, Pee Wee was OK. But we left anyway. My blood boiled with jealousy. I decided to hate Prince, and to hate my best friend’s secret lover, Stephen.
Over the next year or so, Todd and I barely spoke. My life was girlfriend, band, and rock n’ roll fantasy. I got my driving license and explored Atlanta, radio blasting in my ’68 VW Bug. It was 1981, and new wave was seeping into the mainstream. Bands like the Knack, the Pretenders, and Blondie resonated in me, deeper than anything had before, in hungry areas I did not know existed, places that became hungrier the more they were fed.
Styx and REO Speedwagon, et al, began to lose traction. Girls sporting new wave fashions – parachute pants! Spandex! ripped t-shirts! – distracted me. I wanted to take more risks, explore. But I lacked the courage. The brazenness in the reverberations of punk, even diluted into new wave, felt accessible. I circled around my future.
The coup de grace on my “old life” came in 1982, when Todd and I transferred from a largely white, Catholic high school, to an integrated public performing arts school. There, the outsider punkiness of the rising queer community – actors, musical theater kids, dancers – and the cultural diversity in general, further inspired me. When my acting teacher gave me a copy of Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries, fireworks went off in my head.
Within months, I metamorphosed: I quit Iqee Phudj, broke up with my girlfriend, and wrote favorable reviews of the Go-Go’s, Bow Wow Wow, and Elvis Costello in the school newspaper. (I panned Meat Loaf’s movie, Roadie.) A beauty school dropout gave me a disastrous new wave haircut, after which Iqee Phudj burned me in effigy at a keg party. My crime: “going new wave” and “being a fag.”
Todd was watching. Stephen had stayed behind at Catholic school. Todd invited me to see him perform as Riff Raff in the weekly midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He’d been doing it for months with a band of fellow misfits, his first clique, the new wave queer underground of Atlanta. Upon meeting this coterie of teens and young adults traipsing around a repertory cinema in their underwear (erstwhile wallflower Todd sported a corset and stockings), I was smitten. It was a “Road to Damascus” moment.
Thus began Todd’s and my rapprochement. I was pivoting, and Prince, who’d also recently “gone new wave,” would play an integral role in the path ahead.
“Bring your bass over,” Todd told me on the phone in late 1982. “I want you to hear something. And you gotta meet this guy, RuPaul.”
During our estrangement, Todd had hunkered down on guitar, branching out from goth-y punk to funky bands like New Order, Yaz and Heaven 17. He’d also picked up a compilation LP of D.C. Go-Go music, which he wore out.
When I walked in, Todd was blasting something very funky, but also quite rock. He bobbed his head as he played along to a pounding kick drum, pulsing bass, and blasts of synthesizer, over which a falsetto screamed. He didn’t need to tell me this was Prince. Even though I’d not yet heard him, I knew.
Dirty Mind had been out a year, and Todd bought it used. Like the sleeves of Ohio Players records at Peaches, the cover image radiated sex, but decidedly non-heteronormative sex. Here was a monochrome shot of Prince, in bikini briefs, thigh-high stockings, and a studded raincoat, standing in front of an upended box spring mattress, staring down the camera with both invitation and warning. But, unlike when I’d been in line to meet the Nuge, I wasn’t confused. I’d crossed a few thresholds since then.
I instantly loved Dirty Mind. (It is my favorite Prince album, to this day.) Todd and I spent that afternoon listening to the LP again and again, bonding as we had over the Tolkien-meets-the-blues of Zeppelin years before. The pop of “When U Were Mine,” the funk jams “Partyup,” “Uptown,” and the title track. And yes, the fearless taboo-breaking punk rock of “Sister” (incest!), and the grind of “Head” (oral sex!). For two kids looking for ways to be brave, to evoke “emotional reality” from our “totally fake” world via something, anything, this irresistible, pansexual funk-punk-rock was the ticket. It was made for us, two curious, sex-crazed white southern kids, but clearly, it was also made for urban kids – male, female, whatever – of color. Or, as Prince sang on “Uptown”: “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a-freakin’!” It connected us to the other, made it not so “other” after all. In this way, Prince, although edgy and modern, embodied the “hippie dream” of yore; even though my mom would never “get” him (would, in fact, loathe him), to me, he and his music personified the professed goals of her generation more than, say, her CSNY records.
Naturally we pored over the liner notes. Like you do. In inky Courier font, Prince (his real name!) gave props to God and… Joni?
“Joni Mitchell!” Todd said.
This would send Todd and me to the Joni canon, and spark a whole other enduring flame of fandom. (Prince’s consistent shout-outs to God did not send us to church, however.)
Also: but for a couple exceptions: composed, performed, and produced by Prince. By 1982, I’d spent enough time learning bass to understand what it took to master an instrument – much less dozens – and I was stunned. A recording auteur was nothing new – Warner Brothers initially marketed Prince as “the new Stevie Wonder,” in part because Wonder also did it all. But Prince was my first auteur. He was one of my own.
In time, I would grasp the mechanics of recording, and come to appreciate the distinctive lo-fi nature of Dirty Mind. It is more intimate than any other Prince album. Technically speaking, I think I know how he did it. (I won’t bore you with that.) All I knew at the time was the feeling that Prince was right there.
What about Prince’s friends? Who hung out with this guy? Who shared this dream with him and played his songs on the road? Ah, there they are, on the inner sleeve photo. Of course: a sexy, freaky, interracial band of men in slinky new wave attire, plus a sullen, hot woman.
Todd grabbed his guitar. “I already figured out ‘When U Were Mine,’” he said. “I’ll show you.”
While doing that, Todd informed me that he’d invited this guy he’d met, RuPaul, over to play music. Todd told me RuPaul was the biggest Prince fan of anyone he knew. He’d be taking the bus over tomorrow, and was I free to come by and play some music with them?
I was.
Twenty-four hours later, a six-foot-four, skinny black guy with a radiant smile was walking through the shade of the oaks and pines on Todd’s street. Although he was dressed relatively simply – clam diggers, Chinese slippers, and a bolero jacket with safety pins, if memory serves – my first thought was, “He looks like Vanessa Williams. With freckles.”
Todd, fake ID in hand, had met RuPaul at a club where Ru was go-go dancing with two large black women; they were billed as “RuPaul and the U-Hauls.” The trio added backup vocals, between-song patter, and compelling visuals to Todd’s favorite band, trashy, queer-friendly, new wave funk quintet the Now Explosion. Ru wanted to start his own band.
Indeed, RuPaul was a huge Prince fan, going back to Prince’s ’78 debut For You. Although he would ultimately rise to fame a decade later as a drag queen, in late ’82, RuPaul was, like Prince, more new wave cross dresser, in part because he was dirt poor, and good drag is expensive. Ru was quite inventive, though, incorporating aspects of punk, P-funk glam, New Romantic, and boho thrift store into his outfits, which he wore onstage and off. As much as I wanted to emulate Prince, RuPaul actually did it, while adding much of his own original flair. He even used only his first name. (Full name: RuPaul Andre Charles.)
Soon after that first meeting, RuPaul, Todd, and I formed our band, Wee Wee Pole, and booked our first gig, opening for the Now Explosion about six weeks hence. In lieu of a drummer, we incorporated Todd’s dad’s ancient drum machine, later adding percussionist, David Klimchak. We churned out songs clearly influenced by Prince: sexually frank numbers like “Body Heat,” (banned from college radio for faux orgasms), “Hips,” “Lisa,” and others. We carved out our own niche, too, with funny songs like “Pizza,” “Tarzan,” “Fun, Happy, Fun,” and “Who Wants Gum?” We sought to occupy the funny/sexy axis.
Within months, we were headlining clubs. All of 1983 was about Wee Wee Pole, and it was a heady time. A few months in, RuPaul hired a kid named Javier to be his onstage valet, a la Jerome to Morris Day in Prince protégés the Time. (This concept only lasted a couple gigs. During a gig at Atlanta new wave club 688, Javier was caught stealing from the till.) I booked us a tour to New York, where we played triumphant gigs at Danceteria and the Pyramid Club, returning home exhausted from our adventures.
The fun was a bit much for me, however, and I quit soon thereafter, joining Athens band Go Van Go for musical and lifestyle adventures of a different kind. Everyone went on to other projects. Todd and I remained very close until his 2004 death. RuPaul, of course, achieved his dream of superstardom, getting closer to the actual Prince than any of us.
As a fan, I stuck with Prince all through his golden period, i.e. the 80s. While on tour with the Fleshtones, I saw him on the Lovesexy tour in Paris in 1988, and it was, of course, mind blowing. (Sheila E. almost stole the show. No small feat.) As an album artist, he lost me around Graffiti Bridge. But his singles, presence, enduring artistic energy, and his David v. Goliath stance on the recording industry – all of it continued to captivate me. He was a moveable feast. When my son was very small, I happily sang him “Kiss” and “Starfish and Coffee.”
In the wake of Prince’s untimely, tragic death, I recall all of the above with heightened clarity, in part because Prince’s songs are everywhere, and songs are potent time travel devices, intensified in blindsiding grief. His lawyers are either overwhelmed or taking time off, because the internet is chock full of Prince, and this has never been allowed before. It’s both wonderful and excruciating.
Other musicians’ deaths – Bowie, Cobain – have occasioned such experiences of elegy and both communal and private pain, but not with the same intensity as Prince. Not nearly. Not for me, at least. He was one of my own, just six years older than me. His art shaped me – and many of my peers – more than any other musician. Most crucially, he brought me back to making music with my dear friend. That friend is now also gone, but in the magic of music, he is revivified anew, as much as a presence can be, in the songs and images of the strange, willful man who made us unafraid.
– Robert Burke Warren
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on TheWeeklings.com.
Other Posts You Might LikeBackground — The Divine Right of Capital
The biggest problems often seem less like problems and more like unavoidable features of reality – their permanence and ubiquity make them sort of blend into the background. For example, Europeans once took for granted that Kings ruled by Divine Right. It was such a longstanding tradition, few people questioned it.
Marjorie Kelly, founder of Business Ethics magazine and a fellow at the Tellus Institute, has argued for more than a decade that we face another problem of this kind: ownership of corporations – specifically, the cultural norms and laws determining who owns what and what responsibilities and privileges come with that ownership.
In her 2003 book, The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly argued that modern ownership structures are expressions of old feudal ideas about the rights and privileges of ownership. She argues these old ideas are not only long-outmoded but also directly contradict some of our most central cultural values.
Consider the most basic calculation in corporate accounting: profit. Profit equals revenue minus costs. Thanks both to longstanding corporate cultural norms and court decisions like the Supreme Court’s Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, corporations feel obligated to maximize profit for their shareholders, which means maximizing revenue and minimizing costs. It sounds benign until we consider that costs include the salaries of every person doing the actual work of the company. Meanwhile, most shareholders are “absentee owners” who don’t interact with the company except to collect dividends (and raise hackles when they believe a company is too generous with workers).
The example above illustrates that “profit” isn’t just a value-neutral accounting tool. It expresses a judgement about who should receive the fruits of labor.
So companies generally shift as much of the reward of work from workers (top executives a notable exception) and shareholders as possible. What have shareholders done for this privilege? They’ve taken a risk, by handing over money without knowing if they’ll get it back.
The net effect is we’ve systemically promoted gambling at the expense of work.
I read The Divine Right of Capital months ago and had that rare and precious experience of having my brain spun around inside my skull. Despite initial skepticism, Kelly won me over.
Owning Our Future
If the Divine Right of Capital has a shortcoming, it’s that it provided diagnosis only; no cure was offered.
Nonetheless, a decade later, Kelly wrote Owning Our Future, and while it doesn’t provide anything like a comprehensive corrective (Kelly admits this in the book’s prologue) it’s an exploration of possible ways forward and a great conversation starter.
In recent years, an alternative ownership culture has blossomed around the edges of mainstream capitalism. We see it in the proliferation of coops, social businesses of various kinds, and employee-owned businesses.
Kelly argues these new models provide clues regarding how ownership structures might evolve for the healthier. Owning Our Future is a kind of survey of the different ownership structures emerging from this movement, including discussions of their strengths and weaknesses, and speculation about their potential impact on our world
To convey the fundamental difference between mainstream ownership models and the alternatives she discusses, Kelly draws a distinction between What she calls “Extractive” ownership models, and “Generative” models.
The goal of extractive models are to “maximize financial gain and minimize financial risks.” Kelly argues there are several problems with the extractive model. As just one example, if a company is obligated to maximize profit, it’s incentivized to leave some things off of balance sheets and contracts.
For example, let’s say a new coal plant raises the incidence of lung cancer in nearby residents. But the contracts to build the plant don’t acknowledge the existence of such costs, to say nothing of specifying who is to bear them, and the residents themselves aren’t acknowledged as stakeholders in the transaction.
As a result, residents and the local health system bear a brutal cost resulting from a transaction in which they had no say. Current corporate structures provide no adequate institutional mechanisms for sorting out the resulting messes, or better, preventing them in the first place. To the extent they get sorted out at all, they tend to involve dogfights in which burned citizens go to war with the companies involved. It’s antagonistic, trust-destroying, and often fails to solve anything.
This happens not because company managers are evil, but because our cultural and legal institutions tell those of us who work in corporations that our obligation is to the absentee owners (shareholders), even if it conflicts with our own interests or those of others.
Generative Models, on the other hand, take as their mission some notion of service to community. This is an old, time-honored idea, as Kelly acknowledges: “It’s what the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker have always done – serve the community as a way to make a living”. In these models profit is a part of the mission but only as a means to the more central end of community service.
Although the idea is old, Kelly argues it can be and is being implemented not just by the one-employee shop down the street, but by big companies in complex, modern economies. She cites the John Lewis Partnership, owner of one of the largest retail chains in Great Britain. The company is profitable, owned entirely by employees, more democratic than any public U.S. corporation I know of, and its central mission is employee happiness, not profit. It has thrived through decades of disruptive economic change.
Kelly’s conception of generative design goes considerably beyond what I’ve mentioned here – she describes at length five core design principles behind the idea.
Although she argues forcefully for the virtues of generative models, she’s silent on the matter of how we might promote their proliferation. I wish she weren’t, because it’s not clear how her alternatives will displace the entrenched economic forces with sufficient speed and scale.
Another quibble is her discussion of stakeholders. One core principle of generative models is that companies must take account of stakeholder-interest. What she doesn’t much discuss is the exceptional difficulty in defining who is and isn’t a stakeholder. Certain global problems, like climate change, illustrate that, to some extent, every person on Earth is a stakeholder in every company on Earth. How do you take that into account in building a company?
Nonetheless, I loved Owning Our Future. Its umbrella message is that the concept of ownership is not, never has been, and should never be static. Ownership has conferred different rights and responsibilities in different times and places, and our notions of ownership can and will change in the future. Whether they will change for the better or worse depends on how attentive the American electorate is to the issue. Kelly’s book can go a long way toward focusing that attention.
For those interested, I recommend reading Kelly’s earlier book The Divine Right of Capital. It’s aged little and helps bring to light background assumptions most of us aren’t aware we hold. Recognizing those assumptions provides a sound foundation for fully appreciating Owning Our Future.
By Nick Bentley
Organizer, Reclaim DemocracyDudes on horses.
On July 7, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had a late-afternoon date to ride horses with Mike Pence in Washington, D.C. But earlier that morning he had meetings in Yorktown, Pennsylvania, leaving him two choices: Drive six hours round-trip and miss the chance to bond with the VP, or take a helicopter and send the bill to the taxpayers.
Little surprise that Zinke went with the latter. Politico reports that the flight cost about $6,250. An Interior spokesperson justified it by saying that using a U.S. Park Police helicopter allowed Zinke “to familiarize himself with the in-flight capabilities of an aircraft he is in charge of.” That excuse might be halfway believable if the former Montana congressman hadn’t already made it clear that, like many of his Trump administration colleagues, he prefers faster, more expensive modes of travel.
A former Navy SEAL, Zinke arrived in the Trump administration with a reputation as a rugged outdoorsman, but that’s taken some hits since entering office. Along with his appreciation of private air travel, Zinke has a soft spot for some of the more over-the-top rituals practiced by Cabinet secretaries. He’s also shown that he’s not quite as adept at the whole man’s-man thing as he’d like people to think.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Aug. 18, 2016, 10:25 PM GMT / Updated Aug. 19, 2016, 6:56 AM GMT
NEW YORK — It's Donald Trump like he's never been seen before.
Life-size naked statues of the Republican presidential nominee greeted passers-by in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Cleveland on Thursday. They are the brainchild of an activist collective called INDECLINE, which has spoken out against Trump before.
In a statement, the collective said the hope is that Trump "is never installed in the most powerful political and military position in the world."
A statue in Manhattan's Union Square quickly drew the attention of people before it was removed by the city's parks department.
Groups of people took pictures with the statue and other shouted anti-Trump statements, according to NBC New York. The effigy was removed by park department workers around 1:15 p.m., according to the station.
The NYC Parks Department told NBC New York in a cheekily written statement that, "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small."
People pose for selfies with a naked statue of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that was left in Union Square in New York City on Thursday. BRENDAN MCDERMID / Reuters
The statues were created by an artist in Cleveland. They are of a stern-faced Trump with his hands folded over a bulging belly. Some parts of male genitalia are visible while others seemingly are missing.
"It is through these sculptures that we leave behind the physical and metaphorical embodiment of the ghastly soul of one of America's most infamous and reviled politicians," INDECLINE said in its statement.
Trump's campaign declined to comment on the statues.
INDECLINE said statues on the West Coast were still in place.
In San Francisco, onlookers stopped to take photos with the statue in the gay neighborhood of the Castro District, according to NBC Bay Area.
A passerby looks at a statue depicting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the nude in San Francisco on Thursday. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
And in Central Los Angeles, the statue was placed trump in the neighborhood of Los Feliz, directly in front of the La Luz Jesus Gallery, showcasing the figure against a backdrop of colorful designs, according to the station.“That was our ass to ass transition. A nod to Requiem for a Dream.”
It really shouldn’t have worked. An R-rated, superhero movie set in the X-Men universe featuring graphic violence, nudity, an abundance of profanity, and an epic sex-scene montage? I mean, it’s clearly aimed at someone like me, but surely the masses wouldn’t accept it. Right?
And yet, Deadpool is currently the 6th highest-grossing Marvel movie. And not just in the MCU either… that’s including all Marvel-related films including those featuring the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Elektra too.
The newly-released Blu-ray/DVD comes loaded with supplements, and chief among them are a pair of commentary tracks featuring Ryan Reynolds and various behind-the-scenes talent. We gave a listen to the one with Reynolds and the film’s writers in the hopes that it would be as entertaining as it was informative.
Keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary track for Deadpool.
https://medium.com/media/77d07d0e3a8eab01004aa05bffe9473d/href
Deadpool (2016)
Commentators: Ryan Reynolds (actor/producer), Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (screenwriters)
1. They’re recording the commentary in the basement of Reynolds’ home. “If you hear dogs barking, or if you hear an elderly door-to-door salesman who sounds like he’s tied up with a ball gag and several other things, just carry on.”
2. Reynolds stole a Deadpool costume from the film, and it’s sitting in the room with them during the commentary.
3. The opening credits sequence is heavily inspired by Adam Berg’s award-winning Philips Carousel commercial.
https://medium.com/media/8232d995ba4dd4360b336df9587d9560/href
4. Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” was the first song added to the script nearly six years ago.
5. Director Tim Miller originally planned to do the entire film in CG before moving forward with a practical production, “which he soon realized was totally ludicrous and impractical,” adds Reynolds, “but a great idea.”
6. The gum on the ceiling of the cab was Miller’s.
7. Reynolds is asked if the actors had to sign waivers to allow opening credits referring to them without their actual names, but he says no. “As long as you don’t use anyone else’s real name it’s fine.”
https://medium.com/media/94a567829d5b0f23f489a4654d83a256/href
8. Dopinder (Karan Soni) is named after one of Reynolds’ elementary school classmates “who unfortunately died after being struck by lightning. I’m not making that up.”
9. Wernick’s daughter saw Soni in an AT&T ad and recommended him to her father who then proceeded to recommend him to the film’s casting director.
10. It took Reynolds forty minutes to get into the suit early on, but he got it down to ten by the time they wrapped. They had nine suits and destroyed seven of them. “I think it’s the most faithful comic book to screen adaptation of a super suit ever,” he adds, which explains in part why he stole it from the set. “I just walked off set with it and basically told them to go fuck themselves. I waited ten years to do the movie, and if they want to take the suit back they can come try and take it from me.”
11. Reynolds has been attached to the Deadpool character as far back as 2004. It originally came to him during production on Blade: Trinity. “Say what you will about that movie, but it brought me great things. It actually was a lot of fun, I got to sort of improvise and goof around, and looking back at it I was kind of in a weird way playing Wade Wilson.”
Blade Trilogy [Blu-ray]
12. In earlier drafts of the script, the character of Angel Dust (Gina Carano) was originally three different characters ‐ Garrison Kane, Wire, and Sluggo.
13. The highway overpass sequence where Deadpool is shot through the arm was filmed on a viaduct in Reynolds’ home town of Vancouver, British Columbia. “I became public enemy # 1 because we cocked up the traffic in Vancouver for two and a half weeks while we took over this bridge.”
14. The guy who gets shot in the head at 12:07 is played by Reynolds’ stunt double from Blade: Trinity.
15. The bit where Deadpool is shot in the asshole was added a week before filming. He was originally going to be shot in the face.
16. Reynolds also stole the katanas from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “In a fitting piece of destiny those were stolen from me,” he says, during a move.
17. That’s Bea Arthur on Wilson’s shirt in the pizza delivery scene. “That cost ten grand,” says Reynolds, “I don’t made saying that.” It had to be licensed from Arthur’s estate, but the money went to a charity.
18. The pizza box says “Feige’s Famous” as a nod to Kevin Feige, head of Marvel.
19. They filmed the Sister Margaret interiors at the Cobalt bar, “a bar when I was a kid you would never go within 3000 feet of and now is just hipster central.”
20. Wernick’s kids were originally in the arcade scene but ended up on the cutting room floor. “Where they belong,” adds Reynolds.
21. “We spent more time on this fucking sequence than any other sequence in the film,” says Reynolds about the sex montage. They say it was due to time spent on choreography and tone.
22. Reynolds’ first shirtless scene prompts the trio to comment on the immense amount of salmon he ate during production.
23. The movie was shot over forty-eight days. Green Lantern, by contrast was an eighty-nine day shoot.
24. Budgetary constraints made them cut a motorcycle chase sequence between Deadpool and Ajax.
25. Reynolds got into trouble when he was 25 years old after changing a sign in Regina, Saskatchewan. He put another sign over it that said “Welcome to Regina, which rhymes with fun.”
26. They think most viewers miss one of their references to X-Men Origins: Wolverine ‐ the bit where Ajax threatens to sew Wilson’s mouth shut but is warned against it.
27. None of them seem to sure about how to pronounce gif.
28. They altered Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s (Brianna Hildebrand) powers from the comic for the movie and had to ask Marvel’s permission to do so.
29. The main reason that the film is told in a non-linear way is “because the budget was such that we wanted to start the movie with an action sequence and have action sprinkled throughout the first act but couldn’t afford to do three different action sequences.”
30. Reynolds praises Carano for both her strength and gentleness. “[She] never felt that comfortable manhandling me,” he says. “I had to keep asking her to be rougher.”
31. David Cunningham (Hugh Scott), the fellow patient who Wilson befriends at the lab, is a comic character named Worm although he’s never called that in the movie.
32. The machine that Wilson is strapped into was called the punch bowl, and Wernick claims the prop cost $750k. Reynolds refuses to believe it.
33. |
. "I'm not done. I can go a little longer."
The fifth Hokage, Lady Tsunade spoke into Sakura's ear. "It's over, Sakura-chan. You can't do anymore." Lady Tsunade started to pull Sakura away, when Sakura roughly pulled out of her grasp.
"I'm sorry, Tsunade-sama. I can't stop now that I've started." Sakura refused to stop staring at her fallen brothers. "This technique can't be stopped."
Kakashi gasped. "Sakura! No! How could you even know that technique?"
The Hokage looked at Kakashi with a puzzled eye. "What technique are you talking about, Kakashi? Explain yourself!"
Kakashi stared at Sakura, then he explained to Lady Tsunade. "Hokage-sama, when we went to rescue the Kazekage, Gaara, from the Akatsuki, there was an elder that assisted us, Chiyo of the Sand. She was a puppet master and the grandmother of the Akatsuki member, Sasori. As you know, Gaara was already dead when we got there. After we defeated the Akatsuki, Chiyo-san was so moved by Naruto's love of his friend that she performed a technique that brought him back to life. To do so, she fed all of her chakra into his dead body. It killed her. But even with that consequence, she needed Naruto's help to complete the technique. She didn't have enough chakra."
Kakashi looked back to Sakura. "Sakura, how did you learn her technique? And you do realize that you don't have enough chakra to revive one of them, let alone both, right?"
Sakura smiled. "Kakashi-sensei, it was only five hand signs. It wasn't that hard to memorize it. I didn't think I would ever need to use it, but I memorized it anyway, just in case."
Lady Tsunade was floored. How was this happening? She couldn't lose all three of them, not like this! "Sakura. How? As Kakshi said, you should know you don't have enough chakra. You've thrown your life away."
Sakura looked into her master's tear-filled eyes and smiled, light flashing off the diamond that had formed on her forehead just prior to the final stages of the battle. "No, Tsunade-sama. I haven't. You taught me your secret technique, the Hyaku-Gou (100 Healings) Seal. I've been saving my chakra for three years in order to do something special. I'm going to save these two!"
A silence fell over those assembled.
Ino buried her face in Choji's chest, her sobs wracking her body. Choji stroked her blonde hair in an attempt to console her, but stared fixedly at Shikamaru. If someone could come up with something to fix this situation, it would be the heir to the Nara clan. As if he could read the Akamichi's mind, Shikamaru looked at him and just shook his head.
TenTen and Lee stared at their sensei, hoping he would tell them something to do. Tears streamed down his face. He opened his mouth to speak and only a croaking noise came out. He tried again to no avail. He looked at his two remaining pupils, pain evident in his face. They had lost a teammate today as well. None of the three could deal with this pain in addition to the mourning they were already in. Lee was worse than the other two. Not only did he lose his rival and best friend today, he would also lose the only girl that he had ever loved. He would never get the chance to win her heart. A part of him died right there.
Kiba had never been known for his emotional stability. He wanted to howl in grief. He stalked back and forth, unable to think. Hinata wanted to try to calm him down, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from Team 7. Naruto-kun lay there dead. She was almost having a breakdown just thinking about never hearing Naruto's infectious laugh. Then she heard what Kakashi-sensei and Lady Tsunade were talking about. She couldn't believe what they were saying. Sakura was going to save Naruto! Then she understood how it was going to happen. She didn't want Sakura to die. She would never be able to forget this. She would owe Sakura forever. She looked at Shino's stoic face. He nodded in understanding and wrapped an arm around the Hyuuga's shoulders. She dropped her chin to her chest and hugged her arms around herself and wept. Shino stared at the top of her head, feeling her pain. He didn't need to talk to help her. He was sure that if he tried, he would weep as well.
Gaara stared in amazement. He knew exactly what was happening. He openly wept as one of his dear people saved the life of his best friend in the world. His sister, Temari, hugged him and wept beside him. His brother placed his hand on Gaara's shoulder. Gaara appreciated their love and accepted it. He gave his brother and sister a grateful look.
The diamond on Sakura's forehead extinguished and she could feel the drain on her chakra network. She knew she was almost finished, but had no doubts that it would work.
Sakura looked up at her friends. "Tsunade-shisou, thank you for teaching me. I hope I made you proud."
Lady Tsunade nodded and tears fell down her cheeks. "You have been the best apprentice any teacher could have."
Sakura looked at Kakashi and smiled at him. "Kakashi-sensei, please take care of Sasuke-kun. He will need someone to be there for him. And we both know that Naruto annoys him." she said with a giggle.
"Of course, Sakura-chan. I will." He smiled at her through his torn mask and laid a hand on her shoulder.
Sakura looked at Hinata. "Hinata, please take care of Naruto. You know him better than anyone else could. Don't take a minute for granted. I believe in you."
Hinata could have been knocked over with a feather. She shook off her shock and stood straight. Bowing, she said, "I will, Sakura. Thank you."
Sakura smiled. She looked around at everyone. "Thank you all for loving us. Take care of each other. I love you all."
Sakura looked down at her two brothers. She didn't say anything out loud. She used the last of her chakra to leave an impression on them.
"Naruto, Sasuke, thank you for being my friend. Thank you for supporting me. Sasuke, I forgive you for running away from the village. Work hard and earn everyone's trust again. Naruto, help him to get the village's love again.
"I've always been following behind you two. I've never been able to catch up. I finally figured it out. I didn't need to catch up. You two never left me behind. We supported each other. You did the things that I couldn't. Now, I get to do the thing that you couldn't. My job was to hold you both up.
"I love you both. Please forgive me for leaving you two before your story was completed. I needed to do this.
"Take care of the village and all of our precious people. You are my two most precious people. Thank you for being there for me. I love you."
Sakura fell.
Her arms laid across her brothers and she lay between them. As her last breath escaped her chest, both boys opened their eyes...
It rained at the memorial service. All of those that fell in the Fourth Great Shinobi War were represented by their pictures on a stand. 43,872 Konoha shinobi fell in the war. Sakura's picture was just one of many. The entire village was standing and weeping as the Hokage read off the names of each one of the fallen heroes. The entire village was there, except for two.
Naruto and Sasuke sat on the stumps on the Team 7 training ground. Neither said a word. They both knew what Sakura had said to each of them. They dwelled on their own thoughts.
Naruto sat still enough to draw nature energy and enter Sage Made had he wanted to. Sasuke rubbed two pebbles together, creating a small grating noise. Neither cared that they were soaking wet.
Eventually, they both stood and faced each other.
"Was it worth it, dobe?" the raven haired Uchiha asked his companion.
Naruto didn't answer at first. He shook his head. "I want to say no. But Sakura would come back just to knock me into next week."
Sasuke smiled. "She would. I wish that she could."
Naruto gripped his fist tightly, making his knuckles crack. Then he relaxed them. "We've got to get stronger, Teme. We've got to be as strong as Sakura if we want to be able to protect this village and our precious ones."
Sasuke activated his sharingan. "Damn straight we do."
They both entered into defensive stances and started to spar.
Author's note: thank you for reading! Please review and let me know what you think.Snapchat will premiere its first original scripted series tomorrow, The Hollywood Reporter reports. The show, Literally Can't Even, will star Sasha Spielberg and Emily Goldwyn.
Spielberg and Goldwyn, daughters of Steven Spielberg and John Goldwyn, also wrote the series, which is basically about their own lives: They play friends and writing partners who go through breakups, juice cleanses, and other Los Angeles-esque trials of young adulthood.
Just what we need: Los Angeles misadventures
Literally Can't Even will be hosted on Snap Channel, part of Snapchat's new ad-supported Discover service, which launched last week. The episodes will only be a few minutes long, and, in keeping with Snapchat's blink-or-you'll-miss-it style, each episode will disappear 24 hours after it airs. The AT&T-created superhero series for Snapchat was given the same one-day time frame.
By creating content in-house, Snapchat is making moves to compete with companies like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Literally Can't Even might not be the next Transparent, but it's a step.
Literally Can't Even premieres January 31st. Then, on February 1st, it will disappear.Here's the Pricing for Comcast's Looming Wireless Service Comcast this morning provided a little more detail on the company's plan to jump into the wireless business later this year. At a media event hosting this morning, Comcast said the service, to be named Xfinity Mobile, should launch in May or June of this year. The company says the wireless service will only be sold in a bundle -- and users will at least need to subscribe to Comcast Xfinity broadband to subscribe. As for pricing, Comcast says that triple play customers will pay $45 per line for unlimited (users get throttled to 1.5 Mbps after 20 GB) data, text and voice.
That same service, which leans on WiFi but uses Verizon Wireless as a cellular backup, will cost $65 per month if users only subscribe to Comcast broadband service, making it abundantly clear that Comcast's primary thrust here is trying to upsell customers to additional services. "Most customers will save when they bundle," Comcast Mobile President Greg Butz said on the media call. "We have a very efficient business model." Comcast is also offering an option where users can pay $12 per GB of cellular data across all lines on an account. Under this option, Comcast took a page from other providers' play book, and will allow users to only pay for what they use. Comcast says folks in a single home can mix and match unlimited and per gig plans, and switch between the options without penalty. The service leans predominantly on Comcast's growing network of WiFi hotspots, many of which exist in Comcast customer homes. In 2014 Comcast updated customer router firmware so that user routers provide free access to other Comcast customers passing near your home or apartment. And while users are supposed to be able to disable the feature, actually doing so has occasionally proven difficult. While Comcast clearly hopes that it can use wireless to upsell users to additional services, the company may need to shore up its traditionally abysmal customer service if it wants these ambitions to reach fruition. Comcast is consistently rated among the worst at customer service in any industry in America, something that may get worse with the complication created by adding an additional billing option. "We know we need to get better and improve the customer service and customer experience," Butz said. "We know the issue, I think we’re on it." Let's hope so. One thing of note: Comcast has confirmed there will be Let's hope so. One thing of note: Comcast has confirmed there will be no seamless WiFi to LTE handoff at launch. There's some additional detail in Comcast's full announcement
News Jump Tuesday Morning Links Monday Morning Links TGI Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links - Valentines Edition Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links ---------------------- this week last week most discussed
Most recommended from 29 comments
karpodiem
Hail to The Victors
Premium Member
join:2008-05-20
Detroit, MI ·Comcast XFINITY
·WOW Internet and..
3 recommendations karpodiem Premium Member Pretty good deal for someone who has an iPhone SE on Verizon Say for example you're a light user on Verizon's 1GB/2GB loyalty plans - 2x lines will run you $110/month.
With this, once you're out of contract and you own your own phone, you could pay $36/month for 3GB shared (I'm using the $12/GB figure). That's a good deal. qworster
join:2001-11-25
Bryn Mawr, PA 3 recommendations qworster Member Their hotspots SUCK! I can always tell when my phone is on a Comcast hotspot because my data speeds drop to ZERO! Then I turn wifi off, go back on T Mobile LTE and everything is fine again.
wavelength
CyberSec Pro
join:2015-05-22
Raleigh, NC 2 recommendations wavelength Member Third... Fourth... Fifth time's the charm? So, which attempt is this by the Cable industry to get into the wireless business for themselves? I seem to have lost count.
And, just like all the previous attempts, anyone want to take bets on how long this one lasts?
Evergreener
Sent By Grocery Clerks
join:2001-02-20
Evergreen, CO 2.0 5.1
2 recommendations Evergreener Member Seriously... "We know we need to get better and improve the customer service and customer experience," Butz said. "We know the issue, I think we’re on it."
Fix your consistently dehumanizing customer service experience first, prove that you've fixed it over time and then... maybe... we can talk about me paying you even more money for more services (but don't get your hopes up, because I'm certainly not).Exporters have struggled to adjust to soaring inflation, a fast-rising currency and, with some irony, stricter enforcement of labor laws that make it harder to hire regular workers on a seasonal basis. Using child workers from a remote region, many of whom cannot even speak Mandarin, the country’s main national dialect, have provided a temporary, albeit illegal, solution.
A scandal involving Liangshan’s children first came to light late last month, when Southern Metropolis, a state-run newspaper, reported that as many as 1,000 school-age workers from the area were employed in manufacturing zones near Hong Kong.
The report was deeply embarrassing for Beijing, which is preparing to host the Olympics and coping with international criticism of its handling of riots in Tibet. Last week, the authorities in Liangshan said they had detained several people for recruiting children and illegally ferrying them off to factories.
Photo
And officials in Dongguan, one of the manufacturing zones where the children worked, said that they had “rescued” more than 160 young people from factories. The legal minimum working age in China is 16.
Now, officials have begun to play down the scandal, saying there is little evidence of widespread violations of child labor laws. A two-day government sweep involving more than 3,000 factories around Dongguan, which was conducted after the initial raids, turned up only 6 to 10 children, officials said.
But residents of Liangshan say abject poverty, drug abuse and a lack of jobs have forced many children to head for factories. Sometimes it is with their parents’ permission. Other times, children disappear, on their own or with job recruiters, and then call home from a factory dormitory, hundreds of miles away.
“When our daughter left, we were quite worried,” said 42-year-old Qi Ji Gu Xi, whose 14-year-old daughter left last February. “We didn’t know where to find her. Then she called us and told us she’s a migrant worker in Guangdong.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Such stories are not unusual. In more than two dozen interviews this week, children who had returned home from factories told of hardship and abuse. Parents living in squalor acknowledged that their children had been lured into traveling to factories. And other residents said conditions in these mountain villages were so appallingly poor that young people felt they had no choice but to leave home.
On Wednesday, more than 10 families interviewed in the span of five hours in Zhaojue County, part of Liangshan, said they had children working in factories, often earning less than $90 a month for 12-hour days, seven days a week. Even if the children were of working age, the pay, equivalent to about 25 cents an hour, and the working conditions would violate China’s labor laws. In the prime manufacturing zones, the official minimum wage is at least 65 cents an hour, and employers are required to pay significantly more for overtime.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Ji Ke Ri Sha said he had spent more than a year working in factories in several provinces, including Shandong and Shanxi. His family could not survive on farming alone, he said, and so he took a chance on the world outside. He hopped from factory to factory, holding four jobs before his 15th birthday.
“My father worried about me going away, but we had no money,” he said quietly, squatting on the mud floor of a farmhouse. “I had to go outside, but the work turned out to be too difficult.” An employment agent persuaded his parents that he could find their son a factory job. But the boy says the agent ended up making a secret deal with a factory, and pocketing half the boy’s pay as a finder’s fee.
Liangshan, formally known as the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, may have become a target of child labor rings precisely because it is a place of desperation. The villages, populated almost exclusively by Yi, are reached by traveling for hours along winding roads through the thickly forested part of Sichuan Province. Most people survive on subsistence rice farming. Others fall prey to the drug trade. One of the main heroin trafficking routes passes through these parts on the way from northern Myanmar to Chengdu, the largest city in the region.
The area is plagued by drug abuse and AIDS. Many people have no formal education and cannot converse in Mandarin, making it difficult to seek employment in cities on their own.
Luo Gu A He, 69, said his 14-year-old granddaughter left Keqie Village for Beijing in March, after the death of her father, who had been addicted to drugs. She now earns about $4 a day working seven days a week at a construction site, he said.
“She is too young,” the grandfather said. “I worry about her being alone in Beijing. But if she stays with me she couldn’t live either; she’d starve to death.”
A woman spoke of a daughter who left home at 15 to work in a brick factory in Shandong Province but returned recently. “My daughter was taken by a foreman,” said the woman, Pa Cha Ri Gu, 62. “I was concerned, but we are poor. You see the small house we live in.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Residents say they have heard of children being kidnapped and forced to work in factories. Other villagers say that desperate parents, some addicted to drugs, resort to selling their children to child traffickers.
As the supply has grown, so has the demand. Over the past few years, coastal factories have complained of labor shortages and said many migrant workers were reluctant to work for low pay on factory campuses in the country’s coastal provinces.
Factories find themselves caught in a squeeze between foreign buyers, who are addicted to lower prices for manufactured goods from China, and surging food and energy costs. Profit margins, never very fat, have shrunk, and Beijing has passed new labor laws that restrict the use of temporary workers.
Employment agents have come to the rescue, providing the factories with pliable children who carry falsified documents attesting that they have reached the legal working age, state news media and local parents said. They take half the child’s wages, but people in Liangshan are hungry for any cash income.
During an interview with a group of residents in Keqie Village, a man in a leather jacket initially spoke up and identified himself as an employment agent, but then declined to give many details, saying only, “I help them find a way out.”Tori and Candy Spelling: Latest War of Words
It's always fun to hear about a Hollywood fight among family members and when it comes toand her mom Candy, there have been many. Now the two ladies have decided to take it to the pages of their new books.
On April 14, 2009 Candy's book Stories From Candyland will hit bookstores. Her book is a memoir that her rep assures will not be a tell-all but more a series of "little vignettes" of her life. Candy is a guest blogger for the Huffington Post and a columnist for Los Angeles Confidential.
As for Tori, her new book Mommywood was supposed to be released on April 28, 2009 but oddly enough that has changed and now both books will come out on the same day. Tori's rep stated that this was not his clients decision but the publishers decision in order to get in on Mother's Day promotions at major retailers.
Tori knows what it tastes like to have a number one book on the New York Times bestseller list. She scored that with her first book sTori Telling. It should be fun to see who comes out on top. We're guessing Candy will have plenty to say, oh... in probably some sort of open letter.
Good luck ladies!
Photos: WENNThe United States is close to a deal with Egypt's new government for $1 billion in debt relief as part of a U.S. and international assistance package designed to prop up the country's faltering economy and aid its transition to democracy.
A team of senior U.S. diplomats has spent the last week in Cairo finalizing the agreement, which has been delayed by Egypt's political turmoil and caution in Washington about rewarding its newly elected Islamist leadership. Egypt's debt to the U.S. exceeds $3 billion.
Senior American officials said Monday a final announcement is expected later this month.
U.S. President Barack Obama first pledged economic help for Cairo last year. Obstacles remained to completing the debt relief deal - which is reported to involve a mix of debt payment waivers and complicated "debt swaps."
The negotiations come as a trade delegation with representatives from nearly 50 U.S. businesses considering investment in Egypt is set to arrive at the end of the week. Under Secretary of State Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs executive, will lead the group, which includes regional directors of companies such as Google, Boeing, Xerox and General Electric.
Economic turmoil
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohamad Morsi, has said his first priority is to create jobs and shore up the country's struggling economy, which took a huge hit following the chaos of the 2011 revolution. The once-lucrative tourism industry, a major source of foreign currency, was particularly devastated.
Egypt's Central Bank has used up nearly two-thirds of its $36 billion foreign currency reserves to prop up the Egyptian Pound, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Two weeks ago, Morsi asked the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan package. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have provided emergency support and China offered a $200 million loan.
Beyond the debt relief and IMF assistance, U.S. officials have proposed $375 million in financing and loan guarantees for American financiers who invest in Egypt, and a $60 million investment fund for Egyptian businesses.
Mutual suspicion
Under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was one of America's top security partners in the Arab world and received an annual $1.3 billion in military aid.
While these programs have continued, much of Washington's non-military assistance for Egypt was put on hold after the January and February 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.
American funding for pro-democracy civil society groups in Egypt led to a crisis at the end of last year when Egyptian security officials raided the offices of several organizations, arresting their staff and accusing them of attempting to undermine the government.
The election in June of an Islamist government - followed by political upheaval and some unsettling international moves - raised additional questions about Mr. Morsi's reliability as a U.S. ally.
An evolving relationship
But American and Israeli officials have since sought to assure U.S. congressional leaders that ensuring stability in Egypt at a time of turmoil and change across the Middle East is vital to Western interests.
They have argued that persistently high unemployment could undermine Morsi's government. With Egypt seen as hugely influential in the Arab world, its economic recovery and political stability could exert a positive influence on other countries currently in flux, officials say.
While U.S. assistance has provoked suspicion among some Egyptian Islamist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi have made it clear that fixing the country's $25 billion budget shortfall is their most urgent priority.
Hormats has praised Mr. Morsi’s early steps. “The groundwork has been set with a new political leadership, a new level of energy and new opportunities to reform,” he said in Cairo on Wednesday.
The Egyptian leader's scathing public criticism of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a visit to Tehran last week, which angered Iranian leaders, has also helped ease U.S. concerns.
Mark Snowiss Mark Snowiss is a Washington D.C.-based multimedia reporter. He has written and edited for various media outlets including Pacifica and NPR affiliates in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @msnowiss and on Google Plus. SubscribeRon Duwell | Gaming Reviews & News by
If you are holding out for Metal Gear Solid‘s legendary super soldier, Solid Snake, to make an appearance in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U and 3DS, then his creator, Hideo Kojima, might have some bad news for you.
In an interview with Geoff Keighley on Konami’s Twitch page, Kojima stated he did not think Solid Snake would be making a guest appearance again like he did in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii.
“I’m not working on that game, but I don’t think it’s likely. If Mr. Sakurai is watching this, hopefully we see Snake.”
You would think that if he was in the game, Kojima would know. You would also think that if he was in the game, Kojima would be the first person to cover it up and be the last person to tell us.
Solid Snake was one of two third-party characters to appear in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the other being SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog. Now that Sonic is returning to the franchise, and he is being joined by Capcom’s Mega Man, fans were hoping that Snake would come along for the ride.
However, times have changed since Brawl’s release. Kojima and Metal Gear Solid had a short affair with Nintendo back during the Gamecube days with Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, and that carried over into the Wii generation with Snake’s unexpected appearance in Nintendo’ fighting seres. Nowadays, he is a total PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC gaming icon, just like every other huge series jumping into the next generation.
Don’t say I did’t warn you. I would like to see him again, but not at the expense of Captain Falcon, Ness or Wario. Still waiting, Nintendo!Protesters on Wednesday took to the streets of Oakland in the US state of California to denounce President-elect Donald Trump's victory at the polls.
Angered by the billionaire's anti-immigration statements and alleged racism, the demonstrators set fire to garbage bins and smashed windows, chanting: "That's not my president."
Anti-Trump protests spread to other parts of the country, including New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia.
Approximately 1,000 people attempted to gather in front of Trump International Hotel in downtown Chicago, chanting slogans against Trump, white supremacist group Klu Klux Klan and racism.
"I'm just really terrified about what is happening in this country," said Adriana Rizzo, a 22-year-old protester at the Chicago rally.
"I'm particularly concerned about the rise of white nationalism, and this is to show my support against that type of thing," she added.
In New York, thousands marched down sixth avenue toward Trump Tower holding signs and chanting, ""This is what democracy looks like."
Meanwhile, students at secondary education institutions across California staged walk outs, with some 1,500 students rallying in the courtyard of Berkeley High School near the University of California at Berkeley campus.
"We're sitting here, setting our clocks back to 1950 electing this fool. You know? Trump honestly just makes us realize how much hate and ignorance is left," said a female student live streaming the rally online.
Shooting in Seattle
In Seattle, police reported a shooting near the protests. At least five people were injured, two of them with "life-threatening injuries."
However, authorities noted that the shooting does not appeared to be connected to the demonstrations.
In a shocking victory on Wednesday, Trump won the US presidential election by winning more than 270 electoral vote, despite his rival Hillary Clinton taking the popular vote.
ls/bw (AP, Reuters)Finally, a Skate Podcast we can Believe In
Words by Michael Kilcullen
The third season of The Bunt kicked off earlier this month and the roster is already mighty as all fuck—episodes with Tim O’Connor aka “The Podfather”, man of the year Brian Anderson, and more dropping by the week (Mark Appleyard’s just hit the streets).
For a Canadian skate and sports podcast that hasn’t even been around for a full year, The Bunt—comprised of Cephas “The Ghost” Benson and Donovan “Dono” Jones—has made some tech-startup-esque progress in features, sponsors, quality and the show overall.
With support from Vans, a multinational cult following amassing and heavier pods being released every week, it felt like a good time to give the duo a shout and see how things first got, and continue to get, poppin’ in Studio E.
The Bunt has come a long way since jumping off seven months ago. Which aspect(s) of the show would you guys say fuel you the most in lining up and making the next episode?
Cephas: Getting to know a skater that I’ve looked up to or just really appreciated the way they’ve skated over the years is always fun. Get to ask stupid questions and get to the bottom of any nerdy things we’ve always been curious about. In our Tim O’Connor episode, he said that more often than not, skater’s personalities line up with the way they skate. I’ve always believed that to be true. It’s fun to do the interviews and experience that firsthand with some of the legends.
Donovan: It’s a lot of fun for sure. Every interview is so different, so you never know what you’ll get, but The Ghost kills me in the studio every week—nothing but laughs. We’ve been skating since we were like 13-14 years old and now we’re talking to some of the guys we’ve been watching in videos and seeing in magazines for all these years. Never thought it would happen this quickly.
Rewinding back to The Bunt’s genesis, how did you two originally link up, and can you remember your initial thoughts on each other during that first encounter?
C: I just remember this tall kid dragging his heel on manuals, lanky as hell. There weren’t too many kids street skating downtown in those days, so our friendship was inevitable.
D: Honestly we’ve been friends for so long I can‘t even remember how we met. We were probably some little kids skating Shred Central skate park or downtown Toronto. I was probably just in shock by the size of his ghetto booty for such a young kid.
Was the idea for starting The Bunt arrived at independently by one of you, or was it some psychic shit where both mentally conjured the idea simultaneously while sitting next to each other on a busted ledge?
D: Well we definitely think alike. I mean, we both showed up wearing red hats looking like the clowns that we are to shoot the portrait for this interview. A couple of years ago Ce’ put me onto the Jalen & Jacoby Show, best podcast out, and from there I started listening to pods pretty much every day. Being fantasy sports guys, we always bicker about players and teams so we joked about creating our own show. Knowing that no one would listen to us just talk about sports, the idea of interviewing some of our more well known skate friends might generate some actual listeners, so we came to this happy medium.
Vans recently came on to sponsor season three. How’d that get set up and who from the Vans team would you guys be most hyped on lining up for an episode?
D: Vans has a really strong presence in Canada. They do a lot for the skate scene so linking up with them has been great. We were already friends with a bunch of the people at Vans so the whole process happened pretty organically, seeing as some of the Vans homies already listened to the podcast. As far as getting some of the Vans guys on the show, definitely AVE and Dill, the thought of The Ghost and Dill chopping it up already has me laughing.
The Bunt has managed to put out 24 quality episodes in the past half year, making you guys both the hardest working skateboarders in podcast and hardest working podcasters in skateboarding. Are you guys focusing on the podcast full-time now or do you have jobs outside of The Bunt that help support things?
C: I’m thinking about taking my talents to South Beach with all this newfound fame, to be honest. Hard work pays off baby… Nah, definitely still working. I work as a freelance production assistant on commercial shoots which is perfect because it allows me to give as much time to The Bunt as needed.
D: In all honesty, we have three jobs: the pod, our real jobs, and our fantasy teams (the third being the most important).
Cephas always seems to find a way to hijack an intriguing part of the interview and unabashedly ask the featured interviewee’s sponsors to hook it up. What’s the current box-requested to box-received ratio?
C: Hijack!? How dare you? Making it sound like the guests are about to explain the meaning of life and I cut them off right as it’s all about to make sense I’m probably 1-for-15 or something? But boxes ain’t gonna ship themselves! Gotta keep fiending.
D: I think it’s like 3-for-27. Cephas is reaching new levels this season and asking people to create companies and send boxes in.
Of all the episodes you produced in 2016, which interview has been your favourite to conduct and why?
C: A lot of fun ones, but maybe Paul Rodriguez just ‘cause it was so early on and the circumstances were so randomly perfect. We hooked up with Spanish Mike (Primitive Skateboards team manager) at his hotel in Toronto. Went up to his room to do the interview with Spanish. About halfway through, Paul walks in and we’re like “oh shit”. He just sits there quietly on his bed giggling every now and then while we finish our interview with Spanish. The second we were done, Spanish says, “Hey Paul, want to chalk it up with these guys?” and he’s like “yeah, why not?” Knowing Spanish and Paul were sharing a room, we came prepared with some questions for Paul just in case. The rest is history. We walked out of there at 2AM super hyped. It was actually the sixth interview we ever did but we released it way later because we barely had a following at the time.
D: All of the in-person interviews definitely have a different vibe to them. This is a hard one. I’ll go with Brian Anderson. Never met or spoke to him before the interview, always admired his skating and style but never thought he would be on the show, so it was kind of surreal interviewing him. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I remember texting him on his wedding day about posting a video on his Instagram to promote his episode, he sent back a few photos of him and his partner saying “getting married today, will text you tomorrow,” when he definitely didn’t have to.
Best piece of feedback you guys have gotten on the show?
C: For me it came from my boy Ludovic Lolinga, who regularly emails the show and loses to me in fantasy basketball. We made a pilot episode that we never put out just to get some feedback from six friends. He said we sounded too scripted and to be ourselves. That really stuck with us and the more we did it the more relaxed it became, which I hope makes it easier for people to listen to.
D: Scott Varney told me to axe the sports sections, probably some good advice.
Last one—it’s a double scoop. Are there any lost or damaged interviews you guys have stowed away on hard drives, and can you drop any tips on some of the upcoming heat that season three is packing?
C: Maybe we’ll put out our pilot one day because it |
••
Before he trained as a lawyer, Staver was a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor in Kentucky, subscribing to a branch of Protestantism that proclaims Jesus Christ is poised to return to earth imminently; he was also a prominent anti-abortion activist. His desire to attend law school, he said, stemmed from realizing that he could do more to advance the pro-life cause in court than in church.
He met his wife, Anita, while still a preacher. After they married and finished law school, they picked Orlando as their base to open a commercial law firm in 1987.
“I got tired of living in the cold. I really wanted to go back to Florida,” said Staver, who is a Florida native.
Two years later, he formed Liberty Counsel and closed down his commercial business so he and his wife could focus entirely on work driven by their “Christian passion”.
The firm made a splash with stunts such as threatening to sue a library for handing out playful “witchcraft certificates” to kids after a Harry Potter reading.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The stridently evangelical law firm based in Orlando has made a name for itself by taking on high-profile legal battles aimed at “restoring the culture by advancing religious freedom”. One of its clients was Kim Davis, pictured here with Mat Staver and Mike Huckabee. Photograph: Timothy D. Easley/AP
But its bread and butter cases focused on defending pickets outside abortion clinics and the principles of religious expression in public spaces, ranging from displays of the Ten Commandments to Christmas events. Then the Stavers found an urgent purpose when the tide began turning in favor of gay marriage in state after state and, ultimately, the nation.
Staver makes it clear that in many circumstances – mainly those involving his fervent opposition to abortion and homosexuality – he believes scripture is the highest legal authority in the country. But he doesn’t immediately fit the image of the Bible-thumping Christian extremist. Rather, he presents a calm, reasonable manner. He shares this temperament with his co-counsellors, and it serves them well inside the courtroom.
“I can’t say anything bad about them as lawyers,” said Daniel Canon, who faced two Liberty Counsel lawyers in court while representing several couples whom Kim Davis refused to marry. “They performed professionally – they were neat and normal. But I’m divorcing that from the substance of their arguments, which is dangerous and without legal precedent.”
The firm’s professional reputation aside, it still faces opposition. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labelled Liberty Counsel a hate group, based on its public statements online and on religious radio stations.
“It’s despicable. That’s the kind of rhetoric we do not need. It labels people. It attacks someone’s human dignity,” Staver said of SPLC’s move. He compared it to being categorized alongside skinhead gangs or the Ku Klux Klan.
The Human Rights Campaign publicly deplores the firm’s stance, pointing out, among many examples, that the firm described a workplace LGBT protection bill as “one of the most dangerous and discriminatory pieces of legislation in modern times”. And the American Civil Liberties Union is often on the other side of the courtroom, challenging Liberty Counsel on key cases.
One of Liberty Counsel’s newest causes is in mounting legal challenges to state bans on gay conversion therapy for children.
Staver told the Guardian that such bans are “harmful for the country” because teens who “don’t want to have feelings that conflict with their values” and whose parents “are at their wits’ end” should have access to such programs, which have been widely discredited.
And he asserted that being raised by a gay couple is detrimental to children’s wellbeing, based on “research and talking to people who have gone through this”.
•••
While the firm’s doctrine may turn off many mainstream Americans, it appeals strongly to a vital segment at the right wing of the religious and political spectrum, and the donations are pouring in.
Documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that Liberty Counsel is a non-profit, tax-exempt company that in 2013, the most recent year on public record, earned total revenue of $4.2m and had total expenses of $3.8m, leaving a comfortable surplus. Staver said Liberty Counsel received $8m in donations last year.
He declined to go into much detail but confirmed a Reuters report that the firm has received a total of $1.5m from fracking billionaire and radical Texas pastor Farris Wilks, who runs a church called the Assembly of Yahweh that decrees homosexuality a crime, all abortion murder and is part of a project called the Salt & Light Ministry Biblical Citizenship.
That project emanates from something called the Salt & Light Council, based in California and which, according to its website, encourages pastors to send volunteers for training in how to be politically active about the church’s sacred causes, especially restoring “the Bible’s relevance in the critical areas of government and citizenship”. The Salt & Light Council, according to the IRS records, is controlled by Liberty Counsel, and Staver acknowledged he is chairman of its board.
Farris Wilks and his family have given $15m to a Super Pac supporting Ted Cruz for president.
Liberty Counsel also has a Pac but hasn’t tilted toward a candidate yet. Staver is waiting for the Republican primary to play out and then is likely to spend on TV ads as the main race heats up, he said. He also predicted confidently that with the help of Liberty Counsel, Merritt, the anti-abortion activist, will beat the rap.
As a force to be reckoned with, Liberty Counsel is just getting started.
“The opportunities are extensive... where I see injustice I can’t sit on the sidelines,” Staver said.It’s the end of the year, and with the final couple of episodes of Impact recapping their 2016, we figured it was time to take our own look back at TNA these last 12 months. Like any promotion, there was some good, and there was some bad. So what made the best list and what made the worst list? Let’s take a look, shall we:
Best: The Decay
In January, TNA debuted a new trio with a scary movie motif and these three would go on to captivate the crowd at every turn. The two male members of the group were TNA stars who were floundering with nothing to do. The third would be a woman from the indie scene who would end up stealing the show.
There was Crazzy Steve, who debuted as a kooky clown alongside Mike Knux’s menagerie. With much of that stable long gone, there was nothing left for Steve. His comedic clown was a dead end. So in a year that would see clowns become a major villain, TNA got started earlier by simply transforming the funny clown into a scary clown. And that’s all it took. Steve embraced the role, which fit like a glove.
At his side was the monster Abyss, who has been in TNA so long that there really was nothing left for him to do. He seemed as stale as can be. But this new gimmick rejuvenated the Monster. He ended up losing the mask and donning some face paint so he matched his teammates. The Decay has given Abyss new life and a character that is perfect for the veteran.
Leading the charge is TNA newcomer Rosemary. She debuted on the stage that January episode wearing an old dress, creepy face paint, walking with a gait right out of a horror movie. This ghoulish gal would become the voice of Decay and the heart of it as well.
This year, this captivating group has held the tag titles, including a big feud with the Broken Hardy brothers, and Rosemary won the Knockouts title at the end of the year.
In a year with a bunch of good characters in TNA, the Decay may have stolen the show.
Worst: The Tag Team Division
While Decay was a great addition to the tag division, the division as a whole had a pretty down year. Early in the year, Beer Money reunited just to have Bobby Roode leave for NXT. The Wolves were riding high until Davey Richards suffered a leg injury that kept him out for the year. The Helms Dynasty (Andrew Everett and Trevor Lee) were rarely used as a team. The new team of the Tribunal (Baron Dax and Basile Baraka) never got a chance to get off the ground.
While the Hardys and Decay had a great year, they pretty much were the entire tag division. That’s not a recipe for a successful long term tag division.
Best: More Room at the Top
There was a lot of talent who ended up parting ways with TNA this year. But for the promotion and for that talent, it ended up being a good thing.
In the men’s division, Bobby Roode, Kurt Angle, and Eric Young all decided to make their exit from TNA. Roode and Young ended up in NXT and seem reinvigorated there. Angle still works independent dates (or is sitting next to his phone eagerly picking it up on the first ring in case it is WWE). But Angle had gotten stale in the company as well.
With room at the top, new young talent could take those spots. Guys like EC3 and Drew Galloway, who were already near the top, could settle in there. A newcomer like Mike Bennett made the most of the opportunity given to him. And of course, Bobby Lashley was able to reinvent himself in his best year.
The same happened with the women. Awesome Kong was released and Velvet Sky left on her own. Instead of creative trying to find something for the veterans to do, focus was shifted to the new brand of Knockout: the likes of Jade, Maria Kanellis, Sienna, Allie, and Rosemary.
This new batch of men’s and women’s talent has given TNA new life in 2016 and showcased new talent to fans who may not have seen these wrestlers in other promotions prior.
Worst: Galloway’s Injury and its effect on the Grand Championship
Drew Galloway sustained a serious enough injury to keep him out of action from wrestling for a couple of months. Unfortunately, the timing of this was right before Bound for Glory, where he was to have a match with Aron Rex (the former Damien Sandow) for the new Grand Championship. This is a secondary title that is defended in a World of Sport/MMA style, with timed matches and judges deciding the rounds unless the competitors won by pinfall or submission. It was a title that needed a big talent to support it.
Given TNA’s taping schedule, Drew’s injury caused him to miss the rest of the year (even though he was able to resume wrestling about a month earlier). Though even if it were taped live weekly, Drew was going to be gone too long to be involved in the early days of the new title.
The Grand Championship could have used Galloway in that title picture to give it some legitimacy. Drew is a former TNA champion and even if the plan was always for Rex to go over at Bound for Glory, Galloway being in the title picture would have given the title a bit of a boost. Instead, Aron Rex ended up feuding with Jessie Godderz for the title in a feud that made that title feel like it wasn’t that important. Rex is not the technical wrestler that this belt is made for and Godderz is a wrestler who is most known as being part of the BroMans tag team.
Luckily, Drew returned on the last taped Impact in a non-contact role to set up a feud with the current Grand Champion, Moose, for when TNA returns in 2017. (Moose won the title the episode prior in the first round.) That sounds like more of a feud to help give the Grand Championship some meaning.
Best: Bobby Lashley
This was Bobby Lashley’s best year of professional wrestling, and that includes on the microphone.
I bet that’s hard to believe for people who just remember him from WWE, wrestling as Donald Trump’s WrestleMania surrogate. But the man was a top promo in TNA this year.
Lashley started the year as babyface, but after defeating Kurt Angle in the Olympian’s final TNA match, he immediately turned heel. This created a cool, calm, confident Destroyer who knew he could beat anyone and didn’t mind telling his opponents with a wry smile.
He won the TNA title from Drew Galloway at Slammiversary and then went on a tear. At the Destination X special, he convinced X Division champion Eddie Edwards to go title vs. title and won the X Division title. He then beat James Storm to win the King of the Mountain title, holding all of the men’s singles titles in the company at once.
He ended up getting stripped of the lesser titles since he wouldn’t defend them, but that didn’t stop him. He was poised for another big feud at Bound for Glory against one of the company’s biggest stars: EC3. Carter is known for his fiery promos and Bobby Lashley was able to go toe to toe with him without problem.
He ended up defeating Carter, continuing on as TNA’s unstoppable force. He was a man who had the look, could wrestle in the ring, delivered on the microphone, and had a legit MMA background.
That’s why it was so disappointing that they just dropped it.
Worst: The abrupt end of the Lashley story
Unfortunately, on the Impact after he defeated EC3 at Bound for Glory, Lashley suddenly dropped the title to Eddie Edwards.
While Edwards isn’t a bad choice to be champion, they invested so much time into building Bobby Lashley as an unstoppable force that there was no reason not to take their time building to a payoff. If they wanted Eddie winning to be that payoff, that would have been fine. But after creating an unbeatable force in the Destroyer, they should finish telling the story and not abruptly end it.
In October, Lashley dominated his competition at Bellator 162, making the move even more curious. They could have had a man who dominated not only in scripted pro-graps but also inside an octagon.
After building a great character and telling a great story, the sudden end to it was a major letdown.
Best: The Knockouts Division
Despite turnover and a rather thin division, the Knockouts made the most of what they had. They lost Awesome Kong, who was let go due to a confrontation with Reby Hardy. Velvet Sky then decided to part ways with the company.
However, those two leaving opened up some room and it was filled was some superb characters and talent. Maria Kanellis entered TNA and brought her fire on the microphone to become the top villain of the division, despite rarely wrestling. She added new talent to her stable and they performed well. Joining Maria’s team was her muscle Sienna, another TNA newcomer, who held the KOs gold this year. Even former Tough Enough contestant Chelsea Green displayed good character work as the spoiled, entitled rich girl.
Jade was no longer saddled with the Doll House gimmick and was allowed to flourish as a badass. Gail Kim, a long time Knockout, had the honor to be the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Rosemary turned heads as the captivating leader of Decay. With a creepy character, she was magnetic in TNA all year. She debuted in January and left 2016 holding the Knockouts title.
And then there’s Allie (the former Cherry Bomb) who started as Maria Kanellis’ bubbly but clueless assistant. Originally meant as a heel who’s shrill announcements were aimed to annoy fans, they soon fell in love with Allie. Playing a character who had no clue how to wrestle, she accidentally defeated her ally Sienna in a match to win the Knockouts championship to the crowd’s delight. It wasn’t long, however, until Maria forced her employee to lay down for her so she could pin her for the title, igniting a strong feud that will continue into 2017.
Hopefully, TNA can add a few more ladies to the division and build off what they did this year and continue to put forth a growing women’s division full of potential.
Worst: The X Division
The X Division continues to be the forgotten stepchild of TNA. While Josh Mathews loves to talk about how you can’t see this type of action anywhere else (which isn’t true), there’s no care put into the division.
Like the women, they have talent. But they never have any direction or stories. More often than not, it’s just matches for the hell of it. There were only a few real stories. Braxton Sutter and Rockstar Spud had a brief program that ended in an empty arena match, and they pretended to care about the division around the Destination X special, but there was little to remember. In fact they ended the year with random trios matches for no reason.
They’ll need to learn that flippy stuff alone isn’t a draw any more. They’ll need to actually work on building characters and storylines if they really want the X Division to be a success going forward.
Best: Improved public opinion
It’s obvious that TNA has a poor reputation amongst wrestling fans. Years of poor booking decisions and mismanagement has given way to some very negative opinions of TNA, and many deservedly so. LOLTNA is a stigma that the company continually has to fight against.
However this year they seemed to have some good press surrounding them. Yes, they had their typical rough ride (more on that in just a bit). But with the unique world that Matt Hardy created with his Broken Universe, fun characters such as Decay, Eli Drake, EC3, and Allie, and some good longform storytelling, some people started to realize that TNA was often putting on a fun show.
Of course, not everyone is going to give TNA another chance. That’s inevitable. But just a quick look at comment sections on article posted here about TNA and on the Twitter feed, there’s been much more positive feedback regarding the promotion in 2016 than years past.
Unfortunately, given a management shake up yet again, that’s not guaranteed to continue into 2017.
Worst: Their annual bad press
While public opinion may have improved somewhat, they weren’t without their typical problems.
Going into Bound for Glory, there was word that they didn’t have money to run the show. Billy Corgan had already loaned them a bunch of money to keep taping, but his goal was to own the company and he didn’t want to continue without some assurance that he would be able to buy the company. Out of all of the “TNA is out of money” scares, this one felt the realest. As the person who does all the prep for the promotion’s pay-per-views, I was legitimately wondering if I should bother to start writing early or if their doors would close prior to BFG.
Of course, this is TNA and they found a final influx of money from a third party.
But all was not well. Billy Corgan was getting frustrated about his position in the company. Realizing that Dixie Carter would never sell to him like he believed, he decided to take her to court. Citing a clause in the contract that if TNA was insolvent, he would become owner, he tried to win the company in the court. However, that clause was not deemed legal in Tennessee and eventually he was bought out by Anthem, who was the third party that funded Bound for Glory. Anthem, the owners of the Fight Network, have become TNA’s new financial source with restructuring of the company coming if it has not happened already.
Losing Corgan could be a big loss. He said he was the one who pushed for Matt Hardy’s Broken vision. (In character, Matt seemed to back up that claim or at least say that he’d be happy with Corgan owning the company.) Mike Bennett was a big supporter of Corgan and seemed a bit miffed when he lost the suit.
With Anthem very possibly in charge in 2017, the fate of TNA is unfortunately just as big of a question mark as it has been in the past.
We’ll be back next week with part 2 of our look back at TNA this year. We’ve got plenty more to cover, including which talent flourished and which floundered, what creative strengths they had, and what made TNA tough to watch at times.
Until then, sound off below!The mysterious crusader known only as HonorTheCall gained viewers – and respect – when he blew the lid off a video game scandal
O n June 27th, a bombshell of an investigative report rocked the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community. Using irrefutable facts and public documents, it tore the lid off of a case in which several high profile professional YouTubers were illicitly profiting from the bizarre shadow economy that has sprouted up around the popular online shooter. The release of the report touched off what came to be known as the CS:GO Gambling Scandal. It led to several lawsuits, prompted follow-on coverage from many major news outlets, and sparked a conversation within the community about the legal and ethical rules around disclosure – a topic that has become increasingly hot as the popularity and followings of what marketers call YouTube "influencers" has ballooned, along with their earnings.
Though the scandal blew up into a mini Watergate-for-gamers story, there was no Woodward and Bernstein in the picture. Neither mainstream media nor the specialist gaming press were responsible for what came to light. The report was entirely the work of one man – a regular shooter fan who started out making videos for fun and chooses to remain anonymous.
Known only by the handle of HonorTheCall, this muckraking crusader is a mild-mannered engineer by day. "I make boring software that enables big enterprises to do their work," he says. But in his spare time, he creates fiery, profanity-laced video rants that excoriate wrongdoers in the gaming community.
Only HonorTheCall’s immediate family and one close friend know his secret identity. All that his online audience of tens of thousands know about him is that he was born and raised in Northern India, that he now lives in Toronto, and that he dedicates a significant portion of his spare time to policing the community of online shooter game fans. He sees himself as a truth-teller and an advocate, and he doesn’t hesitate to call out stars in the YouTube community when he feels that they have transgressed.
HonorTheCall didn’t set out to be a crusader. He initially got into YouTube because he was a fan of the Call of Duty franchise, and he enjoyed watching videos that offered tips and insights that helped him improve his play. He began posting his own clips late last year under the handle War God. At first, he simply presented straightforward information on the latest developments related to his favorite game. But he increasingly felt a responsibility to try to improve behavior in this community that he spent so much time in.
He literally felt a call of duty, and he changed his handle accordingly. He started out six months ago with a video that castigated his fellow YouTubers for ignoring a worthy cause. “Let’s talk boots on the ground – the real heroes who keep us safe while we sit here and grind,” said HonorTheCall. He championed a new $3.99 content pack released for Call of Duty, the proceeds of which would go to an endowment that helps veterans find jobs. Then he singled out all of the popular streamers who were ignoring in favor of frivolous stuff.
“ I used to get a hundred comments a month that were just saying something racist about my accent ”
That video set him on a path towards a more advocacy-based approach. HonorTheCall’s most visible achievement to date was unearthing the so-called " CS:GO Gambling Scandal." His exposés on this topic earned him millions of views and a fiftyfold increase in his regular audience, plus a new level of respect. “I used to get a hundred comments a month that were just saying something racist about my accent,” he says. “Nowadays, that’s down to about five racist comments a month even though my traffic is way up.”
To understand why HonorTheCall’s muckraking struck a nerve, you first have to understand how “gun skins” in CS:GO have become a form of digital wampum, akin to cigarettes in prison – something that has an actual use, but is more often employed as an illicit currency. A gun skin is an overlay that changes the appearance of your weapon in the game, giving it, say, a unique camouflage pattern, or leopard spots, or a purple lightning bolt motif. It is purely cosmetic, and has no effect on gameplay. The casual observer might wonder why players care so much about weapon skins. What does it matter what your weapon looks like? Who even sees it when you’re racing around a map, crouching behind cover, or sniping enemies from a rooftop?
What they don’t understand is that killer and victim share a special moment of intimacy after each execution in a CS:GO match. This is thanks to a feature found in most shooters called the killcam. After getting blasted in the face, the doomed player can look forward to witnessing their final moments again through the eyes of their killer courtesy of the killcam.
The killcam means that each frag you log is far more gratifying, because you know that your victim is reliving their moment of humiliating defeat while staring down the sights of your weapon. It’s literally adding insult to injury. Why not further personalize that delicious moment by embellishing your weapon with a unique overlay?
Custom paint jobs – or "skins" – have become their own form of currency for the popular 'Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'. Steamcommunity.com / AléSSandroCaSSo
Unusual and rare skins are highly sought after. CS:GO developer Valve boosted the desirability of gun skins by offering a wide array of them, creating a sort of metagame by randomizing how players can get them, and allowing people to buy and sell and trade them freely. Players could do this on Valve’s game marketplace Steam, or through third party sites built on top of the Steam platform.
Those third party sites are where things begin to get weird. Instead of simply facilitating trades, many of these sites allowed players to use skins to gamble on the outcome of esports matches, or use them as betting chips in casino-style games. Because skins are such a new and murky form of pseudo currency, many of these sites could effectively skirt laws that constrain straightforward cash-based online gambling.
The lucrative skin gambling sites became increasingly impossible for gamers to ignore. Prominent YouTubers who weren’t even known for playing CS:GO began recording videos of themselves winning huge sums through skin gambling. There was widespread speculation that these YouTubers were paid to promote these sites, and that they were faking their enthusiastic reactions to their alleged winnings in order to drive more traffic and income to these sites.
That’s when HonorTheCall got interested. He noticed that several of his favorite full-time professional Call of Duty YouTubers were posting videos on their huge winnings from CS:GO gambling sites, and he decided to do some digging on the phenomenon. He posted his findings in late June.
HonorTheCall singled out the popular YouTuber Trevor “TmarTn” Martin, who had been posting videos of himself gambling on a site called CSGO Lotto, including a clip where he shrieks with delight after apparently winning $13,000 on the site. “I did some digging into this, and holy shitballs,” says HonorTheCall. To emphasize the incendiary nature of his discovery, he splices in a clip of Walter White from Breaking Bad walking away from an explosion.
What HonorTheCall learned is that the site CSGO Lotto Inc. was registered to Tmartn Enterprises Inc. “Trevor Martin, aka TmarTn, is the director of this site,” thunders HonorTheCall. “He fucking owns the damn site. He goes on his own site, pretends to allegedly win huge amounts of cash, and do pre-rehearsed reactions!”
HonorTheCall posted screenshots of online listings for CSGO Lotto by the Better Business Bureau and the Florida Department of State Division of Corporations and a half dozen other sites. He added giant red arrows to the screenshots, pointing out where Martin was listed as principal and president of the site. (These sites also showed that YouTuber Thomas “TheSyndicateProject” Cassell, who also posted videos of himself on CSGO Lotto, is the vice president of that site.)
Trevor Martin responded to the allegations, claiming that the fact that he and some other YouTubers owned CSGO Lotto “has never been a secret.” HonorTheCall published a followup video that excerpted footage of one of Martin’s videos in which he claimed to have stumbled upon the site, and claimed that the people behind the site were offering to sponsor him. “Why did you lie to your five million followers, Trevor?” he demanded.
HonorTheCall has continued to release videos on the people behind CSGO Lotto. He has also gone on to excoriate other YouTubers who concealed their ownership of skin gambling sites, as well as YouTubers who presented fake results of PC performance benchmark testing, YouTubers who have failed to deliver on Kickstarter rewards, and YouTubers who stole the thumbnail images they use to promote their content. (A mortal sin in the community.)
HonorTheCall has expanded his social media profile as his audience has grown. His Twitter account is full of strangers reaching out to him about other potential scandals that he should look into. He assures them that he answers every email he receives.
The Torontonian insists that he doesn’t see himself a journalist. To his mind, what he’s doing doesn’t count as journalism because his videos only earn him enough to buy a nice restaurant meal once a month, and he doesn’t give his targets a chance to respond to his allegations before publishing his videos the way a reporter should. But he fits the definition of citizen journalist laid out by media critic and NYU professor Jay Rosen: “People formerly known as the audience who employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.”
HonorTheCall points out that YouTube receives far less scrutiny than other more traditional media sources. “There are so many different mediums through which people are consuming information now; twice as many people tuned into YouTube to watch the presidential debates than all the traditional TV channels,” he correctly points out. “But there aren’t many people who are actually following the scene on YouTube closely. No one is actually paying attention to what’s really going on here.”
He has a simple message for prominent YouTubers who want to remain in his good graces. “Realize that your viewers made you what you are,” he says. “You shouldn’t rip them off.”The Turkish military confirmed that 16 soldiers had been killed Monday as operations continued, with helicopters dropping special forces in a mountainous area near the Iraqi frontier, while surveillance drones sought out targets for airstrikes.
"Sixteen of our comrades in arms were martyred" in Sunday's attack on two armored military vehicles in the southeastern Hakkari region, the army said in a statement, adding that six other soldiers were wounded in those attacks.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which sometimes exaggerates the casualties, claimed 31 Turkish soldiers had been killed in a combination of bombing and shooting attacks.
But a security source told the Reuters news agency that 16 soldiers had been killed, which still would be the highest military death toll in a single attack for years.
The Hurriyet newspaper reported that 400 kilograms (880 lbs.) of explosives were used in a roadside bomb and that around 150 PKK fighters had engaged in a seven-hour firefight with soldiers.
Turkish leaders convene crisis meeting
In a sign of the gravity of the attacks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu broke off a Sunday trip to central Turkey to watch a national football game and summoned an emergency midnight security meeting in Ankara.
In retaliation, wo Turkish F-4 and two F-16 jets were deployed to carry out strikes in a "heavy air campaign" against 13 targets controlled by the militants, the military said.
Many "terrorists" had been killed in the retaliatory airstrikes, the official Anatolia news agency said, without giving a precise toll.
The PKK - designated a terrorist group by the European Union, the United States and Turkey - has been staging daily attacks against the armed forces, as the military presses a relentless operation against the group in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, which began in late July.
Violence destabilizing country
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks next to the flag-draped coffin of a slain police officer. He has vowed to intensify the war with the PKK.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement that he strongly condemned "the atrocious attack that caused the martyrdom and injuries of our soldiers."
As news of the attack broke overnight, nationalist Turks took to the streets in a show of support for the army, blocking a road between Antalya and Mersin in the south and scuffling with police in Gaziantep, television reports said.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), accused by the government of being linked to the PKK, called for a renewed ceasefire and an extraordinary parliamentary meeting.
HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas cut short a visit to Germany to fly back to Turkey. He also took to Twitter to condemn killings on all sides.
"We will not surrender to war policies, which only deem death proper for the people's poor children and splatter blood on the mothers' dreams of peace," he wrote on Twitter, referring to the Daglica attack and conflict in the southeastern town of Cizre.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 with the aim of establishing an independent state for Turkey's Kurdish minority. In recent years, it has retooled its demands, pushing for greater autonomy as well as and language and cultural rights for Turkey's ethnic Kurds.
The unrest has raised questions over how security can be guaranteed for general elections slated for November 1. But Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for over a decade and now seeks a parliamentary mandate to extend his executive powers, said the vote would go ahead regardless.
jar/jil (AFP, Reuters)BREAKING: James Comey plans to testify that Trump pushed him to end FBI probe into aide’s Russia ties, a source says https://t.co/V6AskneABk pic.twitter.com/RV2GkY1Dr1
This of course, according to CNN. However, if true, then he’s going to have a difficult time explaining why he didn’t report it or why his testimony and that of his chief deputy disputes it.
Via Free Beacon
Former FBI Director James Comey will publicly testify before Congress as early as next week that President Trump pressed him to end the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia, according to CNN.
Comey reportedly kept notes on his private conversations with Trump. Regarding the probe into Flynn’s links to Russia, the New York Times reported that Comey wrote a memo that Trump told him “I hope you can let this go.” In another conversation, the president asked for Comey’s “loyalty.”
Keep reading…The first thing you instinctively want to do after strapping on a VR headset and diving into a virtual world is to reach out and touch what you see.
Unfortunately, this is not a reality on today's most popular VR headsets. Well, official support isn't. Instead, VR headsets either rely on traditional gamepads like the Xbox One controller (Oculus Rift), custom hand controllers (HTC Vive/Rift), side-mounted touchpads on the headset (Samsung Gear VR), or wireless remotes (Google Daydream View).
I've tried all of these controls, and while they work fine, none of them feel completely intuitive or natural; there's a learning curve for all of them. The Vive's hand controllers and the Rift's Touch controllers are good attempts at mimicking your hands, but neither provides full-finger tracking.
The people at Leap Motion have figured out how to change that.
The startup has been working on its hand-tracking technology, called Orion, that works with its motion controller sensor. With the sensor strapped to the front of a VR headset and Orion running, users can experience VR with their hands (and every finger and joint) without the need for any physical controllers.
Orion has been available for the Rift and Vive since earlier this year, but now the company is taking it to the next level with the "Leap Motion Mobile Platform" which is the same setup but designed for mobile VR. Michael Buckwald, Leap Motion's CEO and co-cofounder, told me the company is targeting mobile VR headsets because it's the easiest entry point into VR for consumers since they don't need a powerful PC; all they need is a headset and a smartphone.
Leap Motion isn't getting into the VR headset business. The Leap Motion Mobile Platform is really a system the company hopes VR headset makers will license and integrate.
Leap Motion built a reference design for the Gear VR with the Leap Motion module embedded within a cover. Image: raymond wong/mashable
As a proof of concept, Leap Motion built a reference design that straps over the front of the latest Gear VR and connects via its pass-through USB-C port. What I saw won't be released as a consumer product, but if mobile VR headset makers like Samsung incorporate the technology into their headsets, the issues of immersive controls will be a thing of the past.
Having never tried Orion, I was a little skeptical of its hand-tracking. When the Leap Motion sensor launched in 2013 and promised Minority Report-esque air gesture controls for computers, it didn't exactly set the world on fire. It was laden with buggy software and inaccurate gestures.
But all of that is in the past. The Leap Motion Mobile Platform is the real deal. Leap Motion increased the speed by 10x and the controller' dual camera field of view from 140 x 120 degrees to 180 x 180 degrees. The result from the new, more sophisticated module (see below), is faster hand-tracking with virtually no latency for more realistic 1:1 hand controls.
The new Leap Motion module is 10x faster. Image: raymond wong/mashable
My demo was only about 15-20 minutes, but it was enough to convince me that real hand-tracking is the future of VR controls.
The demo I tried put me in a rudimentary cyberspace chamber (nothing graphically fancy) that felt very much like the toy box demo I tried with the Oculus Rift at CES earlier this year.
With my hands held out in front of me, the Leap Motion sensor embedded within the Gear VR cover replicated them into the VR world. When I wiggled my fingers in real life my virtual fingers also wiggled. I was blown away by how accurate the tracking was; there was no motion blur and even when I held my hands out in a chopping like position with my ring and pinky fingers obscured by the fingers in front, the sensor still knew they were there.
Image: raymond wong/mashable
Within seconds I built blocks and balls and stacked them on one another in virtual space using simple gestures. All I had to |
natural transition into the mainline franchise -- namely the destructible environments and squad commands.
We merged the Battlefield main game with Bad Company," Bach explained. "And well continue to do it. I wont say well never build another Bad Company game, but right now were focusing on Battlefield 4.
...'Making movies is hard,' insists Andrew Dominik in partial explanation for the seven-year gap between his explosive debut 'Chopper' and his masterful sophomore effort, 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'. 'If you can avoid working you should do it. Ridley [Scott] can't take more than two weeks between movies or he starts going bananas. I don't understand those guys at all. You have to get up at five o'clock in the morning, it's political, and you feel like you're failing 90 per cent of the time. It's a tough job.'
In fact, 'Jesse James' was finished last November, but it's considered a 'fall movie', and if you miss one, says Dominik, you have wait till the next autumn. Even so, the extra delay (it was shot two years ago) only added to the perception that this was a movie in deep trouble, a view not helped by cuts of varying length being dispatched around the globe by Warner Bros for different critics to offer their opinion on. Given such treatment, did Dominik detect a lack of faith in the film from the studio?
'I always thought the film was great,' says the New Zealand-born director diplomatically when Time Out meets him at the Venice Film Festival in September. 'But it's a weird movie – it's fruity.' Fruity? 'It's a fruity movie about suffering, like "Barton Fink". It's baroque; it's rococo. You've got to look at it from the studio's point of view. They make movies that are real crowd-pleasing films. They look at a film like this and think: Jesus Christ, what is this? Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.'
Based on the novel by Ron Hansen and starring Brad Pitt as the infamous outlaw and Casey Affleck as the former James Gang member who shot him in the back, 'Jesse James' is a cinematic cousin to 'Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid', 'McCabe & Mrs Miller' and 'Heaven's Gate', a long, deliberate, elegiac, '70s western. Like 'Chopper', it tells of a violent, real-life criminal all too aware of his own celebrity, although Dominik says it was the language of Hansen's book that first hooked him. 'I loved the way Jesse was written. He was a character with magical thought, he believed in omens, he speaks in riddles, he seems to have some consciousness of God, and Bob was just this idiot who, over the course of the story, seemed really brave to me.'
Dominik's initial cut was four-and-a-half-hours long and wasn't great. 'It's not an undiscovered masterpiece, put it that way. With "Chopper", I threw away a ton of shit too, but that was an easier film to cut because you've got one central character, and you threw out all the stuff that was bad and made a film out of all the good stuff left over. With this film I had to throw away stuff that was great and keep stuff I wasn't as enamoured with and make it work harder.' Periodically, during the lengthy editing, Dominik was removed from the process. 'Various different people came in and had a crack at it, but they never turned it into "Young Guns" or "Saving Private Ryan" on horses, so it always ended up back in my court.' What was the shortest version they tried? 'Probably two hours. I had a version that was two hours and it's not good.'
The finished film runs 160 minutes and, because of its lyrical narration and Roger Deakins' sublime magic-hour cinematography, has drawn comparisons to Terrence Malick, whom Dominik counts as a friend. (He even shot a week of second unit on 'The New World' before being fired for not being in the Directors Guild.) 'I showed the movie to Terry and he was appalled. He was like: "It's too long, there's too much voiceover, you've got to cut that." '
Post-'Chopper', Dominik found himself in demand. 'Actors – movie stars – like "Chopper", so my name is put on their list of ten people they'll make a film with,' he explains. 'And then the studio is interested in you because you can attract talent. Then, because I said no to every offer, I'm like the girl at the party that won't have sex with anyone. They want me more and more and they buy their own hype.' He wrote five scripts to direct, including adaptations of Jim Thompson's 'Pop', '1280' for Woody Harrelson and producer Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cormac McCarthy's 'Cities of the Plain', none of which he could get off the ground. 'It was impossible to make a film without a movie star, but it's very difficult to find a part you can cast one in that doesn't seem like miscasting. You can have Brad Pitt play Jesse James and it doesn't feel wrong.'
Pitt was one of those who had Dominik's name on his list. 'We went back and forth on a number of things,' he notes, 'but it was not until this film that it clicked.' Pitt signed on as both star and producer. 'He's powerful and he's not afraid to use it. Brad had it put in his contract that they couldn't change the title. He can be the best friend you have, but when we fought it was bloody.'
Dominik has no immediate plans beyond maybe trying to resurrect one of his earlier scripts. 'I'm exhausted,' he says. 'I'd like to make another movie but I'm in no hurry to do so. It all depends on how this film goes over, because it's not up to me, it's up to some guy who's got to pay for it. And from my point of view, they're on to me. I can turn up with Leonardo DiCaprio or some other movie star and they're going to think: "Jesus Christ, it's going to be another fruity, three-hour movie. I'm not going to be involved in that shit." '
'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' opens on Nov 30.Outside of a single season with Brett Favre in 2009, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson has played his entire nine-year career without the benefit of elite quarterback play.
His current quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater, has put together a solid but unspectacular first two seasons in the NFL. He's flashed the skills of a franchise quarterback, but has failed to significantly develop as a passer, throwing 6,150 yards and 28 touchdowns in his two-year career.
However, Peterson said on Friday’s PFT Live that he believes Bridgewater is ready to make a significant leap in his third season in the league.
"His third year in, that's a moment when a young guy really just comes to himself," Peterson said, according to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. "I feel like these past two years have been good. His first year I felt like was an awesome opportunity with me not being back there to really kind of have a load on his shoulders. Then last year we went through those first couple of weeks just kind of balancing things out with me being back there. I feel like this year with how I feel the offensive line will perform that's just going to make him an even better player. Just having more time to sit back there in the pocket and deliver the ball."
With the additions of guard Alex Boone and offensive tackle Andre Smith during free agency, as well as center John Sullivan and right tackle Phil Loadholt returning from injury, Bridgewater should be able to play with adequate protection for arguably the first time in his career.
Because of this, Peterson said Bridgewater will be able to show that he possesses a similar skill set to one of the league's premier passers.
"He reminds me of a Tom Brady because Tom Brady is great at those mediocre passes," Peterson said. "Those short passes and mid-range passes and that's exactly what Teddy does as well. He's the type of guy that needs the receiver that runs routes and that's at a specific location that you're practicing. So I feel like with the additions that we've made to the offensive line and of course me envisioning what I'll be able to bring to the offense as well I think that's going to make his job a lot easier. With that he'll feel more comfortable and he can really get back there and just play his game. So I'm expecting big things from Teddy this year."
Peterson said recently that he thinks the Vikings are capable of winning it all this season, and if that prediction is going to come true, the team needs Bridgewater to become an upper-echelon quarterback.I occasionally thumb through my old notebooks, and thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the sketches I took while formulating ideas for FEZ, back in 2011.
Structure
For the Industrial part of the FEZ world (‘Progress’ on the soundtrack), I was looking into the usage of one tonality per time of day, per level. Some of this idea came through in the final version, where the music does change tonalities in certain levels. However, changing tonalities for each time of day proved to be too difficult to do effectively, because our tech limited us mostly to crossfades. The system did have a clock in place for triggering stems after x number of bars, but it proved to be a little bit shaky in practice. If you listen carefully, you may be able to hear this imperfection on display in the game’s opening village music.
Here you can also see a visual map of the level connections for the industrial area, and some of the internal names for those levels. Also, lots of experimenting with specific chords as the basis for tonality per level, and thinking about time of day by way of little sun/moon icons.
Mine
This is a fairly close representation of how the structure of the music used in the cave/mine levels (‘Formations’ on the soundtrack), turned out. Each box is a level, and arrows show the traversal between them. The rows depict the various states of gameplay in those levels, which just happened to be fairly parallel to the height of these obstacles/checkpoints. The little bomb image signifies the section where you must plant a bomb and rotate the world continuously to keep the fuse lit.
Improve
Often times I would just get something, anything, into the game, and then play with it in there to get a sense for how the music was feeling. This was a very effective method and has always been my go to way to iterate on music, especially dynamic music.
Full Day / Levels
For the Industrial area, I started to think about how long each time of day roughly was in game time, and how large the levels were relative to each other, in hopes it would help me figure out how I wanted to structure the music changes. Also the phrase ‘volume triggered’ here actually refers to altitude. I was probably experimenting with the idea of altitude to trigger different musical layers in these levels.
The note to the far right seems like it was the basis of an idea to create really sparse music for the interiors of the initial village. This idea was likely inspired by the music treatment in Jasper’s Journeys by Lexaloffle, which I found to be very unique in its approach. I either thought better of this idea or forgot about it, because the final version of the interior music is the exterior music with the low pass filter that Renaud implemented for when Gomez is out of view.Chris Broussard reacts to the news that Bulls star Jimmy Butler did not fly with the team Sunday to New Orleans and discusses whether the locker room is divided. (1:27)
Chicago Bulls star Jimmy Butler did not fly with the team Sunday to New Orleans for its game Monday night, according to league sources.
One source with the Bulls said Butler had a family commitment and would fly to New Orleans later Sunday night and that he will play against the Pelicans.
"It's the first time he hasn't flown with the team,'' one source said. "But he will play tomorrow for sure.''
Neither Butler nor Bulls general manager Gar Forman could be reached for comment, but Butler's agent, Happy Walters, told ESPN.com that he was unaware that his client was not on the team plane.
"Maybe he had stuff to take care of,'' Walters said. "Whatever he's doing, he'll be at the game.''
The outcome of the game will have no bearing on the postseason, after the Indiana Pacers' victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday eliminated Chicago from playoff contention. This is the first season since 2007-08 that the Bulls have not reached the postseason.None of this is easy to do. But, relying on more than 15 years’ worth of academic research and her own work with students and executives, the author has found that leaders who recognize and understand the effects of psychological distance and then use two specific strategies to reduce (or sometimes increase) it can improve their outcomes in many professional scenarios.
For example, skillful negotiation requires considering the interests of other parties as well as your own (which narrows social distance). Effective time management means accurately predicting which commitments will be most pressing in the future (temporal distance). Inspired leadership involves not only appreciating and incorporating people’s goals, but also anticipating how they will change over time (social distance and temporal distance). And profitable product management means using imperfect information to figure out how to meet distant customers’ changing needs (social, temporal, spatial, and experiential distance).
Four types of psychological distance can separate you from your goals: social (between yourself and other people), temporal (between the present and the future), spatial (between your physical location and faraway places), and experiential (between imagining something and experiencing it). Success depends on bridging those gaps.
Federico Jordan
You’re negotiating a contract with an important client whose budget is tight, but your boss is pressuring you to increase margins. How do you close the deal?
Several weeks ago you agreed to speak at a college alumni event, but now you’re extra busy at work and regretting the decision.
A junior employee says he’d like a leadership role, but you don’t know him well and aren’t sure he’s ready. How do you suggest reasonable goals?
Customer research on an existing product line in a new geographic market suggests that you should add some features, but you don’t know which—and how many—will really drive sales.
Surprisingly, the challenge at the heart of all these situations is the same: Success depends on bridging what psychologists from Walter Mischel to Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope have labeled psychological distance—that is, gaps between yourself and other people (social distance), the present and the future (temporal distance), your physical location and faraway places (spatial distance), or imagining something and experiencing it (experiential distance).
For example, skillful negotiation requires that you consider not only your own interests but also those of other parties (which narrows social distance). Effective time management means accurately predicting which commitments will be most pressing in the future (temporal distance). Inspired leadership involves not only incorporating various people’s goals, but also anticipating how they will change over time (social and temporal distance). And profitable product management means using imperfect information to figure out how to meet distant customers’ changing needs (social, temporal, spatial, and experiential distance).
None of this is easy to do. But I’ve found, in more than 12 years of academic research and my work with students and executives, that leaders who recognize and understand the effects of psychological distance and then use two specific strategies to reduce—or sometimes increase—it can improve their outcomes in many different professional scenarios.
From Abstract to Concrete
When psychological distance is large, we tend to think in more-abstract terms, focusing on the big picture, the desirability of certain options, and why we want them. In contrast, when psychological distance is small, our thinking is more concrete: We focus on the details, the feasibility of options, and how we will use them. For example, we can think of an action such as completing a sale either concretely, as “filling out an invoice,” or more abstractly, as “contributing to company revenue.”
The introductory examples highlight some of the perils of large psychological distance. In the negotiation scenario, the social distance between you and your client (compared with that between you and your boss) makes it difficult to see how she views the trade-offs between higher spending and lower-quality materials and service. When you’re asked to commit to an event weeks in advance, the temporal distance makes the desirability of building your professional profile loom large and the feasibility of crafting and giving the speech recede in importance. In the leadership scenario, social and temporal distance make it hard for you to move from abstract advice to concrete goal setting with the junior employee. And experiential distance during the market research process may lead customers to request many features without considering the degree to which those features will collectively reduce usability, causing you to make poor product investment decisions.
All this happens unconsciously and consistently, even when we’re aware that psychological distance has previously led us astray. In one study I conducted with colleagues, for example, participants who had just struggled to use a digital video player with lots of features acknowledged that next time they’d prefer a simpler player. But when we asked them moments later to choose a digital audio player, they again gravitated toward the model with more bells and whistles. Similarly, studies on retirement-saving decisions suggest that although people know they should be putting aside more for the future, they continue to save too little.
Of course, psychological distance can be a plus in certain scenarios. Research by Cheryl Wakslak and colleagues shows that power is associated with psychological distance. This explains why newly promoted managers often struggle to navigate the balance between maintaining friendships with former coworkers and supervising them. Temporal distance allows you to set more-challenging goals. When you leave home for the office, you create the spatial distance that allows you to set aside domestic concerns for professional ones. And experiential distance can lead to more-expansive thinking; that’s why companies often bring in outside consultants to rethink their products and businesses.
These examples make it clear that no particular degree of psychological distance is always best. We should aim to narrow or enlarge gaps as necessary to achieve the psychological distance that’s just right. This can be accomplished in two ways: by adjusting the distance or substituting one type of distance for another.
Adjusting the Distance
Many time-tested “managing yourself” techniques fall into this category. The theory of psychological distance helps us understand when and why they are effective. Let’s look at the four types in turn:
Social.
Negotiation and leadership experts have long advocated for perspective taking—that is, attempting to understand your counterpart’s thoughts, feelings, and motives. The result is reduced social distance. The ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes comes more naturally to some than to others, but research has shown that even a simple directive such as “Try to focus on the other party’s intentions and interests” can improve outcomes. In contrast, when you want to increase social distance—perhaps with peers you’re now managing—try using more-abstract language: Challenge them to increase revenue instead of asking them to fill out more invoices. A large-scale survey has shown that workers experience greater job satisfaction when company leaders provide abstract, visionary communication (although they still want concrete feedback from their direct supervisors).
Temporal.
Self-imposed deadlines are an easy way to reduce temporal distance, thereby improving your focus, productivity, and even performance. When Professors Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch allowed students to set their own binding deadlines for a series of assignments (with the caveat that all be turned in by the end of the course), the students who set earlier deadlines performed better than the rest. Another strategy for managing temporal distance is to visualize the future. If, for example, you’re worried when you receive the invitation to that alumni association event that it’s one commitment too many, imagine that you have to give the speech the following day. Are you still interested? Or if you’re experiencing writer’s block with your speech, imagine that you’ve already delivered it. Focusing on the desired outcomes—a sense of accomplishment and enhanced professional standing—can help you identify themes and points that will lead to them. You can make similar adjustments when trying to challenge yourself or those who report to you. Think forward to your next performance review. What achievements will you be most excited to discuss? Increasing temporal distance makes the reasons for setting your goals more prominent than the steps required to meet them.
Spatial.
You have the most control over this type of distance—and your manipulation of it can yield surprising benefits. Face-to-face meetings and customer site visits are obvious ways to reduce spatial (and social) distance, leading you to more-concrete thinking. But studies have shown that even an action as simple as facing toward an object can make you perceive it as closer to you. When you want to increase spatial distance in order to stimulate abstract thinking, try moving to a different venue. The researchers Joan Meyers-Levy and Juliet Zhu have shown that subtle changes in office and retail spaces, such as higher ceilings, encourage people in those rooms to think more creatively and make more connections between concepts.
Experiential.
Product managers interested in reducing experiential distance in market research should consider moving from hypothetical questions to techniques such as asking customers to choose and use prototypes. For example, consumer packaged goods companies often ask study participants to “shop” stocked shelves, which encourages people to think more concretely about price and brand. When restaurants launch new offerings, they routinely take them to test markets before investing in a full-scale rollout. The launch of the McLean Deluxe by McDonald’s, in the 1990s, should serve as a cautionary tale. Instead of conducting extensive testing in a few markets, as was their usual practice, executives let themselves be influenced by polls indicating that nearly nine out of 10 consumers were willing to try low-fat beef. In surveys like that, consumers tend to focus more on desirability (improving their diet) than on reality (burgers that taste worse, cost more, and take longer to cook). And actual experience is what usually determines the success of a new product or service.
But when you’ve already developed something radically new and want to encourage adoption, greater experiential distance can sometimes be beneficial. Bullet points highlighting the features of a new product may be more persuasive than a live demonstration. For example, when BMW launched iDrive, a powerful new user interface for its vehicles, automotive experts were flummoxed during their first test drives, leading to mixed reviews. If customers or reviewers have the chance to try a complicated new product or service only once, that experience could hurt sales.
Substituting One Type for Another
Because all psychological distance involves the same underlying thought processes, substituting one type for another can spur either more-abstract or more-concrete thinking. This trick works so well that academic researchers use it to establish that what they are manipulating really is psychological distance: If it is, then any type—social, temporal, spatial, or experiential—should produce the same effect.
Social.
When searching for common ground during a negotiation, you can leverage temporal distance by asking yourself what you would propose if an agreement had to be reached within the next two hours. You’re not doing anything to change the social distance between you and your counterpart—you don’t feel closer to the other person—but the urgency of reduced temporal distance may change how you think about and approach the deal making. If you’re in a situation where you need to command respect among your peers (that is, increase social distance), spatial distance can substitute. Move to a new office down the hall; give yourself a bit more space at the conference table rather than squeezing in right next to your colleagues. You might also try to use temporal distance: Envision the legacy you’d like to create at your organization to encourage yourself to think and communicate more abstractly.
Temporal.
If you find yourself struggling with large temporal distance—procrastinating on a big project, for example, or making retirement plans—try playing with social distance. Schedule a meeting with the colleague to whom you’ll need to deliver the completed work. Or take a look at yourself in the future: Researchers have shown that when people are presented with photos of their own faces, aged, they more closely identify with their older selves and, as a result, dramatically increase the amount they intend to invest in retirement. But if you’re feeling stressed about a looming deadline, increasing spatial distance may help. Simply lean away from your computer screen. Recent research by Manoj Thomas and Claire Tsai shows that anxious participants who did just that rated the assignments they’d been given as much less difficult than did those who performed the same tasks while leaning toward their screens.
Spatial.
Perhaps the most obvious substitute for spatial distance is social distance. If you are physically separated from people you’d like to influence—customers or colleagues—you can reduce that distance not only by visiting them but also by emphasizing your common attributes and interests. Zappos makes a point of connecting with geographically distant customers by listing the Zappos Family Core Values on its website and sharing photos of the teams who work to deliver orders. You can narrow the spatial gap with far-flung colleagues by connecting on a personal level at the beginning of phone calls or e-mails and, when possible, using Skype or other video conference services.
Experiential.
One way to fight your (and others’) temptation to choose products with lots of features—or those that substitute form for function—rather than more user-friendly versions is to reduce temporal distance. If your team had to start using that fancy new collaborative software tool today instead of next month, when it’s scheduled for implementation, would it still seem like a good investment? If you had to execute your recommendations for beefing up your company’s social media content approval process today instead of next quarter, would each of the checkpoints still seem necessary? You can also reduce experiential distance by substituting social distance. Globally, 69% of those who responded to a recent survey said that online content provided by other consumers helped them decide whether to buy a product, and online word of mouth is particularly influential when social distance is small. Similarly, best practices feel safe because people within your organization or industry have already adopted them. Social validation is a powerful way to persuade others to adopt new products and practices.
Managers face challenges related to social, temporal, spatial, and experiential distance every day. They can overcome those challenges by understanding the common thread that links them and learning to either adjust the distance or substitute one type for another.Amazon has spent time and money taking on Netflix in the video wars. Now it's going after YouTube, too.
Sort of.
Jeff Bezos and company are using cash to lure video makers who fill YouTube with clips, offering them a share of the ad dollars or ad revenue their videos generate.
That doesn't mean Amazon is going to rival the world's biggest video site anytime soon, but it's a start. It also puts Amazon ahead — for now — of Facebook, which has made a big video push but has yet to reward most video makers with payouts.
Amazon is describing its "Video Direct" plan as a "self-service program for creators and storytellers." In short: Video makers can upload their stuff to Amazon, and then tell the company whether they want to sell their videos, rent them, make them available for free, with ads, or include them as part of Amazon's ad-free Prime Video offering.
An Amazon rep says the company is offering 15 cents for every hour of viewing a video creator's stuff generates via Prime Video in the U.S., and six cents an hour for views outside of the U.S. If video makers allow Amazon to show their stuff to any visitor, for free, Amazon will give them 55 percent of all ad revenue their clips generate. And if uploaders let Amazon sell their stuff via its subscription service, or via its rental store, Amazon will split that revenue 50-50.
That's roughly analogous to the offer YouTube makes to its video partners: 55 percent of all advertising revenue, or an unannounced split for videos that run in YouTube's ad-free YouTube Red subscription service.
More outlets for video makers' stuff — and, in particular, more outlets that pay money for their stuff — is a good thing. But it would mean more if Amazon looked like it was spending lots of time and effort on this.
For now, the list of partners that have signed on to Amazon's plan sounds pretty modest: It includes publishers like Mashable, Business Insider and the Guardian, but none of the big movie studios and TV networks, and none of the really big YouTube networks or individual stars, like Disney's Maker Studios, or PewDiePie.
Put it this way: An executive whose company is listed as a partner in Amazon's press release told me they were unaware they had finalized their deal with Amazon, because they weren't keeping close tabs on the discussions.
Still! If you squint, you can see Amazon building a roadmap that gets it into every part of the video business, if and when it decides to get there.
The company is already getting serious about the stuff it provides via its own subscription service, and it has begun selling add-on subscriptions from services like Starz and Showtime. It has also started the beginning of a free, ad supported service with shows from the likes of Conde Nast and the NFL, and it has also shown that it's interested in pursuing live sports rights.
Now it looks like Amazon is trying to round up small publishers and video stars, too. Imagine if it starts making a real push.
Recode Video: The difficulty of streaming live sportsThough you may have found some free wi-fi in BART stations and on some trains the last few years, the test program under which that was being provided has now ended. As BART spokesman Jim Allison said in a statement issued this afternoon, "BART has terminated its License Agreement with WiFi Rail, Inc. (WFR)," adding that WFR service had only been offered in downtown San Francisco and Oakland and on about 5% of the train fleet. The trial program may be over, but SFist asked Allison why the contract was terminated, and this is what he said.
WiFi Rail, Inc. (WFR) offered service on a free test basis for several years in limited areas and the test concluded. WFR has not submitted an adequate financial or technical plan for completing the network throughout the BART system. Also, the performance of the constructed portions of the network did not meet expectations. 38 of BART's 669 car fleet were equipped; also, service was available at some stations.
Going back to January 2013 BART was sounding some alarm bells about WFR, saying they were having "trouble coming up with the capital needed to fulfill the contract" and noting riders' dissatisfaction with the weak signal and connection charges they were being asked to pay. The WFR contract dates back to 2009 and was at the time billed as a 20-year agreement, as Bay City News points out.
Cell service in some stations, which dates back to 2009, will not be affected. But it seems like this might affect some of your connectivity in downtown BART and Muni stations where you may have been relying on this free wi-fi without realizing it. BART says it is "working to have mobile phone service throughout the remainder of our tunnels and underground stations, including those in Berkeley and on the Peninsula," but that won't be completed for a while.
Best of luck getting those emails out.
Update: Sacramento-based WiFi Rail is now threatening to sue saying that BART is illegally backing out of a contract. As WFR's CEO Cooper Lee tells the Chronicle, "The principal issue was trying to expand coverage, but they’ve been consistently blocking our ability to do so... The contract we have with them says that they are to let us know of any bad service and we correct it within 30 days. They haven’t done that. Instead they canceled what was supposed to be a 20-year contract with no just cause."An F-16 Fighting Falcon takes off from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, in support of Operation Inherent Resolve on Aug. 12, 2015.
WASHINGTON — Turkey has stopped conducting airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria as U.S. air operations ramp up from Incirlik Air Base, the Pentagon said Friday.
Turkey began bombing Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq in late July in response to a suicide bombing that killed more than 30 in the southern Turkey border town of Suruc.
Turkey’s air campaign was criticized for concentrating more on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq instead of on the Islamic State, and for potentially targeting the U.S.-allied People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia in Syria. The airstrikes complicated the U.S. counter-Islamic State campaign in Syria, which relies heavily on the YPG participation to push back the Islamic State and coordinate airstrikes against the militant group there.
“Turkey continues to communicate to us that they are committed to participating in the counter-[Islamic State] campaign,” said U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Pat Ryder.
“In the meantime – they agreed to not undertake independent counter-[Islamic State] strikes in Syria so that we can ensure that we are deconflicting and conducting safe air operations,” Ryder said.
“They have stopped doing any counter-[Islamic State] flights until we finalize some of the details in terms of how they will be part of the coalition air campaign,” he said.
It was not immediately clear whether Turkey had also agreed to pause its air campaign in northern Iraq. Ryder said that the U.S. recognizes Turkey’s right to defend itself against the PKK, and “from our perspective there is no connection between this deeper cooperation against [the Islamic State] and their operations against the PKK.”
The U.S. launched its first manned airstrikes against the Islamic State from Incirlik Air Base earlier this week, after six U.S. F-16s from Aviano Air Base and about 300 support personnel relocated there over the weekend. Ryder said the F-16s will be a regular part of the daily airstrike operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
copp.tara@stripes.com
Twitter: @TaraCoppThere are more exhibits behind these buttons:
Vibrations visualized, Rainbow Spectral Dispersion, Visual Illusion, etc.,
More high speed and stroboscopic photographs. Supersonic bullets in color schlieren beam,.22 cal bullet impact on lemon, Barnswallows returning to nest and chicks, etc.
More scientific and technical photographs including ultraviolet photographs of several flowers, reflection schlieren images, liquid crystal thermographs and stroboscopic photos
Even more technical and scientific photographs.,
The Bouncing Balls Page: is a collection of stroboscopic photographs of a bouncing ping-pong ball.
The Rising Air Bubbles Page: is a collection of photographs of air bubbles rising through various liquids such as hand soap, shampoo, and water.
Phoenix Process based Peripheral Portraits
More Panoramic, Peripheral, Linear and Circular Panoramic Photographs
Panoramics with a converted Nimslo
Here are some photographs that can be described simply as "Pretty Pictures in Nature" and more.
and my personal home page is here!
For those interested I have a few of the images below available to give away as free postcards. Find out how and which ones by clicking here: HERE
Lime
exploding Banana
exploding Tomato
explosion I Tomato
explosion II Frozen lemon
exploding Frozen lemon
exploding
.22 bullet cutting
rubber sheet #1.22 bullet cutting
rubber sheet #2.22 bullet cutting
rubber sheet #3.22 bullet cutting
rubber sheet #4
Object splashing into water filled goblet
Rebounding glass
of water 8490 Rebounding glass
of water 8492 Rebounding glass
of water 8477 Rebounding glass
of water 8488 Rebounding glass
of water 8494 Water rebounding
out of cup 781
Sneeze
Supersonic bullet
BW schlieren Supersonic bullet
in schlieren beam Cutting rubber
microsecond Supersonic bullet
schlieren Shock waves
schlieren Supersonic bullet
shadowgraph Supersonic bullet
schlieren Supersonic bullet
schlieren
Exploding
egg Exploding
orange Leaky faucet dripping water
a sequence of 6 photographs
.22 caliber gun
firing bullet Focusing
Schlieren RGB Focusing
Schlieren Candle flames
Schlieren Warm air rising
Schlieren Warm and Cold air convection
Schlieren
Water
splash #2 Water
splash #3 Water
splash #4 Water
splash #4744 Water
splash #4759 Water
splash #4761 Water
splash #4765
Water
splash #1802 Water
splash #1873 Water
splash #1728
Colliding water
ripples #4559 Colliding water
ripples #4566 Colliding water
ripples #4572 Colliding water
ripples #4565 Colliding water
ripples #4554
Candle flames seen
in schlieren beam Candle flames seen
in schlieren beam Candle flames seen
in schlieren beam Candle flames seen
in schlieren beam Candle flames seen
in schlieren beam Candle flames seen
in schlieren beam
Soup can
exploding Queen of Hearts
in two parts Soda can
explosion Bullet cutting
playing card #10 Bullet cutting
playing card #11 Bullet cutting
playing card #12
Shotgun blast plus
shot & wad separation Shotgun blast plus
shot & wad separation Shotgun blast plus
shot & wad separation Shotgun blast plus
shot & wad separation
Series of individual 1/1,000,000 second exposures showing shotgun firing shot & sabot separation
Light dispersion
by prism #01 Light dispersion
by prism #04 Light dispersion
by prism #15 Light dispersion
by prism #4982 Light dispersion
by prism #4983 Light dispersion
by prism #4991 Light dispersion
by prism #5003 Light dispersion
by prism #5016
Stroboscopic Visualization of
Cyclically Pumped Water Drops
Stroboscopic
Motion Analysis Wasp in
free flight Wasp
cruising Wasp on
the loose Endeavour
launch Comet
Hyakutake
Synchroballistic
photograph Peripheral
self portrait Synchroballistic
photograph Slitscan
photo
Stroboscopic Motion of Dancer photograph I
Stroboscopic Motion of Dancer photograph II
Warm air
above iron Warm air
above iron Poor quality glass
in schlieren beam Poor quality glass
in schlieren beam Warmed air
|
she takes a call from someone who asks, “Do you believe in vampires?” As it turns out, she does. She even knows a few undead, plus an even larger number of werewolves (in fact, she herself is one). Thus is born Kitty’s new hit program, The Midnight Hour, where those who believe in or belong to the paranormal community call in to discuss their problems. It’s not long before Kitty faces threats from vampires and werewolves who would rather not have their existence aired publicly. Kitty is a lively, engaging heroine with a strong independent streak and, usually but not always, enough sense to know when to cut her losses. This fast-paced debut novel is the first in what should prove a very popular series.” First in the Kitty Norville series.NEW YORK -
Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 7:18 pm |
The five borough district attorneys in New York City announced Thursday that nearly 700,000 summons warrants that are 10 years or older will be vacated in the next few weeks.
The warrants in question were issued for failure to pay a ticket for a minor infraction, subjecting individuals to arrest as well as impeding an application for citizenship, to secure employment or obtain public housing. They mainly stem from summonses issued for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, drinking beer in public, disorderly conduct, or being in a park after dark.
“By asking the court to purge these old warrants, we are removing a hindrance to many people’s lives,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark. “Those who committed minor offenses a decade ago or longer and have not been in trouble with the law pose no threat to public safety today. These warrants bog down the court system.”
There are approximately 1.5 million open summons warrants citywide. These summons warrants, when left unresolved, subject those who have them to an automatic arrest when questioned by police on the street or during a traffic stop.
Approximately 143,000 warrants will be dismissed in Brooklyn; 166,000 in the Bronx; 240,000 in Manhattan; and approximately 100,000 in Queens.SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — Three Persian Gulf monarchies on Friday pledged a total of $12 billion in aid to Egypt, adding to a total of more than $20 billion already contributed since the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood nearly 20 months ago.
The pledges came on the first day of an international investment conference here that the leader of Egypt’s military-backed government, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has made a centerpiece of his economic program. The large sums underscored his government’s continued dependence on the backing of the oil-rich gulf monarchs.
Officials representing the monarchies — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — each pledged $4 billion on Friday. The United Arab Emirates said it would provide $2 billion in deposits to Egypt’s central bank reserves and another $2 billion in other economic assistance. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were less specific.
The pledged contributions will bolster Egypt’s balance sheet at a moment when the government has come under renewed pressure. Its international financial reserves fell to $15.5 billion in February, down from $17.3 billion a year earlier and $36 billion before the uprising in 2011, declines that have threatened to undermine the value of its currency.Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that refusal to launch a limited, punitive military strike on Syria would undermine U.S. credibility, including its pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testified in support of President Barack Obama’s push for the United States to intervene in Syria’s ongoing two-year civil war.
"This is not the time for armchair isolationism," Kerry said. "This is not the time to be spectators to slaughter."
Obama has urged Congress to act quickly on a resolution authorizing action against Syria, as he ramps up his effort to win support for strikes against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack that the U.S. says killed nearly 1,500 people.
Facing tough questions from the committee, Kerry said the debate about military strikes against Syria is not about Obama's "red line" that weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated.
Instead, Kerry argued, "this debate is about the world's red line." He said it is "a red line that anyone with a conscience ought to draw."
Only hours earlier, after meeting with Obama, House Speaker John Boehner said he believed responding with military force to an alleged chemical attack in Syria is "something the United States as a country needs to do."
Boehner said, "I'm going to support the president's call for action. I believe my colleagues should support this call for action."
During the meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, Obama said he was confident that Congress would vote in favor of military action and said the United States had a broad plan to help the rebels defeat Syrian government forces.
"What we are envisioning is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad's capabilities," Obama told reporters. "At the same time, we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also expressed support for the president's call for action, and reiterated that any planned strike would be of "short duration."Combos! Hitstun is static in PASBR, so combos are consistent given positioning and situation, though of course most attacks will produce a different reaction if connected on an aerial opponent. Some attacks are cancelable, some will chain together, and others can be linked together, all of which serve as a foundation for the combo system. Adding to this are launcher-type attacks, juggles, throws, wall bounces, and crumples/dizzies, among other things. Furthermore, some characters are combo-heavy while others not so much, so if you're not a combo person, don't fret! We got you!
We're hard at work on polishing as we speak, and that of course includes the UI and SFX. The UI shown thus far is meant to be temporary, so you guys can expect to see a complete overhaul soon!Manama: Five days after getting married, a woman in Saudi Arabia has found that her husband was not religiously-committed man, therefore divorced him.
As per Saudi news site Al Marsad, the woman was so annoyed with her husband who was not offering five times namaz regularly which is mandatory in Islam and filed for divorce.
The court accepted her plea and issued a decree in her favour and asked her to pay 55,000 Saudi Riyal to her husband, as reported in India.com.
Her decision becomes centre of storm on social media, netizens supported the woman’s decision while some are opposing it.
“Islam is very clear about the obligation of prayers,” Reem, an online user, said. “This woman obviously does not want to live with someone who is not fulfilling the requirements, and the best thing is to end the marriage at the earliest stage possible.”
For Faten, marriages should be built on high morals and commitments to Almighty’s way of life.
“Men are not married for their wealth or power, but rather for their morals and religious practices,” she said. “If she feels that her husband is not a practicing Muslim, then she should leave him because she cannot feel comfortable living with him, and that is what she did.”
Those who opposed the wife said she should not be so hurried and have been more thoughtful before asking for divorce.
“She should have been more patient and gradually convinced him to perform his prayers,” a user writing under the moniker of Scout said. “She has really rushed into a decision that is not necessarily the best option.”
The wife should have enquired about the man before accepting to marry him, another user said.
“This is really sad because it involves two families,” he said. “All this mess could have been avoided if the woman was aware of the man’s degree of commitment to religion before they got married. It is truly an awkward situation that could have and should have been avoided.”MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said Friday he was happy with his decision to resign and that it relieved him and the state after the drumbeat of a yearlong scandal focused on his relationship with a former aide.
“I really do feel like a heavy load has been lifted,” Bentley said with a smile as he moved his stuff out of the governor’s mansion.
The doctor and former Baptist deacon found himself in the center of a sex scandal after recordings surfaced last year of him making suggestive remarks to the aide before his divorce. The cloud around him continued to swirl after lawmakers opened impeachment hearings to determine whether he coerced staff to help hide the relationship.
Alabama governor resigns ahead of impeachment hearings
He said he came to the conclusion that resigning Monday would be the best thing for the state and his staff.
“Honestly, I just felt like that the state needed, and the people, just needed to be relieved. You know what, I’m the leader and I had to make that decision,” he said. “I came here because I love the people of Alabama and I’m leaving because I still love the people of Alabama.... It was not going to let up. I want things to be calmer.”
Bentley made a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to misdemeanor campaign finance violations to end the threat of a criminal investigation. The Alabama Ethics Commission last week ruled that Bentley might have broken state ethics and campaign laws. The findings set off a rapid series of events, culminating toward his possible impeachment.
Bentley, speaking briefly to The Associated Press and the Montgomery Advertiser at the governor’s mansion, declined to say if he thought had been treated fairly or unfairly.
Bentley, a dermatologist, said he plans to teach and return to practicing medicine, focusing on rural areas where there is a shortage of specialists.
The ex-governor described his final meeting with staff, where he announced his decision to step down.
“I told them, ‘We’ll cry in here in the meeting, but when we get out there, we are going to hold our heads high,” he said.About Kosair Charities:
Kosair Charities and the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame are proud to announce a class of eight that will be inducted as the Class of 2017 into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. Among the eight is University of Louisville Senior Associate Athletic Director and Sports Information DirectorThe Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame recognizes athletes and sports figures who were born in, or played their respective sport, in the state of Kentucky. Each inductee is recognized with a bronze plaque.Past inductees into the Hall of Fame include Muhammad Ali, Pee Wee Reese, Adolph Rupp, Paul Hornung, Pat Day, Denny Crum, Joe B. Hall, Secretariat, Mary T. Meagher, Johnny Unitas and others.The KAHF induction will take place on June 1 at 6:00pm at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Louisville. Tickets are $100 per person, or $800 for a table of eight. For information go to www.kosair.org Tickets will go on sale in April.Here is the list of inductees for the Class of 2017:One of the faces of thoroughbred racing in the Commonwealth since he began calling races in 1972. Battaglia called races at Turfway Park, Keeneland and Churchill Downs where he called 19 Kentucky Derbies, from Affirmed (1978) to Grindstone (1996). He also worked for NBC on Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup coverage from 1993 until 2014. He's been the morning-line maker for Churchill Downs, Turfway Park and Keeneland, where he is also the on-air handicapper, since 1974. He remains the associated Vice-President at Turfway.Only one of two high school girls' basketball coaches in state history to surpass the 700-win mark. The longtime Marshall County High School coach won two Kentucky state titles, made 19 trips to the Sweet 16 and when he retired in 2010 was the all-time winningest girls' coach in state history with a mark of 794-149. He won the state title in 1982 and '84, finishing a perfect 34-0.One of the state's greatest football players of all time, Bird was a high school All-American at Corbin and then went on to play at the University of Kentucky. With the Wildcats, Bird was a first-team All-American as a running back and was drafted by the Oakland Raiders. He was switched to defensive back and was named AFL Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1966. His jersey hangs in Commonwealth Stadium. His brothers, Calvin and Billy, were football players at UK and another brother, Jerry, played basketball for the Wildcats.The longtime WKYT sports anchor is the familiar face for many wanting coverage of the Kentucky Wildcats in Central Kentucky. He's been at WKYT for more than 40 years, among the longest standing television anchors in Kentucky. His career at WKYT included a run of 30 years on the UK Television Network doing play-by-play, color commentary and sideline reporting. During his duties with the UK network, Bromley has done shows with Fran Curci, Joe B. Hall, Jerry Claiborne, Eddie Sutton, Bill Curry,, Hal Mumme and Tubby Smith. In 2015 he was inducted into the NATAS Ohio Valley Silver Circle, one of the highest awards given by NATAS for 25 years or more of distinguished service. He was named Kentucky Co-Sportscaster of the Year for 2016 by the National Sports Media Association.Growing up just outside of London, England, Hartel's passion was soccer. But he's made a name for himself in the state of Kentucky as a legend of sorts in the local running world. The former Western Kentucky University star runner owns Swags Sports Shoes in Louisville. A former winner of the Kentucky Derby Festival MiniMarathon, Hartel opened his first store in 1985 and now has two locations in the Louisville-area.The longtime Senior Associate Athletic Director and Sports Information Director at the University of Louisville has been with the U of L staff since 1983. The Murray State graduate is a member of the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame. He has worked in media operations for the NCAA at the men's Final Four since 1985 and has also worked for the PGA of America at PGA Championship and Ryder Cup events. He received the Katha Quinn Award for his outstanding service by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association in 2012.One of the legends in high school football coaching, Lampley arrived at Trinity High School in 1971 as an assistant coach. He served as the defensive coordinator on three state championship teams before taking over as the head coach of the Shamrocks' program. He complied a record of 138-21 during his tenure, winning five state titles in 10 years as the head coach. During his tenure, Lampley's teams won 50-straight games from 1988-91 – which is still the state record. He was named National Coach of the Year in 1990 and was inducted into the National High School Coaches Hall of Fame in 2012. He was the longtime athletic director at Trinity and is still the school's assistant AD.She was the best female golfer in America from 1936-41, winning numerous amateur championships in the years before the formation of the LPGA Tour. Miley became one of the best and most famous female athletes in the 1930s but at the age of 27 in 1941 she was murdered in an apartment at Lexington Country Club during a robbery attempt. She is still remembered as a pioneer in women's sports whose legacy of courage and achievement paved the way for future generations.Since 1923 Kosair Charities has had one primary mission – helping children in need. Kosair Charities knows that the quality of a child's tomorrow depends largely on the quality of health, medical treatment, and support a child receives today. Kosair Charities supports over 100 pediatric agencies in our community by donating funding for research, clinical services, health education and care every year. For more information please visit http://kosair.org or call 502.637.7696. Follow Kosair Charities on Facebook Twitter or InstagramWith the recent news that US Postal Service losses in 2011 have been far greater than expected – They're now losing more than $3 billion per fiscal quarter – and with the continued decline in mail volume, it seems only a matter of time until Congress takes the austerity stick uses it to beat the agency half to death. Your anecdotal experience is probably enough to explain why; try to think of the last time you received mail that wasn't garbage. If I didn't occasionally buy something off eBay that arrived by mail, credit card junk mail is the only thing I would ever receive. The Postal Service is unlikely to disappear, but it is highly likely that we won't recognize it in a few more years. Post offices will be closed and consolidated, delivery will be limited to a few times per week in some areas, and the agency will devote even more of its resources to shipping packages as opposed to carrying letters.
In honor of the long history of the USPS (and its predecessor, the Post Office Department originally headed by Ben Franklin, here is a random, hopefully entertaining list of interesting postal trivia and oddities I've amassed over the years.
– As of 2011, the USPS still delivers mail regularly via mule train on one route. An 8-mile trip to the bottom of a canyon to deliver mail to Havasupi Indians in Arizona occurs weekly. Mules, people.
– Although it has been a source of controversy, the most expensive mail route in the U.S. continues as the only one with delivery solely by air. Once per week a subcontractor, who is paid over $50,000 annually in the contract, flies mail to 20 cabins and ranches in the Frank Church Wilderness Area in Idaho. (The cuts referenced in this NPR story were later overturned by the Postmaster General).
– The Zip Code 48222 is a boat on the Detroit River called the J.W. Westcott, which deliver mail to passing ships without either vessel docking. WTF. I have never understood this. But it exists.
– The longest daily rural mail route is 148 miles long and snakes through rural northwestern North Dakota. It serves less than 100 addresses over that vast distance. North Dakota is not a very exciting place, is it? And I bet the letter carriers draw straws to avoid this route.
– The very first daily, day-and-night transcontinental air mail route – from NYC to San Francisco – was established in 1924. The plane stopped between 12 and 16 times for fuel. Air travel has changed a lot, hasn't it.
– Zip Codes rise as one travels west. The highest, 99950, belongs to Ketchikan, Alaska, home of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" that became an issue in the 2008 election. The lowest, 00501, serves a single IRS office building in New York.
– The Pentagon has six Zip Codes. For a single building. The World Trade Center had one as well. Until 2008, Chicago's Merchandise Mart also had its own (60654).
– Marc Chagall's painting "Study for Over Vitebsk" was stolen the Jewish Museum in New York in 2001 and found in a Topeka, Kansas dead letter office. Legally, dead letters are the only kind of mail that can be opened by the Postal Service in an attempt to determine the intended recipient. Or to discover priceless art.
– Loma Linda, CA has no Saturday delivery but is the only municipality with regular Sunday delivery. The town has a large percentage of Seventh Day Adventists, including among its postal workers, who will not work on Saturday.
– The Post Office Department, forerunner of the USPS, had a seriously awesome logo:
– In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, mail was delivered several times per day. In major cities like New York, deliveries in business districts took place almost continuously during the day. Wall Street and Lower Manhattan were the last areas with two-per-day delivery, which ended in 1990.
– For the last 20 years, new USPS employees have seen a training video starring one of the most famous fictional mailmen, Cliff Clavin of Cheers.
– Mail delivery to and in Alaska is a major drain on the USPS. With a poor road network and low population density, it has hundreds of towns to which mail must be flown daily.
– The largest USPS facility in the country by far is Chicago's main post office / sorting facility. It is so large that Interstate 290 travels underneath it at one point. Most of the complex has been abandoned for years. Daley wanted to turn it into a casino.
– A little girl was mailed from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents in Lewiston in 1914. A cooperative postmaster invoiced the child as a "48 pound baby chicken", two pounds under the 50 limit on mailing live poultry. Rather than being sealed in a box, the address was pinned to her dress and she rode with the mail carrier in the cab of the delivery vehicle.
Feel free to add your own trivia or relay some amusing anecdotes. Before we forget all of this stuff.For more than five years, Iran has maintained a reputation as one of the most aggressive nations in the global arena of state-sponsored hacking, stealing data from corporate and government networks around the world, bombarding US banks with cyberattacks, and most brazen of all, unleashing multiple waves of computer-crippling malware that hit tens of thousands of PCs across the Middle East. But amidst that noisy mayhem, one Iranian group has managed to quietly penetrate a broad series of targets around the world, until now evading the public eye. And while that group seems to have stuck to traditional spying so far, it may also be laying the groundwork for the next round of destructive attacks.
Security firm FireEye has released new research into a group it calls Advanced Persistent Threat 33, attributing a prolific series of breaches of companies in the aerospace, defense, and petrochemical industries in countries as wide-ranging as Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the US. While FireEye has closely tracked APT33 since May of last year, the security firm believes the group has been active since at least 2013, with firm evidence that it works on behalf of Iran's government. And though FireEye describes APT33's activities as largely focused on stealthy spying, they've also found links between it and a mysterious piece of data-destroying malware that security analysts have puzzled over since earlier this year.
"This could be an opportunity for us to recognize an actor while they’re still focused on classic espionage, before their mission becomes more aggressive," says John Hultquist, FireEye's director of intelligence analysis. He compares APT33 to Sandworm, a hacking operation FireEye discovered in 2014 and tied to Russia, which began with spying intrusions against NATO and Ukrainian targets before escalating to data-wiping attacks in 2015 and finally two sabotage attacks against the Ukrainian power grid. "We've seen them deploy destructive tools they haven’t used. We're looking at a team whose mission could change to disruption and destruction overnight."
FireEye says it's encountered signs of APT33 in six of its own clients' networks, but suspects far broader intrusions. For now, it says the group's attacks have focused on Iran's regional interests. Even the targets in the US and Korea, for instance, have comprised companies with Middle East ties, though FireEye declines to name any specific targets. "They’re hitting companies headquartered all over the world," Hultquist says. "But they’re being swept up into this activity because they do business in the Gulf."
Seeds of Destruction
Beyond run-of-the-mill economic espionage, FireEye has found infections of victim networks with a specific piece of "dropper" malware—a piece of software designed to deliver one or multiple other malware payloads—that the security firm calls DropShot. That dropper had in some cases installed another malware weapon, which FireEye calls ShapeShift, designed to wipe target computers by overwriting every portion of a computer's hard drive with zeros.
While FireEye did not find that destructive malware in networks where it had identified APT33 hackers, it did find the same dropper used in APT33's intrusions to install a piece of backdoor software it called TurnedUp. It has also never seen the DropShot dropper used by another distinct hacker group, or distributed publicly.
The notion that Iranian hackers may be prepping another round of destructive attacks would hardly represent a break from form. In 2012, Iran-linked hackers calling themselves "Cutting Sword of Justice" used a piece of similar "wiper" malware known as Shamoon to overwrite the hard drives of 30,000 computers at Saudi oil behemoth Saudi Aramco with the image of a burning US flag. The same year, a group calling itself the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters took credit for an unrelenting series of distributed denial of service attacks on US banking sites known as Operation Ababil, purportedly in revenge for the anti-Muslim YouTube video "the Innocence of Muslims". Those attacks, too, were eventually pinned on Iran. And last year another round of Shamoon attacks ripped through the Middle East, destroying thousands more machines, this time overwriting the drives with the image of the body of a 3-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean.
Security firm Kaspersky first spotted ShapeShift in March of this year, calling it StoneDrill. Kaspersky noted that it resembles Shamoon, but with more techniques designed to evade security mechanisms, like the "sandbox" protections that limit a given application's access to the rest of a target computer. Kaspersky wrote at the time that one of the two targets in which it found StoneDrill malware was European, whereas Shamoon's attacks had been confined to the Middle East. "Why is this worrying?" asked Kaspersky founder Eugene Kaspersky in a blog post about the discovery. "Because this finding indicates that certain malicious actors armed with devastating cyber-tools are testing the water in regions in which previously actors of this type were rarely interested."
Critical infrastructure security firm Dragos has also tracked APT33, says the company's founder Robert M. Lee, and found that the group has focused the majority of its attention on the petrochemical industry. Dragos' findings back up FireEye's warning that the group seems to be sowing infections for destructive attacks. "This is economic espionage with the added ability to be destructive, but we have no reason to think they’ve gone destructive yet," says Lee. He notes that despite the industrial focus of the hackers, they haven't tailored their malware to industrial control systems, only mainstream computer operating systems. "That didn't stop Iranian hackers from doing massive damage to Saudi Aramco."1
FireEye's evidence tying APT33 to Iran goes further than mere similarities between ShapeShift and Iran's earlier destructive malware, Shamoon. It also found plentiful traces of the Iranian national language Farsi in ShapeShift, as well as in the DropShot dropper used to install it. Analyzing the active hours of the hacker group, they found they were heavily concentrated during Tehran business hours, almost entirely ceasing during the Iranian weekend of Thursday and Friday. The group's other hacking tools are ones commonly used by Iranian hackers, FireEye says. And one hacker whose pseudonym, "xman_1365_x", was included in the TurnedUp backdoor tool is linked to the Iranian Nasr Institute, a suspected Iranian government hacking organization.
APT33's attacks have in many cases begun with spearphishing emails that bait targets with job offers; FireEye describes the general polish and details of those messages down to the fine print of their "Equal Opportunity" statements. But the company also notes that the group at one point accidentally fired off its emails without changing the default settings of its phishing software tool, complete with the subject line "your site hacked by me"—a rare one-off, sloppy mistake for a prolific state hacking group.
Ready to Blow
Even as Iran's hackers have caused mayhem for its neighbors, the country hasn't been tied to any high-profile hackers attacks against the US since 2012—perhaps in part due to the the Obama administration's 2015 agreement with Tehran to end its nuclear development program. But America's brief rapprochement with Iran may be closing again: President Trump on Tuesday spoke at the UN General Assembly, accusing Iran's government of pursuing "death and destruction," and calling the Obama deal with Tehran "an embarrassment."
Though APT33 seems focused for the moment on regional espionage, it's also carrying out "reconnaissance for attack," says FireEye's Hultquist. "With a sudden geopolitical shift, that behavior could change."
If it does, the group may already have its malware bombs planted around the world, ready to detonate.
1Updated 9/20/2017 10:30 am to add comments from security firm Dragos.Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush cautioned Netherlanders against thinking of Donald Trump's supporters as a "bunch of idiots."
Bush, who was in Amsterdam making one of his first public appearances since ending his presidential campaign, is no fan of Trump, but he says has respect for his following.
"What I fear is that people, kind of looking down their nose, will say the people that are supporting Donald Trump are a bunch of idiots. They're not. They're legitimately scared. They're fearful," Bush said per CNN. "They're not as optimistic for legitimate reasons and there should be respect for that."
Bush participated in a three-hour event in Amsterdam hosted by the Nexus Institute about American democracy, where he also participated in a panel discussion.
The former Republican presidential candidate has said he will not attend the GOP convention this summer, and he does he plan to vote for Trump.“Arrow” star Stephen Amell landed in hot water on Twitter Wednesday afternoon after he made a comment equating the treatment of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed to stererotypes lobbed against Texas, the state where the incident went down.
“Stereotyping Texas isn’t any better than stereotyping Ahmed. Just so we’re clear,” Amell tweeted Wednesday afternoon.
Also Read: 'Arrow' Star Stephen Amell Says He Will 'Go Away For a Bit' in Video Apologizing for Ahmed Mohamed Comments
Mohamed was arrested for bringing a self-made alarm clock to school in Irving, Texas, on Monday. The arrest has prompted questions about bias against Muslims. Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that “It would not have occurred if he did not have a Muslim name and have a heritage from the Muslim world.”
Mohamed was proud of the clock he made from a circuit board with wires leading to a digital display, and wanted to show it to his teachers at MacArthur High School.
However, one teacher alerted authorities when she mistook it for a bomb, and Mohamed was put in handcuffs shortly afterwards. But realizing there was no imminent threat, the boy was released.
Also Read: Mark Zuckerberg Invites Ahmed Mohamed to Facebook Amid Clock 'Bomb' Arrest
Since then, the #IStandWithAhmed hashtag started trending on Twitter. Even President Obama has invited Mohamed to bring his alarm clock to the White House on Twitter.
Amell’s comment did not sit well with Twitter users.
“Stephen Amell just needs to take his top off but shut his mouth,” user ShayneCaffrey said. “Talk about missing the point. I thought season 3 was bad but he’s worse.”
“@amellywood get over yourself,” said baetoul. “Nobody is “profiling” Texas, they’re talking about the rampant racism and systematic inequality present there.”
Also Read: 'DC's Legends of Tomorrow' Reveals First Look at Hawkman and Hawkgirl (Photo)
Rather than apologize or take back his remarks, Amell doubled down in subsequent tweets.
“I can’t believe I broke my rule and tweeted about an actual event. Staggering to remember that debates in 140 characters don’t work,” he wrote. “What happened to Ahmed was terrible. Obviously. I happened to read a series of tweets pronouncing that this is a systemic problem in Texas, which is also profiling…. Anywho, I’m not apologizing or deleting the tweets. If you’re outraged at an opinion it’s because you’re bored.”
Amell concluded his rant on a positive note, saying, “Last thing: Ahmed’s White House visit will be an awesome, awesome moment.”
Also Read: 'Arrow' Season 4 Trailer Teases Oliver Embracing His Dark Side (Video)
But the outrage has not died down. Below is a sampling of social media reactions to the “Arrow” star’s comments.
Reps for Amell did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
@amellywood stop it, you're getting fucking annoying. You're 34 but you dont realize that your tweets are SO DIRESPECTFUL for Muslims. — cassandra (@isuckitup) September 16, 2015
@amellywood you might as well end off ur rant with #WhiteLivesMatter since ur tryna make it all about u — jai (@OLlVERQUEEN) September 16, 2015
stephen amell: yeah what happened to ahmed is bad but u kno what's a REAL crime? bringing up texas's long case history of racial prejudice — fave ✨ (@helmetwings) September 16, 2015
@amellywood So u are allowed to be outraged & go on a twitter rant about Texas being wrongfully profiled but wen we r outraged we are bored! — iLoveMeBeingMe (@LoveMeBeingMe) September 16, 2015
People: a kid got arrested bc of the strong islamophobia in america Stephen amell: but texas's feelings got hurt :// so — tatiana (@VVINTERHELL) September 16, 2015
@amellywood get over yourself. Nobody is "profiling" Texas, they're talking about the rampant racism and systematic inequality present there — Batoul (@baetoul) September 16, 2015
@amellywood this is the guy from arrow? lmfao definitely won't be watching that show anymore — ramsha (@rarnsha) September 16, 2015
Would Stephen Amell stfu about Texas. We know not all of Texas is a shitstain. That is NOT THE FUCKIN POINT FFS. — amelia's robbins (@arizonavery) September 16, 2015
I used to live in Texas and as a person of color, there were very many people who were not as polite to me as they were to you @amellywood — baesia (@asiachka) September 16, 2015
stephen amell rn probably https://t.co/JucDahN9fh — gasoline molly (@jaemspotters) September 16, 2015
Just like Matt Damon got called out by the media for his comment on diversity, I hope the same thing happens to Stephen Amell. — メοメο (@Loyal2Musiq) September 16, 2015LAS VEGAS -- One reason Metta World Peace wanted to sign with the Knicks was the challenge of winning in New York.
"We all know it's the hardest place to win," said World Peace, who agreed to a two-year contract with the Knicks on Monday. "Since [the] '73 [title]. Why not take on something that's hard? Why not?"
The Knicks had the opportunity to draft World Peace, a Queens native and St. John's star, with the 15th pick in 1999, when his name was still Ron Artest. But they shocked fans going with no-name Frederic Weis.
World Peace was drafted 16th by the Bulls -- the beginning of a rollercoaster ride that included an All-Star Game (2004 with the Pacers), an NBA title (2010 with the Lakers) and a lot of games lost to suspensions.
"As a young kid growing up in the Queensbridge projects, whether you're from Brooklyn or Far Rock, you go from nothing to making a million dollars a year," he said. "And [with] so many people telling me, 'You're the best, you're the best,' you believe that and you get in trouble. And that’s what happened. And then it take 10 years to realize that you grew up in dysfunction, and you're going to continue to make mistakes if you don't change."
World Peace said Monday that signing with the Knicks wasn't his priority. He initially thought of playing football.
"Y'all know I like to be adventurous," he said. "I have no filter and I have no filter in my creativity. Very bold. I changed my name. So the thing with the Arena Football League was really appealing to me. That was something I mentioned to everybody. And I'm pushing kids to play multiple sports, like Bo Jackson did back in the day."
His second option, he said, was playing basketball in China, as he's close with Yao Ming. They played together in Houston during the 2008-09 season.
"Being in my prime, I think China would have been very inspirational," he said. "But then you get back to that orange and blue, and you know that orange-and-blue blood; you've got to come back home."
Now that he's in New York, he doesn't care what role he plays.
"Doesn't matter," said World Peace, who averaged 12.4 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game for the Lakers last season. "I don't care if I'm starting or sweeping the floors. You hear me? I want to win.... It's not about one person helping one person. It's about us doing it together. They have chemistry and everybody's a teammate."
You can follow Jared Zwerling on Twitter.Translated by Ahmed Abu Turaab
Al-Albaani said, “There was a problem with my eye so the doctor asked me to rest and stop reading and writing for some time. I said [to myself]: so that time is not wasted, I’ll give one of our brothers a small manuscript to copy out for me, such that by the time he finishes, I would have taken sufficient rest.
The brother started to copy out the manuscript and I would look through what he had copied, consoling myself by saying that such reading would not [adversely] affect [my eye] or overstrain it.
[While doing so] I came across a word [in the copy] which I didn’t understand and which I could not read. I went back to the manuscript [the copy was taken from] and found that the brother had copied the word [correctly] just as it appeared in the manuscript, he was a [skilled |
on New Year’s Eve.
“We’re doing two inspections this week,” Charles King, general manager of the Baltimore Eagle, told the Blade. “We’re still hopeful of opening even partially by New Year’s Eve. Keeping our fingers crossed.” The inspections will be conducted by Baltimore City officials.
The bar, located at 2022 N. Charles St., closed in 2012 following the death of its owner Richard Richardson. The Eagle was purchased by Charles and Ian Parrish in 2013, and a major renovation and construction effort costing approximately $1 million got underway.
There was a setback with the Baltimore City Liquor Board in 2015, but the management team persevered. While construction continued, they obtained the needed liquor license in September.
“The bar itself will not just be one bar, but rather a collection of bars, restaurants, a leather and adult retail store, a package goods store, a lounge featuring a collection of leather community history and artifacts, and an event space inspired by Bohemian romance and cabaret nostalgia that will bring the NYC and Montreal music scene to Baltimore, all on multiple levels and taking a much larger footprint than the previous Eagle,” Miles Crackow, the director of social media and public relations, told the Blade in September.
A new large billboard on busy Charles Street has been on display that reads, “Buckle Up Your Ride Is Coming Soon.”
If the permits are in place in time, “we will have the biggest party Baltimore has seen in years! Keep your fingers crossed and check in with our website,” according to The Baltimore Eagle’s Facebook page.
Management has scheduled several events beginning in 2017 including the launch of “Baltimore Bear Fridays & Bears After Dark” in conjunction with Bear Nonsense.
For more information and updates, visit TheBaltimoreEagle.com.On television and on the stump, at debates and in speeches, Donald Trump is reminding the American people that they are going to die.
The reminders aren’t explicit, and they probably aren’t part of an intentional strategy. All the same, much of Trump’s rhetoric could have the effect of bringing his viewers’ omnipresent fear of death closer to their conscious minds, according to Sheldon Solomon, a psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
That includes his emphasis on terrorism, unsurprisingly, but also his preoccupation with immigration. This focus might be helping Trump, since Solomon’s recent research shows that people who are thinking about death are more likely to say they support him. Study subjects who were prompted to talk about their own death later rated their support for Trump 1.66 points higher on a five-point scale than those who were prompted to talk about pain generally.
Trump reads snake poem to discuss immigration, terrorism Embed Copy Share Play Video 2:55 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump read a poem about a snake at a rally in Ohio to discuss immigration and terrorism. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump read a poem about a snake at a rally in Ohio to discuss immigration and terrorism. (Reuters) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump read a poem about a snake at a rally in Ohio to discuss immigration and terrorism. (Reuters)
“I’m not suggesting that any of this is calculated, but almost everything that he does is demonstrably effective for raising these non-conscious, existential concerns that in turn make his kind of candidacy all the more alluring,” Solomon said.
Solomon is part of a group of researchers that has spent decades investigating the connections between death and a broad variety of human beliefs and behavior. Their inspiration has been the work of Ernest Becker, an anthropologist who argued that the fear of death was a kind of fundamental principle in explaining human psychology. Becker won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1973 book “ Solomon is part of a group of researchers that has spent decades investigating the connections between death and a broad variety of human beliefs and behavior. Their inspiration has been the work of Ernest Becker, an anthropologist who argued that the fear of death was a kind of fundamental principle in explaining human psychology. Becker won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1973 book “ The Denial of Death,” but he was shunned in the academic community for what his peers saw as a lack of rigor.
“It was existential, psychodynamic, philosophical speculation for which there was no empirical proof,” Solomon said. He and his colleagues have tried to supply that proof through experimentation.
Their research is still preliminary and controversial, and they haven’t worked out a complete theory, but they have discovered a number of startling facts about how people think about death.
For example, Solomon and Florette Cohen of the City University of New York, College of Staten Island recently found evidence that asking people to think about immigrants also gets them thinking about death.
Solomon and Cohen asked a small group of volunteers at the College of Staten Island to respond to one of three prompts. One group was asked to write down what they thought would happen, in as much detail as possible, if immigrants moved into their neighborhoods, and what emotions they would feel. The other two groups were asked to answer the same questions, but about their own deaths and about feeling intense pain instead of about immigration.
Then the two researchers gave the participants a set of words with letters missing and asked them to fill in the blanks to get an idea of what the participants were thinking about. Shown “C O F F _ _,” for example, many people might write “COFFEE,” especially students in college. If they were thinking about death, however, they might write “COFFIN” instead.
The participants who had been asked to think about immigration had death on their minds, too — almost to the same extent as those who had been asked to think about death explicitly.
Assigned scores from zero to one based on how many words related to death they produced, those who had been asked to think about immigration scored 0.92 on average, while those who had been asked to think about death scored 0.96. Those asked to think about pain scored just 0.19. There was no evidence that the effect was greater for conservative participants in the study.
Solomon said he hopes to replicate the study, which was completed with a small group of a few dozen students at the College of Staten Island.
Yet the results accord with those of similar studies that suggest people interpret challenges to their culture as threats to their very existence. Yet the results accord with those of similar studies that suggest people interpret challenges to their culture as threats to their very existence. A different group of researchers found that after a group of Canadians read an article in which Canadian cultural tropes were mocked, they were thinking about death, too.
The pattern extends to religious beliefs. The pattern extends to religious beliefs. Another study found a comparable effect in atheists confronted with arguments in favor of intelligent design, and a third concluded that pointing out logical inconsistencies in the Bible made thoughts of death also more accessible to fundamentalist Christians.
For Solomon, the research suggests that when people create meaning in their lives — whether through religion, nationality or “staying at home with a 30-pack of beer and spraying some Cheez Whiz on a cracker,” in Solomon’s words — they are protecting themselves from their constant awareness of death. He and his colleagues For Solomon, the research suggests that when people create meaning in their lives — whether through religion, nationality or “staying at home with a 30-pack of beer and spraying some Cheez Whiz on a cracker,” in Solomon’s words — they are protecting themselves from their constant awareness of death. He and his colleagues have argued that the same is true of clothing and grooming, and that humans conceal their nature as animals from themselves to avoid thinking about their mortality.
Solomon and his colleagues also have found that thinking about death makes charismatic, resolute leaders more appealing. They Solomon and his colleagues also have found that thinking about death makes charismatic, resolute leaders more appealing. They showed that to be true during President George W. Bush’s successful campaign for reelection against John F. Kerry, now the secretary of state, in 2004, and Solomon’s new research with Cohen has produced similar results for Trump.
They rated participants’ support for Trump on a scale out of five points based on their answers to several questions. The average rating for those who had been reminded of their mortality was 3.8 points, but it was just 2.2 points for those who had been asked to think about pain.
Solomon said these results suggest that the fear of death is one of several interrelated psychological concepts that could help explain why Trump has been so successful, including authoritarianism, an aversion to uncertainty and racial prejudice.
“It sure seems like an existentially shaky historical moment where it has become increasingly difficult for the average American to perceive that they have any basis for either meaning or self-worth,” Solomon said. “It is a factor, and in a very close election, it could matter.”
business wonkblog true Wonkbook newsletter Your daily policy cheat sheet from Wonkblog. Please provide a valid email address. Sign up You’re all set! See all newsletters
1 of 40 Full Screen Autoplay Close Advertisement Skip Ad × Embed Copy Share What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail View Photos Businessman Donald Trump has become the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president. Caption Businessman Donald Trump has become the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president. -- July 7, 2016 | Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. ( Mark Wilson/Getty Images ) Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
More from Wonkblog:'What gives Apple the right to change the world?'
This thought struck me during Tim Cook's presentation on Monday. Strip out the emotive language of magical hardware, software that reduces the pain points of modern life, and an ecosystem that attempts to link everything in your life through Cupertino, and what did you have? You had a streaming video receiver, a thin laptop, a watch that needs charged every day, and a massive bug hunt to try to fix the faults in the smartphone in your pocket.
Yet the language was not about the physicality of the objects, and the stories told were not about working down a features list. Cook and his team have moved beyond simple product launches in the vein of the other smartphone manufacturers that we saw in Barcelona at MWC the week before.
Steve Jobs once said that Apple was for "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently." Well, there are two more qualities to add. The first is the disruptors, and the second is the alchemists.
Through its sales and income, Apple has earned the right to disrupt many new markets. It has managed this with the desktop computer, with the smartphone, and now is doing the same with the connected world. At each step it has iterated something that is even more personal than the time before. Companies since the dawn of business have attempted to do this, but only a select few gain the trust, the position, and the authority to literally reshape the world. Apple's final goal is to disrupt society.
What does Apple sell? At a fundamental level, Apple sells change.
The idea of 'think different' could be seen as thinking different about how to make a computer, but it is more than that. It was about thinking about computing in a different way. The iPhone was not about matching every feature of the competition or building a handset that could do everything the Nokia N95 handset, it was about rethinking what a mobile phone should be used for. The same is true of every Apple product, but as time passed, Apple reached for more change. It changed itself, it changed individuals, it changed families, and it is now looking to change the world.
Apple's dominance permeates society. The iPhone is the biggest selling smartphone in the world, portable computing is dominated by the MacBook range, the iPad family is still one of the strongest tablet lines, and in the Apple Watch Cupertino is taking steps to build an even more personal relationship.
What has Tim Cook achieved? Philosophically he has managed to place Apple at every major intersection of life. He has placed his physical agents of change exactly where they need to be. For what purpose? To make the world a better place, to use technology to create a better society; to redefine how the human race interacts with technology; and perhaps attempting to alter the course of human evolution.
While everyone else is selling smartphones, Tim Cook is doing something more akin to alchemy. He is acting as an agent of social change, he is pouring his mercury into every corner of humanity, and he is comfortable in his role as an agent provocateur. The iPhone is not just the primary symbol of Apple, but each iPhone is a symbol of its owner. By driving material change through each iPhone, Cook can drive social change through each owner, and drive material change on society.
The alchemists dream was to turn lead into gold. Cook's Apple is more practical, but also much more grandiose. He has earned the right to change society itself, and to push humanity forward in a way that only a handful of people in history have ever been offered.
And you thought it was about selling a $20,000 smartwatch...On Tuesday, renowned legal journal Cosmopolitan ran a piece titled “9 Ways To Make Your Man Gasp In Bed.” No, actually – they could have run that piece, but we know that they ran a piece titled “9 Reasons Constitutional Originalism Is Bulls***.” Written by NYU Law graduate Jill Filipovic, the article evidences all of the brilliant jurisprudential analyses we’ve come to expect from the journal that informs you which sex positions best tickle your significant other properly.
Here are Filipovic’s nine critiques:
1. “No one is really an originalist.” Filipovic argues that judges don’t actually pay attention to the original wording and meaning of the Constitution, instead substituting their own policy preferences. As evidence, she chooses DC v. Heller, a decision re-enshrining the individual right to keep and bear arms. Why isn’t that originalist? Because, Filipovic argues, the founders meant to restrict arms ownership to militia members and didn’t know what handguns were (“Nor, of course, did handguns exist in the 18th century”). Both of these contentions are false. Militia members were members of the community, and there were many state laws that required all able-bodied men of age to own a gun so as to be available for militia duty. The militia clause is a justifying clause, not an operative one. And handguns were in use as early as the 14th century.
2. “Societies evolve, and that’s a good thing.” Filipovic argues that new scientific knowledge should impact how we interpret the Constitution – for example, brain science should help determine what the founders meant by “cruel and unusual punishment.” But we have legislatures for that. The Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment, but legislatures can outlaw certain tools. She mixes up the role of the courts – to apply the meaning of the law – and that of the legislature to make policy. She even says she hopes that the courts would rule capital punishment unconstitutional on this basis.
3. “Words evolve to reflect changing norms.” She says that words like “equal” meant something different in the 1790s than they mean now, particularly with regard to women and minorities. She’s right. That’s why America implemented Constitutional amendments in order to enshrine those new meanings, as per the 14th and 19th amendments. It’s not the job of the courts to rewrite meaning.
4. “Technology evolves, and the law has to keep up.” Filipovic argues that it’s difficult to apply constitutional principles to modern technology. So, for example, the provisions of the constitution guaranteeing liberty from unreasonable search and seizure – how would they apply to cars or wiretaps? These are indeed controversial propositions in originalist circles. But that doesn’t mean that we ought to merely ignore what the framers intended in principle in order to reach our own policy preferences.
5. “Originalism is a cover for legal discrimination.” Again, this ignores the fact that we have legislatures in this country. You can’t rewrite founding documents to implement your own version of utopia. Filipovic says, correctly, that “a lot of our laws originally allowed a lot of terrible acts.” This is true! It’s also the reason we have … you guessed it … legislatures. And amendments. She says that Plessy v. Ferguson, reversed by Brown v. Board of Education, is a good example of courts evolving. She ignores the fact that Plessy was arguably wrongly decided on its merits at the time – that’s the case Scalia made during his career, stating that, “In my view the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement of ‘equal protection of the laws,’ combined with the Thirteenth Amendment’s abolition of the institution of black slavery, leaves no room for doubt that laws treating people differently because of their race are invalid.” Even if Scalia was wrong on originalist grounds, that does not mean that the legislature could not or should not have taken the proper measures. Again, courts are not legislatures. And just because history was full of bad things doesn't mean that the Constitution doesn't provide mechanisms to fix those bad things outside of Jill Filipovic convincing Ruth Bader Ginsburg to run roughshod over the republic.
6. “Not even the founders were originalists.” This is just horsecrap. Filipovic says, “The framers of the Constitution didn’t offer any instructions for how to interpret the document.” Actually, it’s dubious whether the founders even agreed with judicial review, but if they did, there’s no doubt that they would have hated the court’s usurpation of legislative power. See, for example, Hamilton in Federalist No. 78: “The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body. The observation, if it prove any thing, would prove that there ought to be no judges distinct from that body.” All laws are applied as written. No judge would dare interpret the Sherman Antitrust Act the way leftists encourage judges to interpret the Constitution.
7. “The founders weren’t fortune tellers and couldn’t predict every possible legal issue.” Here, Filipovic states that “many of the realities of modern life didn’t exist in the 18th century.” That’s true! You know who else knew that? The founders, who relied on legislatures to create law. Filipovic makes the idiotic assessment that if you’re an originalist, if the founders “didn’t specifically bar the government from doing something, the government is free to do it.” That’s asinine. That looks only to the Bill of Rights, not to the structural Constitution, which delegates powers. The founders explicitly rejected Filipovic’s logic – and said so in the Ninth Amendment, which reserved rights to the states and people. As for Filipovic’s examples of governments doing bad things at the state level – again, true! The founders recognized that, and relied on people not to be complete morons. But they didn’t trust the people completely, which is why they created some federal rights.
8. “No one really wants to live in an originalist country.” I do, if she means that legislators should legislate and – get this! – judges should adjudicate. She quotes UC Irvine Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky for the proposition that if the court didn’t impose its will, “This would mean the end of constitutional protection for liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to custody of one’s children” – and the list goes on. Yet, magically, for decades the court didn’t read its preferences into the Constitution, and yet the country didn’t descend into chaos and anarchy. That’s because we elect people here. Again, legislatures exist.
9. “A Constitution that doesn’t reflect changing norms and realities is a Constitution that would eventually prove itself ineffectual and irrelevant.” Filipovic says that the judicial system cannot be neutered lest it fail to check the other branches. Except that she wants the other branches to be incapable of checking the mystical wisdom of the judicial oligarchy. A Constitution that changes at the whim of nine unelected judges means a country ruled by a clique, not by the people or their elected representatives.
Even Filipovic has to admit that “of course the Constitution should be interpreted as it’s written.” But she then says that what she means is that judges should interpret it as they wish it had been written.
The Constitution, in other words, should have more positions than Cosmo. And they’ll all be less satisfying.Membership usually has its perks. In Strava’s case, its Premium members now have an exclusive shot at a custom kit made by Black Sheep. Yes, the same Black Sheep that only sells its kits in limited releases, blending high-end design with unmistakably unique styling. For just 48 hours, starting on Monday, September 28th at 10:00 AM PST, the special Strava X Black Sheep collaboration kit will be offered only to Strava’s Premium members. Only 500 of these kits exist; if any remain after the 48-hour period, they will be offered to Black Sheep’s following and all Strava members.
RELATED: How to Buy Bib Shorts
The kits are available for both men and women. As one would expect, this high-end kit doesn’t come cheap ($290), but that does include the jersey and bib short. The jersey features a form-fit, full-zip design made with a mix of light Asteroid fabric, super lightweight warp fabric, and free-flowing, open-cell mesh side panels. The matching bibs are constructed of Powercore high compression fabric with Power Cuff compression around the thigh. Its chamois is made of high-density foam with perineum support for riders who spend a lot of time on the rivet.Abstract
The five-factor model (FFM) is a widely used taxonomy of human personality; yet its neuro anatomical basis remains unclear. This is partly because past associations between gray-matter volume and FFM were driven by different surface-based morphometry (SBM) indices (i.e. cortical thickness, surface area, cortical folding or any combination of them). To overcome this limitation, we used Free-Surfer to study how variability in SBM measures was related to the FFM in n = 507 participants from the Human Connectome Project. Neuroticism was associated with thicker cortex and smaller area and folding in prefrontal–temporal regions. Extraversion was linked to thicker pre-cuneus and smaller superior temporal cortex area. Openness was linked to thinner cortex and greater area and folding in prefrontal–parietal regions. Agreeableness was correlated to thinner prefrontal cortex and smaller fusiform gyrus area. Conscientiousness was associated with thicker cortex and smaller area and folding in prefrontal regions. These findings demonstrate that anatomical variability in prefrontal cortices is linked to individual differences in the socio-cognitive dispositions described by the FFM. Cortical thickness and surface area/folding were inversely related each others as a function of different FFM traits (neuroticism, extraversion and consciousness vs openness), which may reflect brain maturational effects that predispose or protect against psychiatric disorders.
Introduction
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in personality neuroscience, an emergent field of research exploring how the extraordinary variety of human behaviors arise from different patterns of brain function and structure (DeYoung, 2010; Booth et al., 2014).
Currently, the ‘Big Five’ or five-factor model (FFM) represents a widely used taxonomy of personality and this is because a large number of studies have converged on the conclusion that five traits (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) represent key descriptors of human behavioral dispositions (Digman, 1990; McCrae, 1991; McCrae and John, 1992). Nevertheless, the relationship between individual differences in FFM traits and variability in brain function and structure remains elusive and poorly characterized.
To achieve a step change in the field, it is necessary to link the enduring personality factors described in the FFM with reliable markers of brain function and structure. An emerging body of research using functional and structural neuroimaging measures has begun to tackle this issue, although the results across studies have been fragmented (e.g. different studies have not systematically assessed the brain correlates of all the FFM traits) or even conflicting (Canli et al., 2002; Omura et al., 2005; Cremers et al., 2010, 2011; DeYoung et al., 2010; Suslow et al., 2010; Hu et al., 2011; Kapogiannis et al., 2012; Taki et al., 2012; Coutinho et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2013; Lu et al., 2014; Servaas et al., 2014,, 2015; Lewis et al., 2016).
For example, opposite results have been reported for the same regions (e.g. the volume of the posterior cingulate cortex has been either positively or negatively associated to agreeableness) (DeYoung, 2010; Coutinho et al., 2013) or different brain areas have been linked to the same trait (e.g. both positive and negative correlations have been found between extraversion and the para-hippocampal cortex (Omura et al., 2005; Lu et al., 2014), amygdala (Cremers et al., 2011; Lu et al., 2014), or orbitofrontal cortex (Omura et al., 2005; DeYoung, 2010; Cremers et al., 2011; Coutinho et al., 2013).
Two factors appeared critical in determining part of the variability of the results amongst earlier reports. First, many of the previous studies were based on small samples (e.g. n∼20 participants represent the typical sample size in functional neuroimaging studies, while n∼60 participants are more characteristic in structural studies). Second, some of the past studies included heterogeneous samples of participants—e.g. with notable within-group differences in age, which in itself may have significantly influenced the results due to the well-known effects of aging on brain function and structure. Together, these limitations may have affected the replicability of the findings and/or the statistical power to detect statistically significant effects.
Furthermore, the majority of previous studies assessing the neuro anatomical basis of the FFM used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to identify the gray-matter changes associated with the FFM personality traits (Omura et al., 2005; Blankstein et al., 2009; DeYoung et al., 2010; Hu et al., 2011; Kapogiannis et al., 2012; Taki et al., 2012; Coutinho et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2013; Lu et al., 2014). Overall, VBM findings are difficult to interpret as they may be driven by differences in cortical thickness, surface area (SA), cortical volume, and folding or any combination of these measures (Voets et al., 2008; Hutton et al., 2009). In other words, while classical morphometry methods like VBM use image intensities to provide a composite measure of apparent gray-matter density and/or volume, they are not able to separate the geometrical basis that underlies such changes in the cortex. This means that variations in the local gray-matter density may be due to a regional variation in thickness only, SA only, or any possible combination of these measures. Furthermore, the apparent gray-matter density measured via VBM may be influenced by the local gyrification index (i.e., cortical folding) (Hutton et al., 2009), a further confounding dimension that cannot be extracted without an explicit reconstruction of the cortical geometry.
Surface-based morphometry (SBM) methods enable researchers to overcome these limitations and disentangle cortical thickness, SA, and folding to examine how each of these indices contributes to variability in cortical anatomy. SBM analyses are also well suited to investigate the neuroimaging correlates of genetic factors that may act early during brain maturation and may consequently play a role in shaping FFM personality traits (Winkler et al., 2010). This is important as cortical thickness, SA, and folding are thought to have distinct developmental trajectories and cellular mechanisms (Rakic, 2009; Raznahan et al., 2011). In particular, cortical thickness is determined by the horizontal layers in the cortical columns, while SA reflects the number of radial columns perpendicular to the pial surface (Rakic, 2009). Conversely, the folding patterns at the brain’s surface relate to the microstructure of the neuronal sheets, although the local connectivity within a cortical region may also determine its degree of folding (Zilles et al., 1989). Overall, considering their differential sensitivity to genetic and developmental factors across the entire cortex, SBM metrics can provide useful information about the association between brain maturation and individual differences in the FFM personality traits.
Compared to several studies using VBM (Omura et al., 2005; Blankstein et al., 2009; DeYoung et al., 2010; Hu et al., 2011; Kapogiannis et al., 2012; Taki et al., 2012; Coutinho et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2013; Lu et al., 2014), only three studies thus far have used SBM methods to investigate how variability in cortical anatomy relates to the FFM (Wright et al., 2007; Holmes et al., 2012; Bjornebekk et al., 2013). The first study was conducted in a sample of n = 29 old adults (age-range: 61–84 years) and found that the thickness in the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) was positively correlated with extraversion and negatively with neuroticism (Wright et al., 2007). These data suggested that neuroticism and extraversion may have an opposite impact on age-related structural changes in the PFC (Wright et al., 2007). A second study, in a sample of n = 1050 healthy individuals aged 18–35 years, assessed only cortical thickness and negative affect (a measure closely related to the FFM trait of neuroticism) and found that this personality trait was associated with decreased thickness in the subgenual and rostral anterior cingulate cortex, which is consistent with the role of these regions in modulating the risk of developing depressive disorders (Holmes et al., 2012). A more recent study in n = 265 people (age-range: 20–85 years) reported that neuroticism was linked to reduced SA in fronto-temporal regions (Bjornebekk et al., 2013). Higher scores on extraversion were also associated with thinner inferior frontal gyrus, while conscientiousness was negatively related to SA in the temporal–parietal junction (Bjornebekk et al., 2013). Finally, no statistically significant associations were found between agreeableness and openness and any of the SBM metrics examined (Bjornebekk et al., 2013).
In the present study, we investigate the neuro-anatomical basis of the FFM in a large, homogeneous, and well-characterized samples of healthy and young participants drawn from the Human Connectome Project (n = 507, age-range: 22–36 years) (McNab et al., 2013). By employing a validated analytical method (i.e., SBM), our study aimed at providing a rigorous test of the links between the five major dimensions of personality and four measures of brain cortical anatomy. More specifically, we examined how individual differences in neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were associated with local variability in cortical thickness, SA, cortical volume (defined as the product of cortical thickness and SA), and folding.
One of the main hypotheses (based on previous relevant studies) was that neuroticism should be associated with individual differences in SBM measures in PFC and temporal areas (Holmes et al., 2012; Bjornebekk et al., 2013), while extraversion should correlate with SBM metrics in the PFC (Bjornebekk et al., 2013). Finally, we predicted that conscientiousness was linked to variations in cortical anatomy in PFC and parietal regions that belong to the multiple demand system (DeYoung, 2010; Kapogiannis et al., 2012; Duncan, 2013; Forbes et al., 2014; Dima et al., 2015; Rodrigo et al., 2016).
Participants and methods
Human connectome project (HCP) dataset
The Human Connectome Project (HCP) public dataset includes high-resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans from healthy adults that completed several sessions of brain scanning including different MRI modalities. Pre-processed structural MRI (sMRI) as well as demographic, clinical and personality data from 507 participants from the ‘500 Subjects release’ were obtained from the HCP public repository (http://www.humanconnectome.org/documentation/S500/HCP_S500+MEG2_Release_Reference_Manual.pdf)
Participants
All participants were young and healthy adults (60% females; mean-age: 29.2 years; age-range: 22–36 years) with no obesity, hypertension, alcohol or tobacco misuse, anxiety, depressive or other psychiatric and neurologic disorders, or history of behavioural problems during childhood (e.g. conduct disorder). The majority of the participants were right-handed white Americans with a non-Hispanic or Latinos background (Table 1).
Table 1. 1st quartile Median 3rd quartile Age (years) 27 29 32 Education (years) 13 16 16 Height (cm) 162.5 167.5 175 Weight (kg) 61.1 71.1 83.2 Body mass index 22.8 25.4 29.2 Blood pressure (systolic, mmHg) 114 123 133 Blood pressure (diastolic, mmHg) 71 78 84 Number of childhood conduct problems 0 0 1 Number of panic disorder symptoms 0 0 0 Number of depressive symptoms 0 0 0 Number of cigarettes per week 0 0 0 Number of drinks per week 0 2 7 Race (%) Asian/Natural Hawaiian/Other Pacific: 1.8% Black or African American: 18.9% White: 68.4% More than one: 1.2% Unknown or not reported: 1.8% Missing data: 7.9% Ethnicity (%) Hispanic/Latino: 9.7% Not Hispanic/Latino: 82.2% Unknown or not reported: 0.2% Missing data: 7.9% Handedness (%) Right handed: 75.7% Left handed: 6.5% Mixed: 9.9% Missing data: 7.9% 1st quartile Median 3rd quartile Age (years) 27 29 32 Education (years) 13 16 16 Height (cm) 162.5 167.5 175 Weight (kg) 61.1 71.1 83.2 Body mass index 22.8 25.4 29.2 Blood pressure (systolic, mmHg) 114 123 133 Blood pressure (diastolic, mmHg) 71 78 84 Number of childhood conduct problems 0 0 1 Number of panic disorder symptoms 0 0 0 Number of depressive symptoms 0 0 0 Number of cigarettes per week 0 0 0 Number of drinks per week 0 2 7 Race (%) Asian/Natural Hawaiian/Other Pacific: 1.8% Black or African American: 18.9% White: 68.4% More than one: 1.2% Unknown or not reported: 1.8% Missing data: 7.9% Ethnicity (%) Hispanic/Latino: 9.7% Not Hispanic/Latino: 82.2% Unknown or not reported: 0.2% Missing data: 7.9% Handedness (%) Right handed: 75.7% Left handed: 6.5% Mixed: 9.9% Missing data: 7.9%
Table 1. 1st quartile Median 3rd quartile Age (years) 27 29 32 Education (years) 13 16 16 Height (cm) 162.5 167.5 175 Weight (kg) 61.1 71.1 83.2 Body mass index 22.8 25.4 29.2 Blood pressure (systolic, mmHg) 114 123 133 Blood pressure (diastolic, mmHg) 71 78 84 Number of childhood conduct problems 0 0 1 Number of panic disorder symptoms 0 0 0 Number of depressive symptoms 0 0 0 Number of cigarettes per week 0 0 0 Number of drinks per week 0 2 7 Race (%) Asian/Natural Hawaiian/Other Pacific: 1.8% Black or African American: 18.9% White: 68.4% More than one: 1.2% Unknown or not reported: 1.8% Missing data: 7.9% Ethnicity (%) Hispanic/Latino: 9.7% Not Hispanic/Latino: 82.2% Unknown or not reported: 0.2% Missing data: 7.9% Handedness (%) Right handed: 75.7% Left handed: 6.5% Mixed: 9.9% Missing data: 7.9% 1st quartile Median 3rd quartile Age (years) 27 29 32 Education (years) 13 16 16 Height (cm) 162.5 167.5 175 Weight (kg) 61.1 71.1 83.2 Body mass index 22.8 25.4 29.2 Blood pressure (systolic, mmHg) 114 123 133 Blood pressure (diastolic, mmHg) 71 78 84 Number of childhood conduct problems 0 0 1 Number of panic disorder symptoms 0 0 0 Number of depressive symptoms 0 0 |
pent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now falling into Hell described here, not in the center (for Heaven and Earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed,) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos …
— PL I The Argument
… who shall tempt with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss,
And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his airy flight,
Upborne with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt …
— PL II 404-9
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
— PL IV 75-8
And on Milton’s blindness, a key unlocking the gates to abysmal depths of visionary accomplishment:
… Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
— PL III 40-55With the massive news this afternoon that Bill O’Reilly is officially out at Fox News, Fox has now announced that Tucker Carlson will be taking the coveted 8 pm slot.
Tucker Carlson Tonight will be moving up from 9 pm, which will now be the home of The Five, co-hosted by Kimberly Guilfoyle, Dana Perino, Bob Beckel, Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters, and Juan Williams.
Eric Bolling will be getting the 5 pm slot on May 1st. Next week Fox’s Special Report with Bret Baier will be on next week from 5-7 PM.
Martha MacCallum‘s 7 pm program The First 100 Days will change its name after those first 100 days to The Story with Martha MacCallum.
Sean Hannity remains in his 10 pm timeslot.
[image via screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comWalls of people formed to watch a funeral procession pass through the streets of Prague on Nov. 4, 1601. A herald carrying a billowing damask flag was followed by 12 imperial guards bearing a coffin covered with black satin. The man inside wore a full suit of armor.
Tycho Brahe, the brilliant observer of the stars in the Renaissance, was being carried to his grave. The scholar had systematically measured the sky, paving the way for science in the modern age. In 1573 he became the first person to describe a supernova, the explosion of a star.
His assistant, Johannes Kepler, praised him as a "phoenix" of astronomy. Brahe simply compared himself to the "Messiah."
He was also a bon vivant -- a member of the Danish aristocracy, and master of his own island. A biographer called him an "indestructible, blustering social being with an enormous appetite for food and wine."
So what killed this tycoon of the heavens? According to contemporary reports, while attending a banquet at the emperor's court in Prague, Brahe suddenly felt a strong urge to urinate, but was too polite to excuse himself. Finally, the reports conclude, his bladder became "twisted," blocked up or somehow "torn."
Kepler, who was also a tenant of Brahe's, witnessed the subsequent illness first-hand. Brahe was unable to urinate for 11 days, and he eventually died in a delirious state.
In his 1990 novel "Immortality," Czech novelist Milan Kundera characterized Brahe's death as "ridiculous." In Kundera's description, the astronomer slid around on his chair so much that "the urinary tract burst." For him, Brahe was a "martyr of shame and urine."
But is this true? Even the funeral orators were shocked by the scholar's "unexpected death." Rumors of murder soon spread through Europe.
The truth didn't begin to emerge until 1991. The Prague National Museum, which has Brahe's moustache in its collection, sent a few of the hairs to Denmark. Lab tests revealed mercury levels more than 100 times above normal.
Five years later, physicists at the University of Lund presented the results of another study, this time using a proton microprobe. The famous scholar had swallowed the heavy metal all at once, about 13 hours before his death.
Was he poisoned? US expert Joshua Gilder believes an assassin used mercuric chloride, which he dripped into Brahe's glass. A few drops would have been fatal.
But who was devious enough to commit the crime? Some suspected the Jesuit order, while a 2004 book points to Brahe's fellow scientist, Kepler, as the murderer. But there is not the slightest bit of proof to back up this assertion.
And not everyone believes Brahe was killed. Administrators of the astronomer's estate in Copenhagen question whether the mercury was even sufficiently potent to cause death. Others believe it was an accident. Brahe, as an alchemist, also made miracle drugs, and some believe he may have killed himself by accident.
To resolve this mystery once and for all, Brahe's grave will be exhumed. This year, a group of conservators, chemists and physicians plans to open the vault in Prague's Tyn Church, on Wenceslas Square, and perform a forensic analysis on the body.
A Danish King, and a Distant Relative
The experts' plans include a "computer tomography of the skeleton" and the removal of "100 milligrams of bone material," according to Danish archeologist Jens Vellev, who leads the group. His autopsy team is now waiting for final approval.
Most experts think they know the result. They claim existing test data already show that Brahe was murdered.
DER SPIEGEL Peter Andersen's new theory
But a new lead has emerged in the search for the killer. Peter Andersen, a Strasbourg German Studies expert, has studied all individuals who were in contact with the Prague court astronomer. He suspects "the murder plot was hatched at the highest political level. Danish King Christian IV was the mastermind."
Andersen also says he's identified the killer: Erik Brahe, a Swedish count. Historians traditionally consider him a "friend" and "affectionate cousin" of Tycho Brahe. He was in Brahe's house shortly before the astronomer's death.
But Andersen has unmasked the relative. "Erik Brahe was an amorous bon vivant, always in financial difficulty," he explains. "He served several crowned heads of state as a secret diplomat."
Andersen says he was only distantly related to the astronomer, "through the Swedish secondary line of the family, which had split off 200 years before."The release of the jobs report Friday morning sparked a fresh round of rhetoric as both parties attempt to spin the numbers to their advantage in the three weeks left before election day.
Soon after the job numbers were released, President Obama addressed the news from a small brick-and-masonry company in Bladensburg, Md. The president said that the job losses in government would have been worse if not for stimulus legislation he pushed for and then signed in August that provided $28 billion to state and local governments.
Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a White House blog post that “this growth provides more evidence that the economy continues to recover, but we must do more to put the economy on a path of robust economic growth.”
Republicans, too, reacted quickly to the jobs figures. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader from Kentucky, issued a statement that said “the trillion-dollar stimulus didn’t live up to promises made by the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress; the massive growth of the federal government didn’t result in a similar growth of jobs; and the maze of new regulations, health care mandates and taxes are having a predictable impact on the economy.”
Other Democrats offering a final economic argument included David Plouffe, who managed President Obama’s 2008 campaign and remains a top political adviser. Mr. Plouffe told reporters on Thursday that his party’s candidates should confront anger about the economic crisis head on — and then blame Republicans.
“Listen, you know, the unemployment rate is what it is,” Mr. Plouffe said in answer to a question about the jobs report. “The economic situation is what it is. What we want people to focus on is: are we moving slowly in the right direction?”
Mr. Plouffe repeated what Mr. Obama has said repeatedly — that the recovery is moving too slowly for anyone’s comfort. But he said that in the final weeks of the election, Democratic candidates should quickly pivot to the responsibility that Republicans bear for creating the economic crisis.
“The Republicans here in Washington act as if they were bystanders to this whole thing. It was their policies that were a chief contributor to this,” Mr. Plouffe said. He added that before Mr. Obama came into office, “we were losing 700,000 jobs a month under the same economic policies that the Republicans want to bring back.”
Republicans scoff at that argument and say they believe the voters will reject it at the polls. They note that the unemployment rate was 7.6 percent when Mr. Obama took office. And they point out that the Congress has been in Democratic control since January of 2007.
“Virtually every single piece of major legislation Democrat leaders in Washington have proposed over the past 19 months has made it either harder for businesses to hire new workers or retain the workers they already have,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader from Kentucky, said over the weekend. “And now they want to make it even worse.”
Surveys suggest that the Republican case has made headway with the American public. By large margins, a healthy majority of people say the country is headed on the wrong track.
But Mr. Plouffe said he remained optimistic that the Republicans had made as much traction as they were likely to make with that argument. In a nutshell, he said that the conservative wave had peaked a month before Election Day.
“They are going to have very good turnout,” Mr. Plouffe predicted. But he said: “I don’t see that getting a lot better for them. The point is, I don’t see another surge here.”
Mr. Obama took Mr. Plouffe’s advice at a rally in Maryland on Thursday. He acknowledged that there were “still millions of families who can barely pay the bills or make a mortgage.” But he spent most of his time lashing out at the Republicans.
“Of course people are frustrated. People are impatient with the pace of change. They want things to move a little quicker. I understand that. I’m impatient, too,” Mr. Obama said. “But the other side, they don’t have an answer. All they have decided to do is to ride that frustration and that anger all the way to the ballot box.”Real Democracy initiative matches Israelis willing to 'donate' their votes to Palestinians who decide how vote should be cast
For millions, it's a way of idling away time, catching up on gossip, making social arrangements or playing FarmVille. But Facebook is increasingly being used as a political tool, and a group of Israelis are using the social networking site to challenge conventional democracy in next week's election.
The initiative, called Real Democracy, has allowed hundreds of Israelis to "donate" their votes to Palestinians as a symbolic protest at what they perceive as a lack of democracy.
It matches Israeli voters who are willing to give up their vote with Palestinians who decide how – or whether – the vote should be cast. The organisers say it is "an act of civil disobedience against … the undemocratic nature of the Israeli elections … elections of a government which controls four million Palestinians without a voting right".
Shimri Zameret, one of those behind the scheme, hopes that the numbers participating will be in the thousands by polling day. The aim is to give Palestinians a potential say not just in the next Israeli government but also in its "de facto control over the United Nations security council".
The idea came from a similar campaign in the UK in 2010, when Britons "donated" their votes to citizens of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana. "Politics transcends borders but governments are national. This is an attempt to create a new form of politics," said Zameret.
One of those who has offered her vote to a Palestinian is Aya Shoshan, 28, who works for an NGO in Tel Aviv. "I posted on Facebook that I am an Israeli citizen who would like to pass on my vote to a Palestinian living under Israeli rule," she said. "Giving my vote is a symbolic act … if Palestinians are not part of this democracy, then neither am I."
Shoshan is now in discussions with a Palestinian originally from Hebron but now living in the US. "He hasn't made up his mind how to use my vote," she said.
Ayah Bashir, 24, a university teacher in Gaza, has asked her Israeli counterpart, Dror Dayan, to boycott the election on her behalf. "I call for boycotting Israel at all levels, not just the election but academic, cultural and sporting boycotts," she said. "The Israeli system is an apartheid system, and the Israeli Knesset [parliament] is a Zionist and racist institution."
Bassem Aramin, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem whose 10-year-old daughter Abir was killed by an Israeli soldier six years ago, is supporting the initiative. "I have no control over the Israeli government who sent the soldier [who killed my daughter]," he said. "I live under occupation. We Palestinians have no vote or veto in the UN security council or the government that controls us. That is undemocratic."California is on track become the latest state to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes after voters on Tuesday were projected to approve a ballot measure that is likely to generate billions of dollars in tax revenue.
ADVERTISEMENT
The ballot measure was backed by groups tied to George Soros, a billionaire hedge fund manager; and Sean Parker, the Napster founder and former Facebook executive. Last week, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said she had voted in favor of legalization.
Proponents said legalizing marijuana for recreational use would save the state tens of millions of dollars in legal costs associated with pot. At the same time, a state fiscal agency said related tax revenue would range from the hundreds of millions of dollars to more than $1 billion every year.
California would join Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Alaska, states where voters approved legalization measures two and four years ago. Voters in four other states — Arizona, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts — are deciding Tuesday whether to legalize marijuana.Google Glass is displayed at the USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on Aug. 27, 2013 [AFP]
The California woman who said she was the victim of a “hate crime” for wearing Google Glass eyewear in a bar released a profanity-filled video taken just before her dispute with patrons became physical.
“I wanna get this white trash, this trash on tape for as long as I can,” tech writer Sarah Slocum said in the video, apparently shot before she was attacked last month at Molotov’s, a bar in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
In response, an unidentified man can be seen approaching her, saying, “Get out of here,” then reaching for the eyewear.
Slocum reported having her purse and phone stolen during the incident, as well as briefly losing the $1,500 glasses. She stated at the time that she was showing a friend how they worked, but the 81-second video showed her insulting other patrons.
“These f*ckin’ b*tches are, like, hating on it right now,” Slocum said, pointing at a group standing at the bar. “I can’t even believe it. They’re throwing, like, f*cking rags at me.”
She then approached one woman, calling her an “ugly-ass b*tch” and pointing at her. The woman then leaned forward and told Slocum, “You’re killing the city” before reaching for the glasses.
“You’re a b*tch,” Slocum responded. “Don’t touch me. I’ll f*cking sue you.”
The woman backs away after calling Slocum a “boring-ass b*tch,” but Slocum’s hand is then seen “flipping the bird” toward both her and a group of patrons.
“These crazy-ass people, dude,” Slocum then said. “I don’t f*cking give a sh*t.”
The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday that no arrests have been made in connection with the incident, and that Slocum was also hit with a restraining order in 2012 after admitting to using her cell phone to record her neighbors’ conversations.
The Times also reported that the woman who confronted Slocum in the video was an off-duty bartender at Molotov’s, who disputed Slocum’s claim that she only began recording the other patrons after she was threatened.
Watch Slocum’s video, as posted on Monday, below.Supergirl
At 12 years old, Kara Zor-El escapes doom on planet Krypton to find protection on Earth with the Danver family, where she grows up in the shadow of her foster sister, Alex, and learns to hide the extraordinary powers she shares with her cousin, Superman. Now an adult living in National City and working for media mogul Cat Grant, Kara finds her days of keeping her abilities a secret are over when super-secret agency head Hank Henshaw enlists her to help protect the city's citizens from threats. Finally coming into her own, Kara must juggle her new responsibilities with her very human relationships.
Cosplayer: Captian Kaycee Cosplay (Kelsey Endter)
Taken at Wondercon 2017, Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim California.
Manny Llanura Photography
www.mannyphotography.com
Other photos from Wondercon 2017DROP YOUR CHEAT SHEET. The clock has ticked down on your second-round pick, leaving you mere moments to decide between two very different running back profiles. Who do you choose?
Player A: Over the past two years, among backs with at least 300 carries, he has the highest yards-per-carry average in the NFL (5.27). And in a league with so many running backs by committee, he is the unquestioned lead back, having averaged 19 touches per game last season. He's a touchdown machine, scoring in more than half his games, and he's a tough tackle too: His 5.4 yards per carry last season was better than the averages of Maurice Jones-Drew, Adrian Peterson and Arian Foster. Since he came into the league four years ago, no running back has a higher yards-per-catch average (10.3). Plus, he had only one fumble all of last year. In 2011, Peterson averaged 16.3 fantasy points per game in the games he finished. Our guy: 16.7.
Player B: He entered the league with a lot of hype -- he was the first back taken in the 2008 NFL draft -- but is it justified? Last year, he didn't get the ball much at the goal line (eight carries inside an opponent's 10-yard line) or anywhere else on the field (24 percent of his team's rushing attempts). Even one of his big calling cards, his pass-catching ability, took a hit, as his receptions and yards per reception (19 catches for 154 yards, 8.1 average) hit career lows in 2011. He seems to have an aversion to the end zone, scoring just four touchdowns last season (plus one receiving TD) and wasn't even a top-30 fantasy running back. After his team hired a new coach, the front office went out and traded for another rusher. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
Last season's hamstring injuries behind him, Andre Johnson eyes a sixth 1,000-yard season. Rob Tringali
Time's up. Which player do you want? You want Player A, right? And you're avoiding Player B, correct? I mean, it should be clear that when you go into your draft, you definitely want to target Player A, Darren McFadden. And make sure you don't get stuck with
Player B...who is also Darren McFadden.
Gotcha.
Both of these McFadden profiles are, in fact, factual. I also intentionally made them wildly misleading to prove a point: Facts, when used selectively, are nothing but opinion. We all twist truths -- every fantasy analyst, every political pundit, every pop culture critic, every voice on every ESPN debate-style show. We can talk up or talk down just about anybody to strengthen our argument and shape your opinion. We just have to choose the right stats for the job.
Want me to talk about an injury-risk QB who hasn't played all 16 games for two straight seasons and now has to worry about a scaled-back offense (second-fewest pass attempts of his career last season)? Because I just described Aaron Rodgers.
Or perhaps you need me to talk up a promising young QB who's on the cusp of being the next big thing, having averaged 280 yards passing and 19 points in every full game he played last year. Because I just sold you Chad Henne.
As you prepare for a predraft stat bombardment of red zone targets, yards after contact, attempted air yards against five or more rushers, new offensive schemes, rumors of this guy being in the best shape of his life while this other guy is in the doghouse, average draft position and blah-blah-blah, it's vital that you understand just one thing: It's impossible -- and I mean impossible -- to get a complete statistical overview of a player. Potential value changes with every game, play, personnel grouping and scheme. So to make sense of the chaos and make a smart decision on a player, you must first figure out who you trust and who you don't and then make your own call. Because that's all any of us are doing: taking small pieces of the big picture and making a call.
Every statement that follows is 100 percent accurate. Some are about football players, some are about teams and some are about tendencies. And not one of the following 100 facts tells the whole story.
1. Over the first eight games of 2011, Cam Newton averaged 299 passing yards per game, fifth best in the NFL.
2. His 8.34 yards per attempt in those games was also fifth best.
3. Over the final eight games, Newton averaged 207 passing yards a game, 18th over that time.
4. Newton's 7.21 yards per attempt over the season's second half was 14th best in the NFL and worse than, among others, Matt Moore's average.
5. Quarterbacks who averaged more passing yards per game than Newton in the second half of the season: John Skelton, Mark Sanchez and Alex Smith.
6. Since 1991, 21 quarterbacks have rushed for at least six touchdowns in a season, but only one has rushed for at least six touchdowns two years in a row: Tim Tebow (six in 2010 and 2011).
7. The Panthers have DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart and Mike Tolbert on their roster.
8. Peyton Manning has played 111 games indoors.
9. In those games, he has 230 touchdowns (6.2 TD percent) and 97 interceptions (2.6 INT percent).
10. Peyton Manning has played 97 games outdoors.
11. In those games, he has 169 touchdowns (4.9 TD percent) and 101 interceptions (2.9 INT percent).
12. Assuming he plays all 16 games this season for the Broncos, Peyton Manning will play 15 games outdoors.
13. In his last eight starts last season, Carson Palmer was fifth in passing yards, seventh in completion percentage, ninth in completions, 10th in attempts, fourth in yards per attempt, tied for second in passing plays of more than 25 yards and tied for 12th in touchdown passes, and he had Denarius Moore and Darrius Heyward-Bey on the field at the same time in only five games.
14. Palmer was also tied for eighth in interceptions, and Oakland has a new offensive coordinator and head coach. But still, Palmer is going 21st among QBs in early drafts on ESPN.com.
15. In the two years with Mike Shanahan as head coach, the Redskins have been in the top five in passing attempts each season.
16. If you combined the stats of Donovan McNabb, Rex Grossman and John Beck over the past two years and made them one quarterback, that QB would have averaged 3,843 passing yards and 20 touchdowns.
17. In 41 games at Baylor, Robert Griffin III had 2,254 yards rushing and 33 touchdowns.
18. Understand this for the rest of the season in everything you read, hear and see from me: I am not rational when it comes to Robert Griffin III.
19. This offseason, Bills coach Chan Gailey revealed that Ryan Fitzpatrick played the final nine games with two cracked ribs.
20. Prior to that injury, Fitzpatrick averaged 248 passing yards and two touchdowns for 15 fantasy points a game. He also completed 67.7% of his passes.
21. After that injury, he completed 58.2 percent of his passes.
22. Mark Sanchez had 84 overthrows last season, fourth most in the NFL.
23. Jets wideouts had 18 drops as a group, tied for seventh fewest in the NFL.
24. Tim Tebow is currently the "backup" quarterback for the Jets.
25. Since 2008, Ben Roethlisberger has been sacked an NFL-worst 168 times.
26. He has been sacked at least 40 times in three of the past four seasons.
27. Over the final five games last season, no quarterback had a higher QBR than &133; Philip Rivers (94.4).
28. Last season, Mike Tolbert and Vincent Jackson had 12 drops in 186 targets.
Don't let the highlight film influence your perception: in the second half last season, Cam Newton's passing game was nothing to write home about. AP Photo/Brian Blanco
29. The rest of the Chargers had six drops in 354 targets.
30. Mike Tolbert and Vincent Jackson are no longer with San Diego.
31. Michael Vick missed (under- or overthrown passes) on only 14.8 percent of red zone attempts last season.
32. Among quarterbacks with at least 50 red zone attempts, the only one with a lower miss percentage was Drew Brees (13.7 percent).
33. Only seven of Josh Freeman's 22 interceptions were on under- or overthrown passes (31.8 percent).
34. There were only four quarterbacks last season with a lower percentage of interceptions due to missed throws: Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, Tom Brady and Drew Brees.
35. Before his 172-yard, two-TD game against the last-ranked Tampa Bay run defense in Week 17, Michael Turner averaged 56 rushing yards over his five previous games.
36. He had single-digit fantasy points in four of his final six games.
37. He scored only once from Week 12 to Week 16.
38. Six of Turner's 11 touchdowns last season came in just three games: Week 4 at Seattle, Week 6 vs. Carolina and the aforementioned Week 17 vs. Tampa Bay.
39. Turner had only six 100-yard games last season. Half of those were when Julio Jones was out.
40. Since Marvin Lewis took over as Bengals coach in 2003, his lead running backs have averaged 1,124 yards, eight touchdowns and 282 carries a season.
41. BenJarvus Green-Ellis has never had more than 229 carries in a season.
42. He has also never fumbled.
43. Those Bengals averages (1,124 yards and eight scores) combined with no fumbles and assuming no receiving yards would have been worth 160 fantasy points, or 15th among running backs, just 10 points out of the top 10.
44. Among running backs with at least 30 red zone carries last season, only Adrian Peterson, Arian Foster and Marshawn Lynch had a higher yards-per-carry average in the red zone than Green-Ellis (2.72).
45. Only five teams ran the ball in the red zone more than the Bengals last season.
46. Green-Ellis had 11 and 13 touchdowns, respectively, the past two seasons, with all but one coming from the red zone.
47. He is currently going in the sixth round.
48. Over his final three years at Tennessee, new Rams head coach Jeff Fisher's teams had 6,518 rushing yards, fourth best in the NFL.
49. The Titans had 56 rushing touchdowns (second in the NFL), a 4.6-yards-per-carry average (third in the NFL) and 1,413 rushing attempts (eighth in the NFL).
50. Of course, the Titans also had Chris Johnson. But still, what are the Rams going to do, throw it?
51. Steven Jackson is just 29 years old and has missed only two games for the Rams in the past three seasons.
52. From 2006 to 2010, Frank Gore averaged 14 games played and 51 receptions a season.
53. Last season, Gore played all 16 games.
54. He had 17 receptions.
55. Over the past six seasons, Gore has averaged 254 rushes and 45.3 receptions a year.
56. The only player in NFL history to have seven seasons with at least 254 rushes and 45 receptions is LaDainian Tomlinson.
57. Frank Gore is not LaDainian Tomlinson.
58. Brandon Jacobs, LaMichael James and Kendall Hunter are not blocking backs.
59. Over the second half of last season, Donald Brown had 492 rushing yards, 16th in the NFL and more than LeSean McCoy, C.J. Spiller, Frank Gore and Roy Helu had.
60. Last season, the first that both Arian Foster and Ben Tate were healthy, the Texans ran the ball 52.2 percent of the time, second most in the NFL.
61. Through Nov. 15 of last season (the last week Matt Schaub played), the Texans had 292 pass attempts, ninth fewest in the league.
62. Andre Johnson has missed 12 games the past two seasons.
63. Johnson has never had double-digit touchdowns in a season.
64. Jeremy Bates coached quarterbacks for the Broncos in 2007 and 2008.
65. In 2007 and 2008, with Jay Cutler as his quarterback, Brandon Marshall had 351 total targets, the most in the NFL and 31 more than second-place Larry Fitzgerald.
66. Marshall hasn't had fewer than 1,000 yards receiving since 2006, when he had 309.
67. In 2007, Marshall had 102 receptions for 1,325 yards and seven TDs, and in 2008, he had 104 receptions for 1,265 yards and six TDs. They were the two best seasons of his career.
68. Since 2007, Marshall has played with nine different quarterbacks.
69. His quarterback this season is Jay Cutler. And the Bears' quarterbacks coach is Jeremy Bates.
70. Dwayne Bowe had seven drops and seven interceptions on passes intended for him last season.
71. The 14 combined drops/interceptions were tied for second most in the NFL.
72. Since 2008, there have been 20 receivers with more than 65 targets of at least 21 yards downfield. The only one not to drop a deep ball? Brandon Lloyd (88 targets).
73. Over the past two seasons, with Josh McDaniels as his head coach or primary offensive coordinator, Lloyd was the most targeted receiver on throws deeper than 20 yards downfield, with 73 such targets.
74. Calvin Johnson was second with 64.
75. Lloyd has done this with Kyle Orton, Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford, A.J. Feeley and Kellen Clemens as his quarterbacks.
76. Lloyd's quarterback this year is Tom Brady. And his offensive coordinator is Josh McDaniels.
77. A.J. Green was fourth in the NFL last season with 12 receptions of at least 30 yards.
78. Of Green's 19 end zone targets, he caught only five (26 percent).
79. If his rate went up to, say, just 53 percent of caught end zone balls, Green would have finished with at least 174 fantasy points, seventh most and two more than Roddy White.
80. Roddy White led the NFL last season in third-down receptions for a first down.
81. The second-most third-down catches for a first down? Antonio Brown.
82. Starting with his Week 7 breakout game against Arizona (seven catches, 102 yards), Brown was 12th in the NFL in targets and
tied for 17th in receptions, and he had the eighth-most receiving yards.
83. Over that same time frame, Mike Wallace was tied for 40th in targets, tied for 44th in receptions and 32nd in receiving yards.
84. Wallace did have more touchdowns than Brown over that time frame.
85. Four touchdowns to two.
86. Wallace is going, on average, four to five rounds ahead of Brown.
87. Last season, Torrey Smith was targeted at least 30 yards downfield 20 times. He caught just five of those balls, with two touchdowns.
88. Smith dropped only one pass (5 percent of targets, better than Calvin Johnson, Hakeem Nicks and DeSean Jackson).
89. Joe Flacco had 18 overthrows on deep balls.
90. From 2008 to 2010, Flacco averaged just nine overthrows, and he had just six in 2010.
91. The Packers wideout with the best receptions-per-target percentage last year: Randall Cobb.
92. Cobb caught 25 of his 31 targets (80.6 percent) and led Packers receivers with 7.5 yards after the catch.
93. He's currently going outside the top 160.
94. Since 2008, only Drew Brees has thrown more balls and completed more passes to a tight end than Peyton Manning.
95. Manning's 71.8 percent completion rate to tight ends is second among quarterbacks with at least 200 attempts to tight ends.
96. Jacob Tamme, Manning's former teammate in Indianapolis, is now on the Broncos.
97. Among tight ends, Rob Gronkowski and Jimmy Graham were tied for first in end zone targets last season with 17. Third in the NFL with 15 end zone targets? Brandon Pettigrew.
98. Pettigrew dropped only one pass in the end zone, the same as Gronkowski, Graham and Jermichael Finley.
99. Had Pettigrew had the average completion percentage for a tight end in the end zone, that alone would have made him the eighth-best fantasy tight end last year.
100. Only Jimmy Graham had more games last season with five or more catches than...Tony Gonzalez.
Matthew Berry is the handsomest, kindest, smartest man in the world (according to his wife). Another good rule about "facts": Check the source.
CHECK OUT THE MAG'S POSITION PREVIEWS BELOWTAI’s Key Legislature… The game’s defining moment, its critical event, the wildest basketball thing you ever saw, or just stuff that happened. Wizards vs Raptors, Regular Season Game 14, Nov. 28, 2015, by Rashad Mobley (@rashad20).
Prior to last night’s game, Randy Wittman pushed all the buttons he knew how to push to “make his own luck,” as he called it, in an effort to shake the Wizards out of a three-game losing doldrums. Wittman was unusually playful in the pregame presser, saying the Wizards needed to play like “crazed animals,” and he joked with Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post about not wearing a tie the other night. And even though Nene and Gary Neal were unavailable due to calf and groin injuries, respectively, Wittman made a bit of a roster power move by benching Kris Humphries. Jared Dudley was placed in the lineup to man the stretch 4 position. This was not on par with Steve Kerr’s benching of Andrew Bogut in favor of Andre Iguodala in the NBA Finals, but Wittman’s hand was forced given how well Dudley had been playing on both ends of the floor. It was a necessary move.
The first nine minutes of the game made Coach Wittman look like a a successful, if mad, scientist. Dudley wasn’t particularly prolific on the scoring end, but the Raptors’ respect for his outside shot improved the offensive spacing—something that was lacking during the Wizards’ three-game losing streak. This newfound space worked to the advantage of both Bradley Beal and Marcin Gortat. Beal was able to both get to the rim and find his outside shot, while Gortat now had space to roll to the basket, get off hook shots in the post, and grab rebounds on both ends of the floor. It was 17-9 with 3:56 left in the first quarter, but the Raptors climbed right back into the game.
Kyle Lowry took advantage of Wall being on the bench, scoring five quick points, then found Cory Joseph for a wide open 3-pointer. Beal came back with two free throws and Otto Porter hit a 3 of his own to put the Wizards back up by seven, but in basketball that’s well within striking distance. That was a recurring theme throughout the night: The Wizards would play well enough to get a slight lead, and then Lowry, Joseph and DeRozan would claw their way back into the game. Neither team looked fluid on offense, forced to take difficult shots, which was clearly reflected |
10 political prisoners.
Next Alexander FlemingCOIMBATORE: Electoral officials in Tamil Nadu seized about Rs 570 crore from three containers on Saturday during checking in Tirupur district, which the occupants of the vehicles claimed was for inter-bank money transfer.Officials said that personnel accompanying the containers told them they were transferring Rs 570 crore from State Bank of India in Coimbatore to Vishakhapatnam branches but did not have all the necessary documents and efforts were on to ascertain the veracity of their claim.The flying squad of the election department, along with paramilitary forces, seized the cash early in the morning during a routine vehicle check on Perumanallur-Kunnathur Bypas, police said.The containers escorted by three cars, did not halt, but officials chased them and stopped them near Chengapalli.A check revealed the amount, kept in many boxes, inside the containers, they said.The men in cars, who claimed to be policemen from Andhra Pradesh but were not in uniform, told the officials they were transferring Rs 570 crore from State Bank of India in Coimbatore to Vishakhapatnam branches.However, they could not produce any proper documents to substantiate their claims, following which the vehicles were taken to the District Collectorate in Tirupur.Asked whey they had sped away without stopping, they told the police they feared it was a robbery attempt and that they were unaware that the officials were from the election department.Bank officials from Coimbatore and Vishakhapatnam were informed and are rushing to the spot, police said.Polling in Assembly election in Tamil Nadu will be held on May 16.Company of Heroes 2 publisher has announced that Relic Entertainment’s strategy title will hit PC in June, not long after it acquired the license from THQ.
In a release sent to VG247 this afternoon, Sega confirmed that he game would launch on June 25th. It’ll be a simultaneous launch across America and Europe. We’ve got a new batch of screens here.
Shedding light on Relic’s life under Sega, the game’s executive producer Jonathan Dowdeswell, said of the news, “Our acquisition by Sega has given us the chance to work with a new partner that has a great track record of working with long standing PC franchises, It gives us great confidence to know that we have a well aligned team working to bring the best experience we can to gamers around the world.”
Producer Greg Wilson added, “We hate to disappoint our fans with a later than expected date as we know they are eager to play but we feel that the additional time will help the team deliver the high quality sequel fans deserve. However, the wait won’t be long as players will soon be able to help us test and balance multiplayer in the upcoming closed beta. Details will follow shortly.”
It’s a delay, but still a slip is better than no release date at all. What do you think of the game so far?
If you want more you can check out my Company of Heroes 2 interview with Relic Entertainment.Ademola Lookman scored his first goal for Charlton against Brighton in December
Several Premier League clubs are fighting it out to sign highly-rated Charlton forward Ademola Lookman, Sky sources understand.
Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester City are among those interested in the 18-year-old, who was playing non-league football two years ago.
Charlton do not want to sell Lookman, but sources have told Sky Sports News HQ that a deal to sign him and loan him back to The Valley for the rest of the season could happen in this window.
We understand the player wants to choose a club that will give him the best first-team prospects but he is yet to decide on his preferred destination.
Charlton signed Lookman from Waterloo FC in 2014 after he impressed in a friendly against the Addicks, and he has two years left on his current contract.
Lookman has scored three Championship goals this season having made nine appearances since November 3.The Kids Are All Right, due out in July, is being praised for its honest portrayal of a lesbian couple, played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening. But what seems most revelatory about the movie is its portrayal of their two teenage children who track down their sperm donor biological father and insist on forging a connection with him. Finally, we have an exploration of how children born from such procedures feel, because in fact it turns out that their feelings about their origins are a lot more complicated than people think.
Each year an estimated 30,000-60,000 children are born in this country via artificial insemination, but the number is only an educated guess. Neither the fertility industry nor any other entity is required to report on these statistics. The practice is not regulated, and the children’s health and well-being are not tracked. In adoption, prospective parents go through a painstaking, systematic review, including home visits and detailed questions about their relationship, finances, and even their sex life. Any red flags, and a couple might not get the child.
With donor conception, the state requires absolutely none of that. Individual clinics and doctors can decide what kinds of questions they want to ask clients who show up at their door. They don’t conduct home studies. No contacts are interviewed. If clients can pay their medical bills, most clinics could care less about their finances. The effects of such a system on the people conceived this way have been largely unknown.
We set out to change that. We teamed up with professor Norval Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin to design and field a survey with a sample drawn from more than 1 million American households. One of us (Karen Clark) found out at age 18 that she had been conceived through anonymous sperm donation in 1966. The other (Elizabeth Marquardt) has completed studies on topics such as the inner lives of children of divorce and has been profoundly absorbed by the stories of adult donor offspring since she first began hearing them in comments to posts she wrote on the FamilyScholars blog in 2005.
Our study, released by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future last week, focused on how young-adult donor offspring—and comparison samples of young adults who were raised by adoptive or biological parents—make sense of their identities and family experiences, how they approach reproductive technologies more generally, and how they are faring on key outcomes. The study of 18- to 45-year-olds includes 485 who were conceived via sperm donation, 562 adopted as infants, and 563 raised by their biological parents.
The results are surprising. While adoption is often the center of controversy, it turns out that sperm donation raises a host of different but equally complex—and sometimes troubling—issues. Two-thirds of adult donor offspring agree with the statement “My sperm donor is half of who I am.” Nearly half are disturbed that money was involved in their conception. More than half say that when they see someone who resembles them, they wonder if they are related. About two-thirds affirm the right of donor offspring to know the truth about their origins.
Regardless of socioeconomic status, donor offspring are twice as likely as those raised by biological parents to report problems with the law before age 25. They are more than twice as likely to report having struggled with substance abuse. And they are about 1.5 times as likely to report depression or other mental health problems.
As a group, the donor offspring in our study are suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the adoptees on average are struggling more than those raised by their biological parents.) The donor offspring are more likely than the adopted to have struggled with addiction and delinquency and, similar to the adopted, a significant number have confronted depression or other mental illness. Nearly half of donor offspring, and more than half of adoptees, agree, “It is better to adopt than to use donated sperm or eggs to have a child.”
The stories that donor offspring tell about their confusion help to illustrate why they might be, as a group, faring so much worse. Christine Whipp, a British author conceived by anonymous sperm donation more than four decades ago, gives voice to the feelings some donor offspring have of being a “freak of nature” or a “lab experiment”:
My existence owed almost nothing to the serendipitous nature of normal human reproduction, where babies are the natural progression of mutually fulfilling adult relationships, but rather represented a verbal contract, a financial transaction and a cold, clinical harnessing of medical technology.
Lynne Spencer, a nurse and donor-conceived adult, speaks eloquently of losing trust when her parents did not tell her the truth about her origins, and she suspected the secret:
When you grow up and your instincts are telling you one thing and your parents—the people you are supposed to be able to trust the most in your life—are telling you something else, your whole sense of what is true and not true is all confused.
Others speak of the searching for their biological father in crowds, wondering if a man who resembles them could be “the one.” One donor-conceived adult responded to an open-ended question on our survey by writing: “Sometimes I wonder if my father is standing right in front of me.” Still others speak of complicated emotional journeys and lost or damaged relationships with their families when they grow up. One wrote at the end of our survey: “I still have issues with this problem and am seeking professional help. It has helped me to become a stronger person but has scarred me emotionally.” Another said, “[I am] currently not on seeing or speaking terms with family because of this.”
Listening to the stories of donor-conceived adults, you begin to realize there’s really no such thing as a “donor.” Every child has a biological father. To claim otherwise is simply to compound the pain, first as these young people struggle with the original, deliberate loss of their biological father, and second as they do so within a culture that insists some guy who went into a room with a dirty magazine isn’t a father. At most the children are told he’s a “seed provider” or “the nice guy who gave me what I needed to have you” or the “Y Guy” or any number of other cute euphemisms that signal powerfully to children that this man should be of little, if any, importance to them.
What to do? For starters, the United States should follow the lead of Britain, Norway, Sweden, and other nations and end the anonymous trade of sperm. Doing so would powerfully affirm that as a nation we no longer tolerate the creation of two classes of children, one actively denied by the state knowledge of their biological fathers, and the rest who the state believes should have the care and protection of legal fathers, such that the state will even track these men down and dock child support payments from their paychecks.
Getting rid of the secrecy would go a long way toward helping relieve the pain offspring feel. But respondents to our study told us something else too: About half of them have concerns about or serious objections to donor conception itself, even if parents tell their children the truth. Our findings suggest that openness alone does not resolve the complex risks to which children are exposed when they are deliberately conceived not to know and be known by their biological fathers.
At the very least, these young people need acknowledgement of reality as they experience it. Donor offspring may have legal and social parents who take a variety of forms—single, coupled, gay, straight. But they also have, like everyone else, a biological father and mother, two people whose very beings are found in the child’s own body and seen in his or her own image reflected in the mirror.
Like DoubleX on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
If the GOP wins the Senate, they’ll no doubt use the opportunity to push through a range of measures that are kryptonite to Democratic voters—new abortion restrictions, limits on the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to combat climate change, a relaxation of the rules reining in Wall Street’s worst excesses.
But Republicans are particularly keen on handicapping one particular federal watchdog: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the three-year-old agency that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) devised and helped build in the wake of the financial crisis.
The bureau’s job is to make sure Americans aren’t getting screwed by mortgage lenders, credit card companies, debt collectors, and other financial institutions. It’s the first federal agency designed specifically to protect everyday consumers from financial wrongdoing, and Republicans have done everything in their power to hobble the agency—including fighting the confirmation of its director, Richard Cordray. Winning the Senate in November could be their best chance to roll back Warren’s greatest accomplishment.
“You just have to watch the House to see what is going to come out of the Senate.”
Half of their work is already done. The House has passed a bill that would limit the bureau’s power by replacing its director with a five-member panel, and subjecting its budget to the congressional appropriations process—meaning that hostile lawmakers could starve it to death. (Unlike most federal agencies, the bureau is bankrolled by the Federal Reserve, an effort to free it from the whims of partisan politics.) House Republicans have also introduced legislation to let other financial regulators overturn CFPB rules, to eliminate a fund the bureau uses to compensate consumers who’ve been defrauded by an institution that’s gone belly-up, and to restrict the kind of data the bureau may collect from consumers. (Republicans have charged that the CFPB’s collection of credit data is a violation of privacy, even though the bureau does not collect any personal details the consumer doesn’t volunteer.)
The Democratic-controlled Senate has refused to consider these types of bills from the House, but the floodgates would open with a GOP takeover. “You just have to watch the House to see what is going to come out of the Senate,” says a Senate Democratic staffer who works on banking issues.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who is expected to chair the banking committee if his party takes the Senate, has led the charge to water down the CFPB’s powers. Financial-reform advocates say he would likely speed the House bills through committee.
President Obama, of course, has his veto power—Senate Dems could block legislation so long as Republicans lack a filibuster-proof majority. But Obama and his party might cave, Hill staffers say, if anti-CFPB legislation were attached to a bill they really had to pass, such as an appropriations bill or a debt ceiling measure.
A Republican-controlled Senate would also likely try to eviscerate portions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act. In 2011, Shelby introduced a bill to beef up the requirements that force banking regulators to conduct cost-benefit analyses prior to issuing any new rule—a significant hurdle. Last year, the House passed a handful of bills to deregulate derivatives, often-opaque banking products that have been demonized as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” In June, House Republicans passed a bill chipping away at consumer mortgage protections.
The financial industry and Republicans are likely to sell these Dodd-Frank rollbacks as “small technical” fixes, a former Treasury Department official told me, and “the White House is more likely to cave” and sign them into law if “they don’t have help from a Democratic Senate in blocking and tackling.”
A GOP Senate would scale back financial regulations “in so many ways,” the Democratic Senate staffer says, “I don’t know where to start.”The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is both a prime oil prospect and a northern Alaska stronghold of caribou and hundreds of other wildlife species that conservationists for decades have sought to protect.
The Senate on Thursday, in a 52-48 vote, rejected an amendment co-sponsored by Washington state U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell intended to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge closed to oil development.
The refuge is both a prime oil prospect and a northern Alaska stronghold of caribou and hundreds of other wildlife species that conservationists for decades have sought to protect from oil development.
The amendment — if passed — would have stripped out language in a budget resolution that instructs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to raise an additional $1 billion in revenue over a decade. That money is expected to be generated through removing restrictions on refuge exploration.
The House already has approved budget instructions expected to result in a move to open the refuge to oil development. Any legislation allowing oil exploration is expected to be backed by President Donald Trump, who campaigned on increasing U.S. fossil-fuel production.
In the Senate, Cantwell has long been a leading opponent of opening the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, and in years past helped to defeat attempts to launch exploration.
On Thursday, Cantwell, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called the plain “one of the most pristine areas of the United States.” The United States doesn’t need the refuge oil, she said, and it should be the last place to drill.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Republican chair of the committee, said that passing the amendment would deny the Senate a chance to do something constructive for the economy and for national security.One of the fundamental issues with most teachers’ grading schemes is that they continue to treat each grade as a reward or a punishment, rather than simply as a measurement. It might seem like a trivial difference, but the way we look at grades (and use them) has big effects on our classrooms. Whether you seek to encourage work habits by praising high grades, or prevent laziness and lack of attention by criticizing low marks, you aren’t doing yourself or your students any favors.
Now, before I dive into this short list, an important point. We must teach and encourage resiliency, responsibility, and work ethic. The skills are critical to the success of our students. But, the key is to provide this instruction and reinforcement separate from grades.
#1: Losing Sight of Student Learning. Once we acknowledge that grades work best when they communicate student mastery, we are forced to admit that giving and taking points for reasons other than mastery is a bad practice. When we penalize students for late work or incorporate zeroes for non-submitted work into their average, we are saying that their grade represents what they know AND some other stuff. With this veil over the meaning of the number (or letter), it becomes much less useful for grouping, identifying weaknesses, and gauging improvement.
#2: Encouraging Cheating. I have seen firsthand the panic and desperation that sets in when students get stressed out about their performance on an assessment. Most teachers can recall a time when they were shocked to learn that a trusted student had cheated on a test. The driving force for this behavior is the importance that we (including teachers, administrators, parents, and students) put on marks that should be just as stressful as having your temperature taken at the doctor’s office. Assessments provide useful information. That’s it. Doing well on a test just shows that a student has mastered the curriculum. We need to lower the stakes.
#3: Mistaking Extrinsic Motivation for Intrinsic. All teachers recognize the value in helping our student develop internal reasons for wanting to succeed. We know that to become lifelong learners and to value the process of education, we need our students to want to learn. What we don’t realize is that when students work hard to earn a high grade, they are not exhibiting intrinsic motivation. Rather, the grade (and perhaps the rewards that come with it) is acting as the motivator. Those who criticize modern grading practices as not preparing students for the world outside school often fail to see this point. Teaching students to perform well when they are being graded does not make them ideal citizens or employees. We need to help them become more aware of the reason behind assessment, and help them develop self-assessment skills. That’s the path to truly intrinsic motivation.
Grades need to lose the high-stakes baggage that they have picked up over the years. We need to begin to see them as they really are, and encourage families and organizations to join us. A student’s grade needs to tell his family, his teachers, and himself how well he understands what he needs to. When we make “good grades” the goal in and of themselves, we muddy any usefulness that they have for improving learning.
What do you see as the problem with grades as they stand today?DENVER (CBS4) – An internal database from Denver’s Right of Way Enforcement Division shows parking agents are making numerous errors and the agency cancels or voids thousands of its own parking citations every year due to those errors.
Nancy Kuhn, a spokesperson for Denver’s Right of Way Enforcement Division, acknowledged the ongoing errors in an email to CBS4.
“Like all of us, right of way enforcement agents make occasional errors and the agency has a process in place to evaluate, track, and address errors,” wrote Kuhn.
A CBS4 investigation found the division that hands out parking tickets also generates monthly reports on hundreds of parking citations it has to void for a variety of reasons.
CBS4 obtained six months worth of those “Cancel Reports” from November 2015 through May 2016 which showed nearly 2,400 parking tickets had to be canceled, most of them due to what are labeled “officer error.”
In one case, an individual officer wrote 15 citations in one shift that later had to be canceled due to “officer error.”
In many cases the explanation was that there was “no violation” but a ticket had been written anyway. In other cases the vehicles had been previously cited so a duplicate ticket was a mistake. Still other tickets were rescinded due to incorrect plate numbers being recorded, no actual violation existing, incorrect location or plate number.
Some of the faulty tickets were blamed on “equipment malfunction.”
It appears some faulty tickets are not caught. Just ask Eric Robinson. Last month he parked in LoDo at 19th and Blake and displayed his current handicapped placard on his front windshield.
Robinson showed CBS4 pictures that he said were taken that day indicating his handicapped placard was prominently displayed.
But when he returned to his car he had been ticketed for not having a handicapped placard visible.
“I was kind of surprised,” said Robinson. “The placard was on display … so it was an erroneous ticket.”
Robinson appealed the citation to a magistrate who agreed with him and overturned the $25 ticket.
“I don’t like throwing money away and it was the principle,” he told CBS4. “It’s not them fighting for safety, it’s revenue for the city I think.”
Frederick Santana found himself in a similar situation. He was cited last month for parking too long in a two hour zone. But he appealed, showing a parking magistrate pictures where he parked indicating there were no signs stating it was a two hour zone. The magistrate agreed and threw out his $25 citation.
“It was a wrong ticket. They should have never gave me that ticket,” said Santana.
Kuhn says Denver parking officers have an error rate of less than 1 percent so far this year. CBS4 found that while the majority of agents have very few tickets that need to be canceled, a small amount of officers have a large amount of faulty tickets that need to be voided. Ten parking officers had 48 percent of all canceled tickets in the six months worth of records examined by CBS4.
“The process, overall, encourages honesty, integrity and goodwill,” said Kuhn.
CBS4 found hundreds of tickets are voided for what is labeled as “compliance” or “goodwill.” That means that in many cases if a driver appears after the ticket is written and the agent can get compliance, the ticket might be canceled.
CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass has been with the station more than 30 years uncovering waste, fraud and corruption. Follow him on Twitter @Briancbs4.fsv (pronounced eff-ess-vee) is a file system visualizer in cyberspace. It lays out files and directories in three dimensions, geometrically representing the file system hierarchy to allow visual overview and analysis. fsv can visualize a modest home directory, a workstation's hard drive, or any arbitrarily large collection of files, limited only by the host computer's memory and graphics hardware. Two different 3D representation schemes are offered: MapV view. This represents files and directories as rectangular blocks, all of equal height, and each with area proportional to the size of the corresponding file. Everything is laid out on top of its parent directory, somewhat like a Venn diagram in 3D. In the sample at left, the yellow blocks are regular files, and the grey blocks underlying them are directories. The root directory is the block at the bottom.
TreeV view. Built around a more conventional tree/leaf paradigm, this view represents directories as interconnected platforms, with leaves (files et al.) sitting on top. Everything is arranged concentrically, with the root directory closest to the center and subdirectories farther out. The leaf blocks all have the same footprint, and vary in height according to the corresponding file size.
fsv combines either of these 3D views with a standard 2D directory tree / file list interface, offering the best of both viewing paradigms. Directories can be expanded (shown) and collapsed (hidden) at will, allowing as much or as little of the file system to be visible at any given time. More fsv screen shots are available here. Requirements To run fsv, you will need: A Unix/Linux workstation running the X Window System
Dedicated 3D graphics hardware (okay, not required but it really helps)
OpenGL 1.1 or newer, or Mesa3D libraries. Download fsv now! Links fsv was partly inspired by fsn, the experimental 3D File System Navigator developed some time ago by Silicon Graphics. This program figured prominently in a scene from Steven Spielburg's hit film, Jurassic Park. The author of fsv has also created Light Speed!, a program which simulates the bizarre optical effects of relativistic velocities on ordinary objects. Author fsv was written by Daniel Richard G., a former student of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. High-end visualization stuff fascinates him. This project is generously hosted byAs the Internet of Things expands, with everything from thermostats to cameras to cars plugging into the net, so does the need for machines that can handle those connections. The data traveling to and from all those thermostats, cameras, and cars, you see, must flow through the massive data centers operated by the likes of Google, Apple, and Facebook.
The worry is that powering all this extra hardware will require exponentially larger amounts of electricity—not to mention all the money and space spent on the hardware itself. But Urs Hölzle says this won't be the problem it may seem. Hölzle is the man who oversees Google's worldwide network of data centers, and he believes that efficiencies brought by devices such as Internet-connected thermostats, lighting systems, and self-driving cars will balance out the extra power needed to drive our computing centers.
"I'm pretty confident that the Internet of Things is going to have net negative power consumption," Hölzle said during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday. "If you control lights, heat, and cooling in a smarter ways, that's really substantial." Even self-driving cars, he says, will push us towards lower power consumption. "You'll have fewer cars on the road, fewer parking lots, less congestion, because every car is a potential carpool." In other words, he believes we'll use self-driving cars in much the same way we use Uber today, calling one whenever we need one.
His outlook may be optimistic. And it's worth noting that Google makes both online thermostats and self-driving cars. But as Hölzle points out, so many Internet of Things devices—such as thermostats—move relatively little data over the network. And as time goes on, our data centers are juggling data with greater efficiency. Over the past decade, Google has streamlined its own operation, designing its own data centers, its own computer servers, and its own networking gear—and the results are enormous.
Compared with five years ago, Hölzle says, Google's data center servers can now generate three and a half times more computing power with the same amount of money and the same amount of electrical power. These gains can be credited in part to Moore's Law, the tech tenet that says the computing power in a computer chip will double every 18 months. But it's also the result, he says, of far more efficient machines, cooling systems, and electrical systems.
Indeed, all of the leading internet companies—from Google to Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple—are pushing towards a far more efficient breed of data center, and with many of these companies sharing their practices with the world at large, many other operations are following their lead. With the rise of the Internet of Things, the demands placed on our data centers may be growing, but the technology needed to handle those demands is improving as well.
The Caveats
Hölzle acknowledges that his prediction comes with a caveat: the proliferation of online cameras—which send so much data across the network—may cause a steep rise in power consumption across the world's data centers. "Video is the one exception," he said on Tuesday. And Jason Mars, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan who specializes in data center technologies, knocks Hölzle's thesis down another peg.
Internet of Things devices may improve power efficiency in theory, Mars says, but it's unclear how well they will actually work—or whether we humans will use them as a effectively as we should. "I’m not going to hold my breath on how effective future products will be at reducing the power consumption of society to the point of being 'net negative' relative to data centers," he says.
But Mars also says that, thanks to likes of Google, data center efficiencies are improving—and that there's room for even greater improvements in the future. Google is leading this revolution, he says, followed by companies like Facebook and Microsoft. And he has more insight than most, having worked along Google data center engineers to analyze the performance of its data centers.
Efficiency Through Openness
Facebook's role is also particularly notable. For years, Google kept its data center technologies under wraps, seeing them as a competitive advantage. But in 2011, through its Open Compute Project, or OCP, Facebook open-sourced many of its streamlined data center designs, sharing them with the world at large. This has sparked a dramatic shift in the way the industry builds hardware. "OCP is a great idea," Hölzle acknowledged. And though he didn't say so, one big result of the project is that Google has opened up its practices as well.
In recent years, Google started using machine learning algorithms to analyze and refine the operation of its data centers, improving efficiency in some facilities by 15 to 25 percent. About a year ago, Google published a paper showing others how this could be done. Google isn't sharing its particular algorithms with others, but according to head of data center operations Joe Kava, its paper has directly sparked similar efforts from outside companies.
Still, there are limits to how much Google is willing to share. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, Google has not joined Facebook's Open Compute Project. "Our applications," Hölzle says, "aren't identical to everyone else's." And Mars says the company still closely guards what goes on inside its data centers. "Google likes to enjoy their datacenter innovations that result in reducing the cost per query for a year our two before they are willing to publish their designs in academic communities," he says.
But Google is sharing more than it has in the past. And like Facebook and Microsoft, the company is leading by example. As a result, the demands of the Internet of Things don't look nearly as daunting.“There are other examples where a club couldn't wait long enough. That's not a criticism. Sometimes you think the next step won't come with a player. Then he changes club and it's like: 'Oh yes, there's the next step' and you think: 'Oh my God, why didn't we wait?'
“I worked as a youth coach when I was very young. I got a team to manage and after one year the sports director came to me and asked me how many new players do you want for next year?
"I said: 'I don't want new players.' He said: 'Always take new players, the best from other clubs.'
"But I said I wasn't interested. I wanted to keep that team and work with them.
"You need scouting, of course. You need to have the best talents as much as possible, but I don't know the way to find out which 10-year-old boy will really go through. It's much too early at that age.
“I'd always say: 'Stay in your club, don't travel a lot, focus on your education. Just play football because it's the best game in the world, it's fun and play as often as you can.'
“It's better playing football 20 times a week in school than training three times a week with other players.”
Klopp says he would also prefer Liverpool’s youth and first team to train at one site, although that brings logistical issues. It would require a revamp of the Academy at Kirkby or locating a new site for development.
“It would be easier,” said Klopp.
“You wouldn't need to drive between two different places.”
Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool FC are supporting Standard Chartered’s Seeing Is Believing charity initiative, which helps the 285 million people around the world who suffer from preventable blindness. For more information or to donate, visit https://www.sc.comIn California, “No one cares if you smoke a joint or not,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
The Governator made the remark while discussing Prop 19, which would have legalized adult recreational pot use in the state, reports Mary Dooe at CBS News
“Proposition 19 went a little bit too far, I think,” Schwarzenegger said of the failed measure. But he added a note of hope for the future.
“Propositions don’t die because the idea is bad, it just dies because it is written wrong,” the Governor added.
Arnie said his decision to sign a bill last month that reduces marijuana possession charges for up to an ounce from a misdemeanor to a civil fine hurt Prop 19’s chances of passing.
“It makes [possession]from a misdemeanor to an infraction, which is like a speeding ticket,” Schwarzenegger said. “And no one cares if you smoke a joint or not.”Baseball Prospectus released its MLB-wide PECOTA projections for players Tuesday — basically, the projected stats various players will have in 2017 based on their career arc and historical data.
If you want to get really fancy, PECOTA is an acronym for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. But you already knew that.
Much of this data — understandably — is paid content. BP puts out a book every year (foreword this season by none other than Twins pitcher Glen Perkins), which would make for nice reading during these dreary days. You can also subscribe to the web site (for a 17 percent discount).
For now, though, editor in chief Aaron Gleeman was kind enough to share the Twins’ individual projections with me — info that, along with the free information on the site that gives us projections for all 30 teams’ records, tells us a lot about what we could expect from 2017.
The number that immediately jumps out: 79.
Baseball Prospectus projects the Twins will win 79 games this season (against 83 losses). While that wouldn’t be a “good” year in many senses, it would be a dramatic improvement from last year’s Twins-worst 59-103 record — and more in line with getting back on the path the Twins thought they were on after their 83-79 season in 2015.
That record, per BP’s projections, would be good for second in the AL Central. That should tell you the projections think the division will be quite bad — and indeed, Cleveland (92 wins) is slated to be the runaway winner. Rounding out the rest, after the Twins: Detroit at 78-84, Chicago at 77-85 and Kansas City at 71-91.
Now: even the best projections using the best data can be wrong. PECOTA has rather infamously whiffed on projections for the Royals in previous years. Trying to gauge how many wins a team will wind up with before injuries, slumps and other things take hold is a tough task. For now, though, it is very interesting to see the relative faith placed in the Twins.
To figure out why, let’s look at a few key individuals — keeping in mind that the numbers aren’t necessarily reflective of anticipated playing time but rather how those players would perform if given that time:
*The PECOTA projections see a clear progression for Byron Buxton, who checks in with an anticipated 17 home runs and a.730 OPS in 509 plate appearances in 2017. He’s projected for 2.9 wins above replacement player — best on the team and indicative of the fact that he could very well be the Twins’ best player as soon as this season. Miguel Sano is next with 31 homers and a 2.6 WARP. It’s pretty safe to say the Twins would love it if those two were their best players in 2017.
Brian Dozier is next with 25 homers and a 2.2 WARP. Fourth in WARP? New catcher Jason Castro (15 homers, 1.8 WARP). Because you asked: Joe Mauer is projected to hit.275 with nine homers and a.360 OBP.
One has to imagine Buxton and Castro — the former having tremendous range in center and the latter coming in with a reputation for being a great pitch framer — helped fuel the projection that the Twins will finish 22.7 fielding runs above average in 2017. That’s the second-highest projection of any American League team and the third-best in the majors. That would be quite the upgrade from 2016, when FanGraphs had the Twins finishing at minus-45.7 in defensive runs above average — second-worst in the majors.
Indeed, if the Twins improve by nearly 69 runs from last year to this year solely from their defense, that will account for a significant share of their projected improvement from 59 to 79 wins. Last year’s Twins scored 722 runs and allowed 889. The projection this year from BP is 734 scored but only 752 allowed.
*The PECOTA projections see starting pitchers Tyler Duffey, Ervin Santana and Kyle Gibson as basically the same — all with 1.2 projected wins above replacement, all with ERAs between 4 and 4.3. That would mean a regression from Santana from 2016 to 2017 and a step back forward for Duffey and Gibson, who both struggled last season. Projections are also much higher on Jose Berrios (4.31 ERA) than Hector Santiago (5.06 ERA). It’s safe to say the Baseball Prospectus numbers call into question the Twins’ decision to keep Santiago on a one-year, $8 million deal — projecting a regression from |
year’s targeted spending of Rs 1 lakh crore.
Among the projects awarded last month was a Rs 1,102- crore contract to Alstom Transport India by Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation, for train sets and signaling systems for the new network planned for the city. The contracts for civil works and electrification of the under-construction Rs 82,000 crore Dedicated Freight Corridor project has also pushed up projects award activity.
He said a major cause for the improvement in award of rail projects is the ministry’s decentralising of powers to delegate works to the zonal railways, apart from the huge budgetary support. “This is a very encouraging sign and would allow the railways to create more capacities within a short time frame,” he said.
The railways’ plan size is Rs 1 lakh crore for this financial year, a 53 per cent jump over 2014-15’s spending target of Rs 65,000 crore.The Xbox Red Stripe Deal of the Week doesn’t update until Thursday, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find a new Xbox Windows Phone deal today. The good folks at Gameloft are running a little sale of their own, with almost every single one of their titles marked down in price. The best deals of the bunch have to be The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises for three bucks apiece - those games only came out in March! Full list with descriptions and store links after the break.
The Amazing Spider-Man (Windows Phone 8 devices with 1 GB RAM) Regular price: $6.99 Sale price: $2.99 Download size: 542 MB Store Link - Review
The Gameloft sale starts out with a bang thanks to this very good licensed game. Based on the underrated Andrew Garfield film of the same name, Amazing Spider-Man is an open-world action game. Players can web sling or run across a fairly large city, fighting random thugs and taking on little side missions. Or run through the story and try to thwart the Lizard’s evil plans. Amazing Spider-Man has just two problems. The frame rate is less than ideal. I still found it perfectly playable, but some players won’t care for it. Also, the game suffers from two broken Achievements. Sadly, Gameloft rarely fixes Achievements, so I’ll be mentioning this same issue in several other games’ descriptions. Asphalt 5 (Windows Phone 7 or 8) Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 110 MB Store Link
Before Gameloft graced Windows Phone 8 with the stellar Asphalt 7, they published a good port of the less amazing fifth game in the Asphalt series. It was actually supposed to be a launch title but came out almost two years later in July 2012. Actually, Asphalt 5 looks and plays very well for a Windows Phone 7 racing game. My only complaint is some of the race types are difficult to figure out, which can eventually prevent players from progressing in the game. Asphalt 7 thankfully dropped those problematic race types. Assassin’s Creed (Windows Phone 7 or 8) Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $1.99 Download size: 139 MB Store Link
This might be the single most frequently discounted Xbox Windows Phone game. Does anybody not own it yet? Assassin’s Creed is a 3D platformer/action title set in the middle ages. With great graphics and full voice acting (though the acting is atrocious), it feels like a DS game squeezed into a mobile title (‘cause it is). The controls are fiddly and the platforming can be frustrating, but the story and action mostly make up for it. Easy Achievements too. Brain Challenge (Windows Phone 7 or 8) Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $1.99 Download size: 112 MB Store Link
Brain Challenge is a collection of brain-teasing minigames that you should be wary of. It sports an amazing five Broken Achievements – the most of any Xbox Windows Phone game. Seriously, Brain Challenge is buggier than an entomologist's laboratory. Skip this and get the superior XBLA version instead. The Dark Knight Rises (Windows Phone 8 devices with 1GB RAM) Regular price: $6.99 Sale price: $2.99 Download size: 774 MB Store Link
Want an open-world action game for your phone that doesn’t have any broken Achievements? Dark Knight Rises fits the bill. Some of the Achievements are difficult to actually figure out, but they are all attainable. As for the game itself, it looks and plays much like Amazing Spider-Man. You can take on the story missions following the film’s plot or run around doing random missions. Batman doesn’t web sling, but he does get to drive vehicles. As long as your phone can run the game and you don’t mind the frame rate, Dark Knight Rises is a must-buy. Let’s Golf 2 (Windows Phone 7 or 8) Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $1.99 Download size: 170 MB Store Link - Review
Let’s Golf 2 is an arcade-style golf game modeled after Sony’s popular Hot Shots Golf franchise. Features include cartoony players, clean 3D graphics, six 18-hole courses, and both Career and Challenge modes. Initially Let’s Golf 2 launched with two broken Achievements, though a subsequent patch fixed one of them. Unfortunately, the ‘Secret Code’ Achievement remains unattainable by design. That’s right, the Achievement’s requirement of inputting a special code in order to unlock the ninth golfer is simply impossible in the Windows Phone version of the game. Still, if you can overlook that blunder, Let’s Golf 2 remains a lengthy and fun title. The Oregon Trail (Windows Phone 7 only) Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $1.99 Download size: 59 MB Store Link
Oregon Trail was not compatible with Windows Phone 8 initially. Then in December we reported that it became available for WP8 again. Unfortunately, the WP8 compatibility appears to have been a mistake on Microsoft’s part. The game is only available on WP7 once again. Too bad, ‘cause I’d totally buy it at this price. The Oregon Trail is an edutainment title, focusing on the emigrant trail used by thousands of American settlers to travel from the Missouri River to Oregon during the 1800s. It features a lively cartoonish art style and several minigames. Plus you get to die of dysentery! The Achievements are mostly easy, but one is semi-glitched. Make sure you follow the instructions in this Achievement Guide to unlock it. Real Soccer (Windows Phone 7 or 8) Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $.99 Download size: 40 MB US Store Link - International Store Link
Like Asphalt 5, Real Soccer was supposed to be a launch title but came out super late – September 2012 in this case. And unlike Real Soccer 2013, this entry is a traditional soccer game unmarred by an overly greedy freemium pricing model. Buy it and play as much as you want. The Achievements from the US and international versions even stack, so players who buy both versions can earn them all twice. BUT both versions suffer from an Achievement that is impossible by design. ‘Man of the Match’ is tied to a mode not found in the WP game. Splinter Cell: Conviction (Windows Phone 7 only) Regular price: $4.99 Sale price: $1.99 Download size: 160 MB Store Link - Review
Conviction is a port of the excellent Xbox 360 game, sharing the same premise and much of the fully voiced story. Series protagonist Sam Fisher must investigate the death of his daughter and eventually save the president of the United States from terrorists. The level designs are different from the console version, but this one still plays like a Splinter Cell game with lots of sneaking around and killing enemies from the shadows. Despite the rudimentary 3D graphics and a few annoying difficulty spikes, Splinter Cell is a fun and easy 200 GamerScore overall. Too bad it doesn’t run on Windows Phone 8 though. UNO (Windows Phone 7 or 8) Regular price: $2.99 Sale price: $1.99 Download size: 59 MB Store LinkCalling on the federal government to bring its "full resources to bear" on the crisis in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.-I) unveiled a $146 billion recovery package for the U.S. territories on Tuesday, two months after Hurricane Maria left destruction across the islands.
Sanders and the Democratic co-sponsors of the new bill argue it is necessary to treat the recovery as the emergency it is, but that rebuilding the islands' battered infrastructure should not mean simply returning to things as they were.
"It is absolutely without any sense at all to rebuild Puerto Rico's antiquated, centralized, and inefficient electric grid that was dependent on expensive and dirty imported fossil fuels," Sanders said in a press conference where he introduced the bill, adding that with the nickname "La Isla Del Sol," the island could be leading the way in the use of solar power and other sustainable energy.
"Before the storm Puerto Rico only had two percent of its electricity coming from sustainable energy," remarked Sanders. "Beyond rebuilding damaged facilities, our bill makes a major proactive investment in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands' infrastructure."
The bill—formally called The Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands Equitable Rebuild Act—was referred to as "a Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico" by Ramon Luis Nieves, former lawmaker on the island. It would give $62 billion to the territory to help it pay off its debts, $51 billion for economic development, and $27 billion for infrastructure.
Sanders noted in his press conference with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and other coo-sponsors, that more than two months after Maria made landfall, "half of the people there—American citizens all—still have no electricity, many are still struggling to get clean drinking water and more than 100,000 people have left Puerto Rico."
But despite the dire situation, Trump has requested just $29 billion for Puerto Rico, Florida, and Texas combined, to help with the recovery from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as well as Maria.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who has been sharply critical of the president's approach to Puerto Rico's recovery, expressed her approval of the bill in a statement:
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
The bill that Senator Sanders has introduced in the United States Congress is a comprehensive plan that provides the blueprint for the transformation of Puerto Rico. While dealing with all major areas of immediate concern: energy, health and education it also sets the foundation to make Puerto Rico a more equitable, just and fair society for all.
In addition to humanitarian relief and improved infrastructure, Warren stressed the need for full, true debt relief. As President Donald Trump brought up in the days after the storm, Puerto Rico's debt exceeds $70 billion, brought on partially by a lack of tax revenue after Congress repealed a tax break for businesses on the island in 1976. This caused companies to flee and take the economic growth Puerto Rico experienced following World War II with them.
The island fell further into debt as "vulture" hedge funds saw an opportunity to buy up the island's debt, only to sue its government when it defaulted on paying the funds back—forcing Puerto Rico to file for bankruptcy four months before Maria hit. Similar firms swooped in following Hurricane Maria.
"Puerto Rico needs full debt relief," Warren said. "This is critical. The vulture funds that snapped up Puerto Rican debt should not get one cent from the island. Not one cent."
Warren also criticized Trump's callous and insufficient response to the island's crisis, and urged him and Congress to support the bill.
"From the start, President Trump's response to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands has been too little, too late. I've been telling President Trump, 'Do your job.' Well,this bill is an opportunity for President Trump to step up and do his job."
The senators' press conference was broadcast on Facebook Live:There are many rumors about the Samsung Galaxy S8 but it can be hard to tell which are credible. A case maker (which prefers to remain anonymous) sent us 3D renders of the S8 based on accurate schematics.
They are only three images but tell plenty. First off, Samsung has taken the edge design forward, the side curves of the display are much more pronounced, pushing the bezels out of sight. Something else was kicked off the front - the Home key. That was moved on screen and the fingerprint reader it used to house was pushed under the glass.
Notice that there are speaker grills both above and below the screen - the Galaxy S8 will have stereo speakers. Also, the 3.5mm headphone jack is safe (phew!), but the USB port is uncertain. From this angle, it looks like microUSB, but with both the Note7 and Galaxy A 2017 phones using USB-C we find it unlikely that Samsung will go back.
Samsung Galaxy S8 (3D renders by a certain case maker)
Finally, theres no dual-camera to be seen. However, the most recent rumors suggest that only the Galaxy S8 Plus model will have one.
With stricter testing procedures in place, the launch date for the Samsung Galaxy S8 is reportedly set for April 18, thirteen months after the S7 and S7 edge were unveiled.Across the United States, people are reporting a number of disturbing hate incidents since the US election. We want to hear your stories
Even before he won the presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric had fueled a rise in xenophobic taunts and bullying across US playgrounds. Teachers reported that Muslim and Mexican students were targeted – “They said things like ‘you’ll get deported’, ‘you weren’t born here’ and ‘you were born in a Taco Bell’.”
Spike in hate crimes possibly linked to Trump's election reported across the US Read more
As the United States emerges from one of its most divisive presidential elections ever, that fear over an uptick in hate crimes remains – and it does not appear to be unfounded. Social media users have begun to flag a number of hate incidents, while transgender Americans say they fear for their safety following Trump’s win.
Have you experienced a rise in abuse since the US election? We want to hear from you. Share your story using the form below. We’ll reach out to some readers about including their responses in our ongoing political coverage.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Top-ranked Florida State suffered another loss along the defensive line Thursday when coach Jimbo Fisher ruled out defensive Mario Edwards Jr. for Saturday's game against NC State.
Edwards, a junior, is dealing with a concussion that occurred in the first half of last weekend's overtime win against Clemson. He did not play in the second half.
Defensive tackle Nile Lawrence-Stample was also injured against Clemson and will miss the season with a torn pectoral, which leaves the Seminoles with a reshaped line. Tackle Eddie Goldman and end DeMarcus Walker have started all three games.
Redshirt sophomore defensive end/linebacker Chris Casher will start in place of Edwards against the Wolfpack. Casher played admirably in Edwards' stead against Clemson, producing several big plays in the second half, including a touchdown-saving tackle and a fourth-down stop in overtime.
Edwards has eight tackles and one sack this season.
Backup running back Mario Pender (concussion) and linebacker Ukeme Eligwe (foot) are also ruled out for NC State.
Fisher also said backup DT Justin Shanks is returning from a lower leg injury suffered in the first half against The Citadel in Week 2. He missed the Clemson game.Dear Campus Community,
As you may know, yesterday we lost a member of the Wolfpack family and I know I speak for the larger community in stating that our thoughts and sympathies go to the family and friends impacted by this loss.
Today, many of us are experiencing grief or any number of emotions that can come along with such a loss, whether or not you knew the individual. There are also many in our community who might be experiencing depression or having a difficult time coping in relation to a variety of other personal issues. It is important to know there are campus resources available to us during this time and always at NC State. The NC State Counseling Center has counselors available to students on call 24/7 and can be reached at (919) 515-2423. Walk-in services are available 8 – 5 p.m.
If you witness behavior that is concerning to you by a student, faculty or staff member, you can contact Students of Concern to make a referral. If you witness an immediate threat to someone, University Police is a phone call or push of a button away.
Counselors are also available for faculty and staff by contacting the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program. The FASAP is confidential and provided at no charge to faculty, staff and their dependents. Access counseling services 24/7 through FASAP by calling 866-467-0467, or using online resources at www.guidanceresources.com (webID: fasap).Your early action could save someone’s life.
Last night, more than 450 students, faculty and staff came together for a candlelight vigil on the Brickyard where emotions were high and healing began. Tonight I suspect the crowd will be even larger for an event on Stafford Commons at 8:00 p.m. During my time here at NC State I have repeatedly seen that when we experience the loss of a member of the Wolfpack, we come together and support each other. However, it is important that after time has passed and hearts and emotions begin to heal, we keep a piece of what we are feeling today as a reminder that we should always treat others with respect, dignity and care.
Today I ask that we begin making special efforts to include those that may feel excluded. Talk to someone in class you may not otherwise have talked to before today. Go out of your way to say hello and to get to know people that are different than you are. But don’t let that behavior stop after today. Take care of yourself and look to take care of each other everyday. It is our responsibility to continue to be supportive and inclusive of all members of the Pack.
Sincerely,
Mike Mullen
Vice Chancellor and Dean
Division of Academic and Student AffairsTough-as-nails North Queensland Toyota Cowboy Ray Thompson will call time on his football career at the end of the current National Rugby League season, the club announced today.
Townsville junior Thompson, 27, has been with the Cowboys since 2009, the year he made both his National Youth Competition and NRL debuts.
He has gone on to play 111 matches for his beloved Cowboys, has represented Papua New Guinea at the 2013 World Cup and played for the Indigenous team at the showcase All Stars match.
In announcing his retirement, Thompson said persistent knee problems played a part in him coming to the decision.
He stressed, though, that he remained committed to getting back on to the field this year to help his team for the remainder of the regular season, and on to a potential seventh straight finals series.
Thompson also signalled his intention to be available for selection for PNG at this year’s Rugby League World Cup, where the Kumuls will play their pool matches in the nation’s capital, Port Moresby.
“This club has been everything to me for nearly a decade, it’s given me plenty and I’d like to think I’ve given back to it as well,” Thompson said.
“I’ve got nothing but great memories of my time playing here and to take the field with these blokes has been a true privilege.
“I’ve battled through some injuries throughout my career, so now was the right time to call curtains, but rest assured I’ll be giving it my all for the rest of the season.”
Cowboys General Manager – Football Peter Parr said Thompson epitomised everything good about the Cowboys: mateship, resilience, hard work and an absolute desire and willingness to put one’s best foot forward each and every week.
“Earlier in the year, Paul Green said Ray was ‘as tough as a two-dollar steak’ after he played against the Knights,” Parr said.
“That’s been the story of his entire career, and while he’s had his challenges on the injury front, he’s never blinked at getting back on to the field.
“This club is a better place for Ray’s time here.”
Thompson has played six games for the Cowboys this year, and is close to taking the field again as he continues to manage his training load for the remainder of the season.
And while his playing days are coming to an end, Thompson won’t be lost to the club altogether after agreeing to take up an off-field position from November.
Thompson will work with the club’s community team as an engagement and programs officer, where he will join former teammate Matt Bowen in rolling out the club’s significant portfolio of programs, including TryTime! and Try for 5!
RAY THOMPSON FACT FILE
Born: January 20, 1990
Junior club: Centrals ASA Tigers
Position: half/hooker
NRL games to date: 111
NRL and Cowboys debut: Round 26, 2009 v Roosters
Representative honours: Papua New Guinea 2011, 2013, 2015; Indigenous All Stars 2015
Other honours: Cowboys Most Improved Player, 2011Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and a number of her colleagues today introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017, a bill to ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Joining Senator Feinstein on the bill are Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.).
Senator Feinstein, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement:
“We’re introducing an updated Assault Weapons Ban for one reason: so that after every mass shooting with a military-style assault weapon, the American people will know that a tool to reduce these massacres is sitting in the Senate, ready for debate and a vote.
“This bill won’t stop every mass shooting, but it will begin removing these weapons of war from our streets. The first Assault Weapons Ban was just starting to show an effect when the NRA stymied its reauthorization in 2004. Yes, it will be a long process to reduce the massive supply of these assault weapons in our country, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
“To those who say now isn’t the time, they’re right—we should have extended the original ban 13 years ago, before hundreds more Americans were murdered with these weapons of war. To my colleagues in Congress, I say do your job.
History
“It’s important to understand how we got where we are today. In 1966, the unthinkable happened: a madman climbed the University of Texas clock tower and opened fire, killing more than a dozen people.
“It was the first mass shooting in the age of television, and it left a real impression on the country. It was the kind of terror we didn’t expect to ever see again. But around 30 years ago, we started to see an uptick in these types of shootings, and over the last decade they’ve become the new norm.
In July 2012, a gunman walked into a darkened theater in Aurora and shot 12 people to death, injuring 70 more. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. The sudden and utterly random violence was a terrifying sign of what was to come.
In December 2012, a young man entered an elementary school in Newtown and murdered six educators and 20 young children. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. Watching the aftermath of these young babies being gunned down was heartrending.
In June 2016, a gunman entered a nightclub in Orlando and sprayed revelers with gunfire. The shooter fired hundreds of rounds, many in close proximity, and killed 49. Many of the victims were shot in the head at close range. One of his weapons was an assault rifle.
Last month, a gunman opened fire on concertgoers in Las Vegas, turning an evening of music into a killing field. All told, the shooter used multiple assault rifles fitted with bump-fire stocks to kill 58 people. The concert venue looked like a warzone.
Over the weekend in Sutherland Springs, 26 were killed by a gunman with an assault rifle. The dead ranged from 17 months old to 77 years. No one is spared with these weapons of war. When so many rounds are fired so quickly, no one is spared. Another community devastated and dozens of families left to pick up the pieces.
“These are just a few of the many communities we talk about in hushed tones—San Bernardino, Littleton, Aurora, towns and cities across the country that have been permanently scarred.
“And the numbers continue to grow. Between 1988 and 1997, 125 were killed in 18 mass shootings. The next decade, 1998 to 2007, 171 were killed in 21 mass shootings. And over the last 10 years, 2008 to 2017, 437 were killed in 50 mass shootings.
“That’s 89 mass shootings in the last 30 years that snuffed out the lives of more than 700 people. Additionally, many police officers killed in the line of duty are killed by assault weapons, including 1 in 5 officers killed in 2014.
After each shooting, we’re told it’s not the right time to act. We’re told to respect the victims by sitting on our hands. Well, the time for inaction is over.”
Key provisions
Bans the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name. Owners may keep existing weapons.
Bans any assault weapon that accepts a detachable ammunition magazine and has one or more military characteristics including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock. Owners may keep existing weapons.
Bans magazines and other ammunition feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload. Owners may keep existing magazines.
Exemptions to bill
The bill exempts by name more than 2,200 guns for hunting, household defense or recreational purposes.
The bill includes a grandfather clause that exempts all weapons lawfully possessed at the date of enactment.
Other provisions:
Requires a background check on any future sale, trade or gifting of an assault weapon covered by the bill.
Requires that grandfathered assault weapons are stored using a secure gun storage or safety device like a trigger lock.
Prohibits the transfer of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Bans bump-fire stocks and other devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at fully automatic rates.
###Humans are evidence seeking machines.
In pickup guys often look for evidence that they are not enough, that their game sucks, that things aren’t going to work out until they magically reach that mystical plateau of mastery.
“She flaked. They always flake.”
“I have to learn to deal with last minute resistance.”
“That girl probably has a bitch shield.”
“I’ll prepare my anti-boyfriend lines.”
We look for evidence that things are going to be wrong.
Instead you should look for evidence that things are going to be right.
At the start of each and every day, I simulate it in my imagination. I see myself being productive, prolific, social and happy.
I imagine women drawn in by my charm.
I imagine potential clients contacting me.
I imagine myself writing awesome blog posts that help people succeed at life.
I imagine myself going to the gym, and being fit, and healthy.
I imagine all sorts of amazing things.
Then, when these imaginary experiences actually happen—I see them as proof:
“Ahh, I knew I would meet you today.”
“I knew I would make money today.”
“I knew I was going to be promoted soon.”
“I knew I was going to lose that weight and make those gains.”
Worrying is simply using your imagination to simulate failure. We pretend that this is “preparation.” But you should be prepared for success, not failure. What does success look like? Feel like?
Use your imagination to simulate success.
Your entire day will be spent looking for proof that your meditations, or prayers, are actually coming true.
Start every day with a meditation on success. Be grateful for what you have.
***I’m accepting clients in Vancouver BC. American? Consider a weekend of Daygame training in Beautiful Vancouver BC. I will also travel for private coaching on request.***Kobe Bryant, one of the best to ever play the game of basketball, has long been referred to by the nickname "Black Mamba." After years of owning the nickname, he decided, through his business arm Kobe Inc., that he would apply to register the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Despite not yet owning a registration for the mark, Bryant is seeking to enforce what he believes to be his rights by opposing others from earning registrations related to same.
Recently, Bryant filed a notice of opposition against 47 / 72 Inc. based on its filing of a trademark application for "The Black Mamba" for use in connection with online retail store services featuring shirts, hooded sweatshirts, sweatshirts, one-piece clothing for babies, mobile electronics cases, posters, pillows, mugs and tote bags. Bryant believes that 47 / 72 Inc.'s mark is likely to confuse consumers as to the source of the products being sold and is a false suggestion of a connection between 47 / 72 Inc. and Bryant himself.
Interestingly, Bryant, who filed his trademark application for "Black Mamba" in May 2016, did so under an intent-to-use designation and has not yet modified the application to demonstrate actual use. As such, the application, which also covers a wide range of apparel and sneakers, remains stalled within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's database. It is unclear as to if/when, Bryant will supplement his intent-to-use application with a Statement of Use showing actual commercial use of "Black Mamba" in connection with the products described in his application.
However, Bryant is not attempting to use his previously filed trademark application to bar 47 / 72 Inc. from receiving a registration for "The Black Mamba." Instead, Bryant is resting on the fact that his nickname has been recognized worldwide to be the "Black Mamba" or simply "Mamba" for many years prior to his filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has even authorized business partners, sponsors and/or licensees to use the "Black Mamba" mark and variations thereof without a registration in place. Said authorization allegedly began as early as 2007.
Additionally, Bryant cites to the fact that Nike declared April 13, 2016 (Bryant's final game in the NBA) as "Mamba Day." He also notes that the applicant he is opposing has purportedly filed other applications for well-known and recognized names and phrases associated with Taylor Swift, Beyonce Knowles, Jay Z and others.
As such, Bryant hopes that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (which has jurisdiction over the notice of opposition) will deem that the strength of Bryant's common law trademark is worthy of defeating 47 / 72 Inc.'s pending trademark application.
Darren Heitner the Founder of South Florida-based HEITNER LEGAL, P.L.L.C. and Sports Agent Blog. He authored the book, How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know.
Follow @DarrenHeitnerWhat Ted Cruz said about church and state during a March 29 town hall is remarkable—and very welcome to me as a secularist.
A student asked Cruz (see CNN’s transcript; hat tip to Craig Biddle):
[H]ow and why does your religion play a part in your political decision-making? Don’t you think it should be more of a moral belief and not something that can interfere with your decision-making when you’re making decisions for all religions in the United States?
In other words, the student asked about Cruz’s stance on the separation of church and state: Should government impose by force the tenets of sectarian doctrine?
Cruz replied:
Listen, with me, as with many people in America, my faith is an integral part of who I am. I’m a Christian, and I’m not embarrassed to say that. I’m not going to hide that and treat it like it’s something you can’t admit publicly and acknowledge. It’s an important part of who you are. But I also think those in politics have an obligation not to wear their faith on their sleeve. There have been far too many politicians that run around behaving like they’re holier than thou. And I’ll tell you, my attitude as a voter when some politician stands up and says, I’m running because God told me... to run, my reaction as a voter is, great, when God tells me to vote for you, we’ll be on the same page. And so, listen, I’m not asking you to vote for me because of my personal faith with Jesus Christ. I’m asking you to vote for me because I’ve spent a lifetime fighting to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, fighting to defend the American free enterprise system, and we need a leader who will stand up every day and protect the rights of everyone, whether they’re Christians or Jews or Muslims or anyone else. The bill of rights protects all Americans. It protects atheists. That’s the beauty of the bill of rights, is that we have the freedom to seek out God, to worship and to live according to our faith and our conscience, and I think the Constitution and Bill of Rights is a unifying principle that can bring us together across faiths, across races, across ethnicity. And we need to come together behind the unifying principles that built America.
Notably, Cruz specifically mentioned atheists as part of the American fabric whose rights are protected equally by the Bill of Rights. He said that people properly have “the freedom... to live according to... [their] conscience”—a crucially important idea. And Cruz openly mocked those who claim they have a mandate from God to run for president.
On their own terms, Cruz’s remarks here constitute an endorsement—or at least approach an endorsement—of the separation of church and state as articulated by Thomas Jefferson (among others). They make me, a secularist advocate of free-market capitalism, more comfortable with the possibility of Cruz serving as president. Indeed, as a participant of Colorado’s upcoming Republican convention, I will do what I can to support Cruz over Trump for the nomination, and I will probably vote for Cruz should he win the nomination.
Of course, Cruz’s recent remarks on the issue of church and state do not erase his history of pandering to religious conservatives and even to outright theocrats, nor his history of endorsing faith-based policies in outright contradiction to his recent remarks.
To review briefly: Early in his campaign, Cruz made outreach to evangelical voters the centerpiece of his strategy. Cruz launched his campaign for the presidency at the evangelical Liberty University (which, incidentally, has its own “Center for Creation Studies” that promotes young-earth creationism).
Cruz actively campaigned with Kevin Swanson, who called for the eventual execution of unrepentant homosexuals. Cruz touted the support of Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, who called for the execution of abortion providers. (I detail these facts in “Ted Cruz’s Dangerous Pandering to Theocrats.”) While sharing a stage with Swanson, Cruz said that a nonreligious person is not “fit to be commander-in-chief of this country.” Cruz also actively campaigned with anti-gay bigot Phil Robertson.
In terms of faith-based policy, Cruz endorsed a total ban on abortion—even in cases of rape and incest—and even a ban on certain forms of birth control.
Obviously, although Cruz recently said that people have a right to live according to their conscience, he does not really believe that. If he could, he would impose at least some of the edicts of his religious faith by force of law.
So what are we to make of Cruz’s recent comments that seem to endorse the separation of church and state? Cruz’s shift from focusing his campaign on evangelical voters to explicitly appealing to nonsectarians and even atheists seems to suggest that Cruz’s earlier outreach to evangelicals was at least as much tactical as it was ideological.
What happened to Cruz, put bluntly, is that his strategy of winning with evangelical support blew up in his face. Rather than back him, as Cruz expected, evangelicals flocked to Trump in large numbers. Now that Cruz must play underdog with less evangelical support than he had hoped for, he needs to build up more support among other segments of the Republican Party, particularly those with free-market and “libertarian” views—people who are far more likely to be secularist in outlook.
Unfortunately for Cruz, if he does win the Republican nomination, his previous alliances with theocrats and his faith-based policy positions likely will haunt him and possibly will cost him the election. At some point, more journalists (not to mention PACs) are likely to seriously question Cruz about his alliances with Swanson and Newman, about whether he really wants to outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest, about his views on the proper legal status of the copper IUD, about whether he wishes to legally punish women who get abortions or doctors who provide them, and so on.
If Cruz manages to win the Republican nomination as well as the presidency, he will seriously threaten to undermine the right to seek an abortion. Not only will Cruz almost certainly sign any abortion restriction sent to him by (a Republican) Congress, he will almost certainly choose Supreme Court justices comfortable with approving national and state restrictions on abortion. This is especially important given the spread of state restrictions, such as a law passed recently in Indiana that (among other things) forbids women to get an abortion if the fetus has Down syndrome.
Unfortunately for voters, the choice is not between Cruz (if he wins the nomination) and an ideal candidate; it is between Cruz and Hillary Clinton (assuming she also wins). As Craig Biddle points out, Cruz is quite good on a number of issues as judged from a secular capitalist perspective, especially the right to |
by William Sudell, Preston chairman and one of the foremost figures in the professionalisation of the English game as an FA administrator. Sudell brought the 22-year-old to Preston in 1885, the same year professionalism became legal within English football. The Preston side recruited by Sudell, featuring a number of Scottish players, became immediately successful. In 1887, the club recorded what remains the biggest win in the FA Cup’s 145 year history, a 26-0 victory over Hyde, and also the biggest win in the history of English football, although Goodall will have been disappointed he only managed to score once in that game.
Preston won an incredibly 42 consecutive games in all competitions in 1887 and 1888, a feat often overlooked due to their later ‘Invincible’ season. The clubs tremendous winning streak was brought to an end in March 1888 at the Kennington Oval, where they were beaten 2-1 by West Brom in the FA Cup Final. There would be no slip-ups the following season though, in the first ever Football League season. It was during the inaugural 1888/89 campaign that Goodall became British football’s first real superstar. He scored 21 league goals in 21 league games, adding a further two in the FA Cup, missing only one game all season, as Preston went unbeaten for an entire campaign in both the league and cup.
He finished the season as top goalscorer, and the Football League had its first marksman. Preston finished the season with 18 wins and 4 draws from 22 games in the league and 5 wins from 5 in the FA Cup. They had a points tally of 40 and a goal difference of +59, emphatically seeing off second place Aston Villa, who finished the season with 29 points to their name and a goal difference of +18. It was also during the 1888/89 season that Goodall won his first cap for England, a 5-1 victory over Wales.
Now the biggest name in British football, it was a major shock when John, along with brother Archie, transferred from Preston to Derby in May 1889. In what was in many ways one of the first ‘undisclosed’ football deals, the details of the brothers contracts were kept well under wraps, although it was fairly common knowledge that as part of the agreement they became the tenants of The Plough pub of London Road, Derby.
Goodall spent the next eleven seasons at Derby, although he did not win a trophy with the club, he was still the central figure in what is considered one of the clubs golden eras. He arrived at a team who had finished 10th, 4 points off the bottom of the league. In his eleven seasons with the club, Derby’s league finishes read; 7th, 11th, 10th, 13th, 3rd, 15th, 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 9th, 6th. Alongside their three top 3 league finishes came three strong cup campaigns, reaching two semi-finals and one final. He was the club’s top scorer in three seasons and set a record which has been matched but still never beaten of scoring in six consecutive games for the club.
Nicknamed ‘Honest John’ and ‘Johnny Allgood’ for his reputation as an absolute gentleman, Goodall was not as prolific at Derby as he had been earlier in his career. He was still regarded as Derby’s finest player for several years however, and became the first Rams player to represent England. As important as his on-field influence, perhaps, was his mentoring of a young Steve Bloomer. The man now widely considered Derby’s greatest ever player was 15 years old when Goodall joined the club.
“Goodall took the greatest interest in me when I was a kid. He coached me, secured me for Derby County, played with me and never failed to give me valuable hints and advice,” Bloomer said of the England international, “Johnny Goodall was a wonderful footballer, brilliant captain and Nature’s gentleman, but little did I think when all the fuss was made over his arrival from Preston what an influence for good was being brought into my life. I always maintain that no player has ever known as much about football and its methods than this old friend of mine.”
Not only was Goodall a great mentor for the young Bloomer, but also an excellent provider. His passing and footballing intelligence were always regarded as two of Goodall’s finest attributes, and it was alongside Bloomer at Derby that he really put them to use, turning from poacher to provider. And a fine one he was too, Bloomer became the most prolific goal scorer of his generation; still holding the record as Derby’s top scorer and the top flights second highest behind only Jimmy Greaves.
Although he did not leave the club until 1900, Goodall had his Derby testimonial in January 1896, in a game billed as ‘Derby County vs The Gentlemen of England’. Despite some atrocious weather on the day, roughly 5,000 spectators attended the match, raising £277, around two years wages for a top flight player at that time, as Derby ran out 4-3 victors. When Goodall’s time at the Baseball Ground was up, he was 37, but in no mind to stop playing the sport he loved. He signed for New Brighton Tower FC, based in Merseyside.
The club were only four years old and Football League members for only two. Their ambitious owners signed a number of former internationals in a bid to get the team into the First Division, but crowds of 1,000 in an 80,000 capacity stadium saw financial troubles creep in and the team was disbanded in 1901, Goodall played only six times for New Brighton, scoring twice. He moved on to Glossop North End, where he spent the best part of three seasons, all spent in mid table in the Second Division, and Goodall managing 8 goals in 35 games.
Now aged 40, few Football League clubs were still interested in ‘Honest John’ by 1903, so he took up a role as player-manager in the Southern League Division 2 with Watford. In doing so, he became Watford’s first manager, and a successful one too. He won the league and promotion to the Southern League Division 1 in his first season, recording the second invincible season of his career, as the Hornets won 18 and drew 2 of their 20 games that season. He continued to play for Watford until 1907, when he swapped his role as player-manager to simply manager, having notched up 62 appearances for the club, scoring 14 goals.
He left Watford in 1910, having spent 7 years with the club, and took up a post in Northern France with the now defunct RC Roubaix. It was there, aged 47, that Goodall put his boots back on. He spent two years in France, before returning to Britain as player-manager of Welsh side Mardy in the Southern League once more. In 1913, aged 50, Goodall finally hung up his boots, retiring from both playing and management. He retired with a record of 150 goals in 370 games whilst playing in England, and 12 goals in 14 games for England, in an international career spanning 10 years, in which he was England’s joint top scorer in two seasons and also captained England on a number of occasions.
Goodall was a curious character. An absolute gentleman no doubt, and a fine footballer to boot. He had worked as an iron turner during the early parts of his career, until football provided an adequate wage. A hugely talented sportsman, Goodall’s abilities extended beyond football, as he was also a skilled cricketer and an exceptional curler. Whilst playing for Derby he played cricket for Derbyshire, and represented Hertfordshire at county level whilst playing for Watford. A keen angler, golfer, curler and bowler, Goodall was quite the all-round sportsman.
He also had an unusual penchant for domesticated wolves. Goodall often walked them on the pitch during the interval at Deepdale, and was seen walking them around the streets of Watford following his retirement. He never moved back into formal employment after retiring from playing and management, instead tending to an allotment where he grew vegetables for his family. Goodall died on May 20th 1942 in Watford, and was buried in an unmarked grave at Watford North Cemetery.
The second oldest individual on the list of the 100 greatest Football League legends, Goodall’s name is now one scarcely known outside of Preston or Derby. He set no fewer than eight Football League and/or club records or firsts by our counting. Add to that those achievements which cannot be measured by numbers or statistics, such as being the perfect mentor and provider for Steve Bloomer and being one of the first Southern-born players to achieve major success within the game; Goodall certainly deserves his place alongside the likes of Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney and Bobby Charlton on the list of Football League legends.
AdvertisementsThe Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called on the Palestine Liberation Organization and its instittions to confront Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks to Zionist media as well as the PA’s delegation to pay condolences on the death of a so-called “Civil Administration” occupation official in the West Bank.
The PFLP notes that this shameful behavior is continuing, repetitive and ongoing, exhibiting subservience to the structures of the occupation and its mechanisms of repression. These actions cross all of the lines and traditions of the Palestinian people and undermine the Palestinian national liberation movement and its principles and decisions, the most recent being the Palestinian Central Council’s decisions to end security coordination with the occupation.
The Front noted that these actions have met with popular opposition and outrage throughout the Palestinian people. The Palestine Liberation Organization and its institutions must hold the PA president accountable before the Palestinian people.
The Front denounced the disgraceful statements of Abbas concerning the PA searching and surveilling schoolchildren on the pretext of “searching for knives” while Palestinian children face the Zionist war machine daily at the checkpoints and barriers of death, and in the streets of Palestinian cities in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. This is a direct attack on the Palestinian education system, whether universities or elementary and secondary schools, and the stigmatization of the intifada and resistance as “terror.”The 41,911 fans who filed into AT&T Park on June 8 got lucky. It was a perfect, 74-degree Sunday afternoon (instead of the notoriously fickle San Francisco weather), and the sky was filled with glorious sunshine. Those in attendance got a taste of baseball glory, too. The Giants beat the Mets 6-4 that day, making it five wins in a row for Los Gigantes. With that win, they improved to 42-21. A year after stumbling to a 76-86 record, the Giants owned the best record in baseball.
They’ve been terrible ever since. San Francisco has lost 16 of its last 21 games, the worst record for any major league team during that time. After owning a 9.5-game lead in the NL West on June 8, the Giants have given most of it up, clinging to a half-game lead on the Dodgers. You can find all kinds of reasons for that swoon. Injuries forced journeyman Tyler Colvin and light-hitting rookie Joe Panik to take on regular playing time, with predictably bad results. Mike Morse, an early-season terror at the plate, hasn’t hit a lick for the past month. And closer Sergio Romo turned into a piñata, becoming former closer Sergio Romo in the process.
Few could have predicted such a sharp and sudden drop. But one indicator did suggest that regression was coming, sooner or later: cluster luck.
In a late-May Grantland column, I wrote about the concept of cluster luck as a way to explain how a series of good (or bad) events coming one after another can propel or punish a team:
Joe Peta, a former Wall Street trader, presented cluster luck in his book, Trading Bases. Essentially, the concept boils down to this: When a team’s batters cluster hits together to score more runs and a team’s pitchers spread hits apart to allow fewer runs, that’s cluster luck. Say a team tallies nine singles in one game. If all of those singles occur in the same inning, the team would likely score seven runs; if each single occurs in a different inning, however, it’d likely mean a shutout.
You’ll sometimes hear a broadcaster talk about a team that scores in bunches, or a pitcher who knows how to scatter hits. But those streaks don’t tend to last very long, since these aren’t sustainable skills for most teams, or players. So when a team has high cluster luck numbers, it usually means its luck isn’t going to last long. Losses are likely around the corner.
Sports analyst Ed Feng, proprietor of ThePowerRank.com, calculates cluster luck by using the Base Runs formula to compare actual runs scored and runs allowed to expected runs scored and runs allowed. When that Grantland article ran just over a month ago, Feng had found that the 32-19 Giants ranked second in the majors in cluster luck. And while Giants hitters had bunched hits together about as well as an average team’s hitters would, their pitchers had been astoundingly fortunate, giving up 22 fewer runs than you’d expect over their first 51 games.
On Wednesday, Feng updated his cluster luck rankings. Below is the ranking of the 30 teams from luckiest to unluckiest:
Whatever luck the Giants had earlier in the season, these latest numbers show that their good fortune has almost completely evaporated. A lot of that pullback falls on Romo. From May 29 to June 28, the team’s erstwhile closer allowed 12 hits in nine and two-thirds innings — subpar numbers for a closer, but not necessarily fatal ones, assuming those hits were spread out. They were not. Romo worked four straight perfect innings from June 4 through June 12, with all 12 of those hits coming in just six appearances. All told, opponents blasted him for 10 runs in those six appearances, netting a 16.88 ERA. The biggest beating came on June 13, when the Colorado Rockies clobbered him for four hits, drew a walk and tallied five runs in just one-third of an inning.
The Giants are a talented team, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them contend for the NL West title, and maybe even make a run at the World Series. They have a young ace in Madison Bumgarner, Tim Hudson enjoying a late-career revival, Tim Lincecum suddenly pitching masterfully, All-Stars Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval heating up after lousy starts, excellent first baseman Brandon Belt due back soon after a long stint on the disabled list, and a general manager who’s made lots of aggressive trades in his 18 years at the helm. The cluster luck regression has come, yet they’re still hanging onto first place.
We could see more teams experience cluster luck pullbacks, starting with Seattle. The Mariners boast plenty of front-line talent themselves, with Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma at the top of the rotation. Robinson Cano is performing about as well as a guy with six home runs can, and 23-year-old Mike Zunino is emerging as a top defensive catcher and dangerous power hitter. Underrated third baseman Kyle Seager is putting up career-best numbers, and the bullpen is leading the American League both in ERA and in fielding-independent metrics. This is also a team with lots of holes, one that has 36-year-old banjo hitter Endy Chavez leading off every day, to name only the most glaring problem. Yet the Mariners are on fire, having won four in a row, 10 of their last 12, and 27 of their last 43 games.
That’s what happens when your hitters bunch together hits better than any other team. Through Tuesday, the Mariners had scored 31 more runs than you’d expect from a club with average hit distribution. That Tuesday game offered a Ph.D.-level course in what happens when your hitters click at the same time. Coming into the sixth inning, Seattle clung to a narrow 3-1 lead. The first two batters of the inning reached on a walk and an infield single, followed by two straight groundouts by the lineup’s 1-2 hitters. Then, an outburst. Cano doubled. Seager doubled. Logan Morrison doubled. Zunino doubled. Michael Saunders singled. Finally, Ackley capped the monster inning with a sixth straight Mariners hit, this one an RBI single. All told, Seattle scored seven runs on seven hits in the sixth, an incredibly tough feat to pull off without the benefit of a single homer.
None of this is meant to suggest that the Mariners will fall into an immediate slump, the way the Giants did. They have the best pitcher in the American League, and a supporting cast that’s getting increasing contributions from younger players. After sweeping the lowly Astros, they now play seven straight against the struggling White Sox and Twins. And they recently called up top pitching prospect Taijuan Walker from the minors, a far better fifth starter than Erasmo Ramirez, Brandon Maurer or others Seattle might have considered.
Still, the Ms probably shouldn’t settle for the roster they have now. They already opened the vault for Robinson Cano last winter, and they’ve got the ample TV revenue they’ll need to go after other big talents. The cluster luck beast is lurking in the shadows, and the trade deadline is coming up. Might as well try to fight back.A high-ranking figure in the Islamic State’s self-declared police force was found beheaded in eastern Syria with a cigarette placed in his mouth and a message written on his body, the British-based the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports.
The body of the man, an Egyptian known as the deputy “al- Hesbah emir” in a province in Syria, was found with a message written on it: “O Sheikh this is munkar (hateful and evil thing).”
The body was found near a power plant in the city of al- Mayadin, the human rights group reported.
“We do not know whether Islamic State killed him or whether it was local people or other fighters,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.
Meanwhile, a suicide blast targeting Iraqi security forces and subsequent clashes with Islamic State extremists on Tuesday killed at least 23 troops and pro-government Sunni fighters in the country’s embattled western province of Anbar, officials said.
The day’s heavy toll for the Iraqi forces came as they struggle in battles against the Islamic State group and try to claw back territory lost to the extremists during the militants’ blitz last year. Iraq’s prime minister vowed on Tuesday to dislodge IS militants from all areas under their control.
Police officials said a suicide bomber first struck a gathering of pro-government Sunni fighters near the town of al-Baghdadi, about 180 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, in the morning hours.
Soon after, IS militants attacked nearby army and police positions, setting off hours-long clashes. Police and hospital officials said 23 were killed and 28 were wounded in all on the government side. They did not give the death toll on the militants’ side, saying only that the attackers “sustained some casualties” and declining to provide further details. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi pledged that Iraq’s forces would retake all areas that fell to IS during last summer’s stunning blitz.
“We will emerge as victorious and the day our lands are liberated is nearing,” al-Abadi told a group of newly-graduated army officers, speaking at the Military Academy as Iraq marked Army Day. “Our goal … is that peace and prosperity prevail in Iraq and end this dark period in Iraqi history.”
A parade was also staged to mark the day, complete with jet fighters, helicopters and transport planes flying overhead.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State group announced killing eight men in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad for allegedly co-operating with government forces and airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militant group.
The group posted photographs showing eight blindfolded and bearded men in orange jumpsuits, their hands tied behind their backs. Five were identified as police officers and two as informants, but no information was provided on the eighth victim. The photos show the men by a riverbank next to masked gunmen, under what looks like a bridge. They are on their knees as the gunmen appear to be readying to shoot them. Other photos show bloodied bodies of seven of the men, lying on the ground.
The Islamic State group provided no details on the purported killings. The authenticity of the photos could not be independently verified but they were posted late Monday on a Twitter account frequently used by the militant group.
However, a provincial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing for his safety, offered a different account on the photos, saying Tuesday that the men depicted in the images were army officers who had abandoned the military before the militants’ takeover of their area last year. The official said the men did not co-operate with Iraqi government forces.
The Salahuddin provincial capital, Tikrit, and other nearby towns have been in militant hands since June, when the Islamic State group expanded with lightning speed across Sunni-dominated regions of northern and western Iraq as government forces collapsed.
Since then, the IS group has declared a self-styled caliphate over about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria. But there has been growing resentment among some residents fueled by the militant group’s enforcement of its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, economic stagnation and a lack of public services.
Seeking to squash any potential uprising, the militants have started killing policemen and soldiers living in areas of Iraq under their control — especially after the U.S.-led coalition air campaign began supporting ground offensives by Iraqi government forces, Kurdish fighters and Shiite militias.Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front has freed several members of a US-trained rebel force that it kidnapped two weeks ago, the Western-backed unit said in a statement.
In a statement circulating on social media, Division 30 said seven of its members had been freed by Al-Nusra after being captured in late July.
“Seven Division 30 fighters who were being held by the brothers in Al-Nusra Front have been freed,” the statement stamped by the unit said.
“We welcome this noble initiative and urge the brothers of Al-Nusra and hope that they will release in the coming hours the group’s commander and other fighters,” the statement continued.
It did not specify where the releases took place. All the kidnaps occurred in northern Syria.
Division 30 is among the units receiving training as part of a U.S.-led programme operating from Turkey that is intended to create a force to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.
But after the first 54 members of the force entered Syria in July, 13 were kidnapped by Al-Nusra, including a commander, and at least three more were killed in clashes with the jihadist group.
Al-Nusra accused the captured fighters of serving U.S. interests and claimed responsibility for the kidnap in a video purporting to show some of the detained forces.
Last Update: Sunday, 16 August 2015 KSA 15:01 - GMT 12:01Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
The process wasn't as smooth as a lot of folks would have preferred, and the end result is surely going to sting fans who were expecting a bigger splash. But, according to NFL Media's Ian Rapoport, Joe Barry will be the new defensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins.
I'm here to tell you not to jump to conclusions about that man or his resume, but instead to wonder about the bad habits that front office has developed.
I don't believe it's fair to assume that Barry isn't the right man for this job, because Barry has a fairly impressive track record and a good reputation.
I know what some of you are thinking. But Brad, he was the Detroit Lions defensive coordinator when Detroit went 0-16 in 2008, giving up what at the time were the second-highest point and yardage totals in NFL history!
Yeah, and Rod Marinelli was that team's head coach—the same Rod Marinelli who is being praised for the magic he's used to make the Dallas Cowboys defense look half-decent and who received what we assume to be a very lucrative new contract last week to stay in Dallas despite attracting interest elsewhere.
Point is, sometimes the coaches can only do so much to save the unsavable. Consider that a 22-year-old rookie, Cliff Avril, was probably the best player on that horrible defense. Beyond that, it was garbage. It was the last time we'd see guys like Dwight Smith, Dewayne White, Kalvin Pearson, Jared DeVries, Brian Kelly and Daniel Bullocks in starting roles. Their most prominent players were Paris Lenon, Ernie Sims and Leigh freakin' Bodden.
That 0-16 season is on Matt Millen, not Marinelli or Barry.
Anyway, from there, Barry went to Tampa Bay to work under longtime former colleague Raheem Morris. There, as linebackers coach, he got solid seasons out of Geno Hayes, Quincy Black and Barrett Ruud. That defense was by no means good, but the linebacking corps was their strongest point.
He then jumped to USC to work under former mentor Monte Kiffin before coming back to the NFL to run the Chargers linebacking corps the past four years.
For what it's worth, three of the four highest-rated defenders on the team from Pro Football Focus in 2011 were linebackers Antwan Barnes, Shaun Phillips and Donald Butler. Barry's unit has been torn apart by injuries and a lack of top-end talent the last few years, but he's still managed to get the most out of veterans Shaun Phillips, Jarret Johnson and Dwight Freeney.
But this move is still quite concerning, mainly because it appears this was a deal made by newly promoted team President Bruce Allen, rather than new general manager Scot McCloughan.
It's not a great sign that Allen continues to go back to that same old Tampa Bay well that gave him head coach Jay Gruden, offensive coordinator Sean McVay, secondary coach Raheem Morris and defenders E.J. Biggers, Adam Hayward and Tanard Jackson.
The whole thing has me wondering once again who's calling what shots, which might not bode well. If indeed McCloughan has the final say on personnel, he should be involved in who will be designing and implementing the schemes for the players he's signing.
Maybe McCloughan signed off on this, but it's hard to imagine he came into town and listed his top two defensive coordinator candidates as Morris and Barry, both of whom have prior relationships only with Allen.
So once again, I'm not concerned that Barry is underqualified. If the Redskins exhausted their options and came to a consensus that he was their guy, I wouldn't blame them for making this hire. Sometimes you fall in love with a candidate, even if on the surface he doesn't appear to be the most qualified.
But the process is just...too familiar.
Wade Phillips, who has had a top-10 defense in seven of his last eight seasons as a coach, seemed like a hell of a candidate. Phillips runs a 3-4 and has a reputation for getting immediate results:
Under Phillips in 1989, the Broncos had the league's top-rated defense. In 1988, before he arrived, they were ranked 20th.
Between 1994 and 1995, the Bills rose from 22nd to 12th in that area. The major difference? Phillips, who was hired prior to the '95 season.
In 2001, the Falcons defense ranked 24th in points allowed. Phillips came on board in 2002 and they shot up to eighth in that category.
The Chargers went from 31st in 2003 to 11th in Phillips' first year, 2004.
In their first year under Phillips, the Cowboys shot up from 20th to 13th in terms of points allowed.
The year before he arrived in Houston, the Texans ranked 29th in the league in points allowed and 30th in yards allowed. And in his first season, they finished fourth and second, respectively.
Phillips will be 68 this year, and it's fair to consider that. But that's the only reason—other than prior relationships—why I could imagine anyone picking Barry or Morris or even Vic Fangio over him.
At some point, you have to wonder if Allen has become over-infatuated with his former organization. ESPN's John Keim elaborates on that borderline obsession with familiarity:
During his last news conference, coach Jay Gruden said, in essence, that if you always do what you've always done you always get what you've always got. Would promoting Morris fall under this category? Unless they viewed Jim Haslett as the sole reason for failure (just as the organization had blamed Mike Shanahan for many things after last season. Turns out they were a bit wrong.). Along the same lines, does always hiring people with a connection to you fall under this category as well? It's not as if that Tampa group was a dynasty, you know? (The Bucs had top-10 defenses in total points and yards in six of seven seasons between 2002-08 when they went a combined 57-55; they were 45-51 in Allen's tenure, which began in 2003).
During his six years with the Buccaneers, Barry got great results from a gifted group of linebackers while surrounded by several notably great defensive minds. That was enough to earn him a defensive coordinator gig in Detroit, where you could argue he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since then, he's padded his resume enough to earn another shot, which is why this very well could work out.
But if it doesn't, the Redskins will rightly deserve criticism for doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
Also known as insanity.
Brad Gagnon has covered the NFC East for Bleacher Report since 2012.
Follow @Brad_Gagnon(CBS) — A Blue Island police officer used a stun gun on the victim of a hit-and-run crash, and the victim says the incident changed his life forever.
CBS 2’s Marissa Bailey reports on allegations of excessive force
Donald Flores needed help after a June 2012 hit-and-run incident. Instead, he says, police caused him further injury.
“I just wanted to go home to basically die, where I felt more at peace,” Flores says
Dazed and covered in blood, he was walking home when he came upon Blue Island Police who had been called to do a well-being check on him.
“The first two officers, they did the right thing,” Flores says.
But then he encountered Sgt. Schultz. Flores says the sergeant screamed at him, “`Are you out of your effin’ mind? You’re bleeding.’”
Stunned, Flores says he yelled back and then it escalated. When the sergeant threatened to use a stun gun on him, Flores said he implored him not to because he has an electronic spinal device to treat a previous injury to his hand.
When the stun gun was used, Flores says it caused a seizure. “When I was seizing they told me, ‘Stop it. Quit resisting,’” he says.
The attorney for Blue Island, Patrick Ward, tells a different story. He says Flores was the aggressor and shoved the sergeant with two hands, causing him to stumble backward.
He says Flores didn’t tell officers about the electronic device until after the stun gun was used.
“Their actions were justified,” Ward says.
Flores’ attorney, Tim Fiscella, says his client was incapable of harming anyone because he had the disability and he had been injured from the crash that night.
There are also questions about how the police department handled this case. When Bailey asked Ward what kind of internal investigation was done after the incident, he answered: “There was no additional investigation.”
CBS 2 called a handful of other police departments, including Chicago, and each requires an internal review after the use of a stun gun, to make sure it is justified.
Sources tell CBS 2 Blue Island police did not follow their own policy of documenting the use of force — a step that would’ve triggered an internal investigation. Ward did not return CBS 2’s calls about this detail.
On the night of the incident, police officers arrested and charged Flores with resisting arrest, battery and assault, but Flores was cleared of all charges. He is now suing the Blue Island Police Department and is hoping they re-examine their stun-gun policies.
Flores says this whole experience has scarred him. “I break down a lot,” he says.Before attempting to implement this spec, please contact the CSSWG at www-style@w3.org.
This spec is not yet ready for implementation. It exists in this repository to record the ideas and promote discussion.
This module contains the features of CSS relating to the borders and backgrounds of boxes on the page. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Level 3. [CSS3BG] The main extensions compared to level 3 are shaping ( corner-shape ) and clipping borders ( border-clip ), logical background positions ( background-position ), and the extend ability of background-repeat.
This document is governed by the 1 February 2018 W3C Process Document.
This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
This document was produced by the CSS Working Group.
GitHub Issues are preferred for discussion of this specification. When filing an issue, please put the text “css-backgrounds” in the title, preferably like this: “[css-backgrounds] …summary of comment… ”. All issues and comments are archived, and there is also a historical archive.
This is a public copy of the editors’ draft. It is provided for discussion only and may change at any moment. Its publication here does not imply endorsement of its contents by W3C. Don’t cite this document other than as work in progress.
1. Introduction
This module is currently maintained as a diff against Level 3. We will fold in the text once it’s all formatted up and in CR again, as this will reduce the effort of keeping them in sync (source diffs will be accurate in reflecting the differences).
2. Backgrounds
2.1. Background Positioning: the background-position shorthand property
See [CSS3BG] for definition.
Where
Values have the following meanings:
One value If only one value is given, and that value is start or end, then the keyword is duplicated; otherwise the second keyword defaults to center. The resulting value is treated as a two-component value. More than one value If the value contains a start or end keyword, then the shorthand sets background-position-inline and background-position-block to the specified values. Otherwise the shorthand sets background-position-x and background-position-y to the specified values. Specify the value assignment in more detail. Should expand just like Level 3.
Specify what happens to set of properties that are not set. Maybe they’re just not set?
This section is still being worked out. The tricky thing is making all the start/end keywords work sanely.
Name: background-position-x Value: [ center | [ left | right | x-start | x-end ]? <length-percentage>? ]# Initial: left Applies to: all elements Inherited: no Percentages: refer to width of background positioning area minus width of background image Computed value: A list, each item consisting of: an offset given as a combination of an absolute length and a percentage, plus an origin keyword Canonical order: per grammar Animation type: discrete
This property specifies the background position’s horizontal component. An omitted origin keyword is assumed to be left.
Name: background-position-y Value: [ center | [ top | bottom | y-start | y-end ]? <length-percentage>? ]# Initial: left Applies to: all elements Inherited: no Percentages: refer to height of background positioning area minus height of background image Computed value: A list, each item consisting of: an offset given as a combination of an absolute length and a percentage, plus an origin keyword Canonical order: per grammar Animation type: discrete
This property specifies the background position’s vertical component. An omitted origin keyword is assumed to be top.
Name: background-position-inline Value: [ center | [ start | end ]? <length-percentage>? ]# Initial: not applicable (initial value comes from physical property) Applies to: all elements Inherited: no Percentages: refer to inline-size of background positioning area minus inline-size of background image Computed value: A list, each item consisting of: an offset given as a combination of an absolute length and a percentage, plus an origin keyword Canonical order: per grammar Animation type: discrete
This property specifies the background position’s inline-axis component. An omitted origin keyword is assumed to be start.
Name: background-position-block Value: [ center | [ start | end ]? <length-percentage>? ]# Initial: not applicable (initial value comes from physical property) Applies to: all elements Inherited: no Percentages: refer to size of background positioning area minus size of background image Computed value: A list, each item consisting of: an offset given as a combination of an absolute length and a percentage, plus an origin keyword Canonical order: per grammar Animation type: discrete
This property specifies the background position’s block-axis component. An omitted origin keyword is assumed to be start.
Determines the background painting area, which determines the area within which the background is painted. The syntax of the property is given with
Or should this be defining the -webkit-background-clip property, saying that all the values are identical, with this additional text value?
<box> The background is painted within (clipped to) the specified box of the element. text The background is painted within (clipped to) the intersection of the border box and the geometry of the text in the element and its in-flow and floated descendants. border The background is clipped to the area painted by the border, taking border-width and border-style into account but ignoring any transparency introduced by border-color.
3. Borders
These properties set the foreground color of the border specified by the border-style properties. If a list of values is provided, the border is split into equal width bands of each color along the direction of the side the border is applied on (i.e. split horizontally on left and right borders and vertically on top and bottom borders), starting outwards.
When interpolating between borders with the same number of colors, interpolation is performed individually per color band as color. Interpolation between borders with different numbers of colors is discrete.
border-color is a shorthand for the four border-*-color properties |
time.
Ghost In The Shell follows Major, a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.
Starring Scarlett Johannsson as Major Killian, and also featuring Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche and Michael Pitt, Ghost In The Shell arrives in U.S. and UK cinemas March 31. See the debut trailer below:
AdvertisementsRazer streams PC games to your TV with Android-powered Forge TV
By Killian Bell
Forget the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One — wouldn’t you rather play your PC games in your living room? Razer’s new Android-powered Forge TV allows you to do just that, thanks to a new technology called Cortex: Stream, which beams games from your PC to your television.
Forge TV looks just like an Apple TV — it’s a tiny little set-top box that doesn’t look too exciting at first glance. Open it up, however, and you’ll find a micro-console capable of “gaming-grade graphics” that will allow you to play PC games as well as those written for Android on any TV with an HDMI connection.
The device is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor clocked at 2.5GHz, with Adreno 420 graphics and 2GB of RAM. It has 16GB of storage, Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11ac connectivity, as well as HDMI, Ethernet, and USB 3.0 ports.
Forge TV runs Google’s new Android TV platform, which means you can also use it to watch content from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and a whole bunch of other services. You can also send music and videos to it from your smartphone and tablet (it’s Cast-compatible), and use apps like Plex. This isn’t the reason why you buy a Forge TV, though.
The device’s biggest selling point is Razer’s Cortex: Stream technology, which works a lot like Steam In-Home streaming; you install the accompanying software on your PC, which allows Forge TV to access your game library and use your computer’s hardware. Your PC is still doing all the work, then, but Forge TV is streaming the visuals to your TV.
Cortex: Stream works even when your TV and your PC are in different rooms — so long as they’re connected to the same network — and it automatically adjusts your resolution to suit your connection, so you’ll always get good performance. Of course, you’ll also need something with which to control your games — and Razer has that covered, too.
There are two options: One is the new Serval wireless controller, which is a lot like an Xbox One gamepad. Up to four of them can be connected to a Forge TV at any time — allowing for local multiplayer gaming. You can also pair Serval itself to four different devices — your PC, your Forge TV, and your tablet — and quickly switch between them as and when you want to.
The other option, which will no doubt better suit PC gamers, is Turret, a wireless “lapboard.” It’s essentially a keyboard with a connected mousepad that lets you use the included gaming mouse with 3500 DPI sensor on your lap while you kick back on the couch.
Forge TV is tentatively scheduled to go on sale in the U.S. this quarter, but we won’t see Cortex: Stream until the second quarter of this year — and it will initially come out in beta. Forge TV will cost $79 on its own or $149 with an included Serval controller, while the Turrent lapboard is priced at $129.The teenagers who took part in Norway's ruling party youth camp in the island of Utoya met with Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and demanded he recognize Palestine on Wednesday, two days before the deadly terror attack which left many of them dead.
Gahr Stoere told the youths that the Palestinians deserve a country of their own and that the occupation must end, Norwegian website Politisk reported. Several of the youths waved signs reading: "Boycott Israel."
Receive Ynetnews updates directly to your desktop
Earlier this week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Norway and was told that Oslo will recognize Palestine, but not just yet.
Ruling party youth camp prior to attack
The Norwegian FM told the youths Oslo is waiting for the official Palestinian proposal to be submitted to the UN in September.
Eskil Pedersen, leader of the Workers' Youth League said that the movement endorses a financial embargo on Israel.
He said that they will pursue a more active policy in the Middle East and expressed support for the resumption of peace talks. Gahr Stoere agreed, but said a boycott was not the way, explaining it will turn the dialogue into a monologue.
Initial information was received via Red Mail"Some pilots program an alternate flight plan in the event of an emergency," cautioned Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator and NBC News analyst.
"We don't know if this was an alternate plan to go back to Kuala Lumpur or if this was to take the plane from some place other than Beijing," the doomed flight's intended destination, Feith said.
Malaysian military radar last detected Flight 370 in the northern mouth of the Strait of Malacca, south of Phuket Island, Thailand, and west of the Malaysian peninsula — hundreds of miles off course.
Authorities said for the first time Saturday that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 veered sharply off its flight plan because of "deliberate action by someone on the plane."
(Read more: Timeline of Flight MH370)
The course of the flight was changed by entering navigational instructions into the Flight Management System (FMS), the cockpit computer that directs the plane along a flight plan chosen by pilots.An epic journey across sweeping mountains, sparkling oceans and hounded by ferocious beasts is what Naherna, the last princess of Odgo finds herself entangled in. A simple errand turns into a quest to save her world and she finds herself surrounded by deception and betrayal.
“Times like this you can’t trust a friend let alone a stranger!”
On the treacherous road to uncovering the truth Naherna is confronted with demons from her past. Forced to choose between loyalty and truth, many will falter. Nothing is what it seems and with Varga on the brink of extinction, time is running out.
An evil Malefic has gripped the land of the seven suns in his pincers of hate and is slowly crushing them. In the battle of Gods and demons, it is the Vargans who are sacrificed. Will Naherna rewrite the code that has always been? Will Naherna and her companions find a way to save Varga or will they too fall as heroes often do? Will they turn into myth or will they fulfill the prophecy of redemption?
Will the combined might of a high priestess, a powerful wizard and Arcanilius himself be enough? Or will they fail like the others before them?
Every chapter introduces the reader to the various races of this exotic planet, Vargans, Elves, and Galshers. Varga is on the precipice of a world war, a war that threatens to engulf the entire planet and decimate its exotic life.
Varga is a magical planet. Scribes, Wizards, Warlocks and their nemesis are able to conjure magic and exploit the five elements: magic, air, water, fire, and Varga itself. But even in a world where magic abounds, there are tinkerers like Old Man Cogs, who know and believe that long after the magic disappears, his gadgets and his knowledge will survive the test of time.
Several prophecies tell of the coming of the Malefic and allude to the birth of a savior. But in a world where everyone is forced to choose sides based on their beliefs and history, who will awaken and question the very foundation of Varga? History is often written by the victors and the truth gets lost in myths and fables. Are prophecies to be trusted?
It is not easy to question what one has believed their entire life. Who do you trust? Whom do you believe? "Wisdom is the ability to see beyond what is visible, and knowledge is knowing everything that is known"
What of those who have spent their entire life seeking revenge? They have spent their waking life hating their nemesis and seeking them out. When they finally have their chance, with their enemy at their feet, do they strike? Can that final thrust which stops their enemy's heart beating quench their lifelong thirst for revenge and justice?
What makes a brother so loved and admired in his youth, turn arch enemy in his prime? Isn't wisdom and knowledge the fruits of age and experience? So what drives people to hate and bloodshed.
Let us journey to the Pleiades system, where the seven suns await us. Come, discover the world of Varga, become a part of it and uncover the TruthSaddest Porsche 911 Ever Sparks Hilarious Comments
Talk a about a big case of bad luck. MBWorld forum member unagil1 managed to snag some photos of a rather unfortunate Porsche 911 Turbo that has been blocked and stripped of its wheels. Being the entertaining bunch you guys are, this sad Porsche has sparked quite a funny collection of comments. From discussions about suspension droop, commentary on the impeccable parking job, and even talk about the sloppy work by the thieves who left the outrageously expensive PCCB brake kit still on the car.
I implore everyone of you to hit the link to the original thread, if for no other reason than reading the collection of funny responses.
On a more serious note, it is sad to see something happen to a fellow enthusiast, but it is a part of the world. So let’s take a second to remember the sadly stolen wheels, and the paint that is surely damaged by those paving bricks, and then we can discuss how anyone would go through all that effort to get those wheels, and not spend the time to pull the four more bolts needed on each corner to swipe those brakes.An antibody that blocks a component of a key signaling pathway in the respiratory airways could help the immune system rid the body of the influenza virus, a new study suggests. The findings, from a team at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, not only offer a new approach to treating the flu, but also add new information about how the immune system responds to respiratory viral infections.
In this new work, published in the December issue of the Journal of Virology and highlighted in the journal Spotlight section, researchers examined the role a protein called programmed cell death receptor (PD-1) plays in the immune response to influenza virus. PD-1 is known to inhibit the function of T cells, the immune system’s first line of defense against intracellular pathogens. While scientists have looked intently at PD-1 activity in chronic viral infections such as hepatitis and HIV, its involvement in acute infections was thought by many to be minor.
Emilio Flaño, PhD, principal investigator in the Center for Vaccines and Immunity, disagreed. Several small studies in his lab had raised the possibility that PD-1 and its associated ligand PDL-1 were actually very important to the immune response to acute infection.
The researchers’ earlier studies had shown that when PD-1 protein was expressed, but its ligand PDL-1 was not, the protein couldn’t bind to T cells to inhibit the immune response. So, for this study, the scientists treated mice infected with influenza virus with an antibody that blocks the activity of PDL-1. Viral levels began to drop within three days of treatment with the PDL-1 antibody, which was administered intranasally. At day five, the viral levels were undetectable.
“The PDL-1 blockade is not directly acting on the virus,” Dr. Flaño says. “It is acting on the T cells, improving their function so that the immune system can fight the virus.”
When they examined the PD-1/PDL-1 response to influenza virus infection in human cell cultures, the scientists discovered that the activity of the protein and its ligand mimicked what they had seen in their mouse models. The findings from this study, coupled with the human tissue observations in the lab, suggest that an aerosolized version of the antibody, administered intranasally, could help the body clear the influenza virus.
“Sometimes it’s better to enhance our own defenses and improve how they work rather than trying to target the virus,” Dr. Flaño says.
Scientists have eyed a PD-1/PDL-1 blockade as a way to treat hepatitis, HIV and other persistent viral infections, but their efforts have so far yielded mixed results in humans. Using the blockade to boost immune response against influenza is a simpler task because the infection is localized to the airways, Dr. Flaño hypothesizes.
Dr. Flaño and colleagues were also interested in how epithelial cells in the airways—the main targets of the influenza virus—respond to the attack and how their reaction might influence the immune system over the course of an infection.
“The original view has been that epithelial cells aren’t all that important, but we are trying to change that, says Dr. Flaño, who also is an associate professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. “The epithelial cells help orchestrate all the subsequent immune response in the body, and I truly believe that what they do at the onset of infection will determine what happens one week or 10 days later, when the immune system is responding at full speed.”
Full citation:
McNally B, Ye F, Willette M, Flaño E. Local blockade of epithelial PDL-1 in the airways enhances T cell function and viral clearance during influenza virus infection. Journal of Virology. 2013 Dec, 87(23):12916-24. Epub 2013 Sep 25.A few years ago, Andrew Hacker, the political scientist, wrote an Op-Ed for the Times titled “Is Algebra Necessary?,” in which he proposed eliminating mandatory high-school math. “Think of math as a huge boulder we make everyone pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves,” he wrote. Although some of the article’s readers suspected Hacker of satire, he was as serious as calculus, and has extended his argument in a book called “The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions.” Recently, the National Museum of Mathematics, on East Twenty-sixth Street, invited Hacker to defend his assertions in a public debate with James Tanton, the mathematician at large of the Mathematical Association of America, and an educator and consultant.
“I may be the only non-mathematician in the house,” Hacker said in opening, a remark that was met with stony silence. (He was off by a count of one: also present was a reporter who cannot pretend to objectivity, and who admits to weeping with frustration over her fifth grader’s math homework.) Hacker outlined his case: mastery of the high-school-math sequence—algebra, geometry, calculus—is unnecessary for most students, and by making math a requirement for graduation and college entrance, the U.S. educational system sets up for failure millions whose talents might lie elsewhere. “Colleges mindlessly require mathematics of everybody, even if you are going to major in poetry, modern dance, or interior design,” he said.
Hacker, who has taught at Queens College for almost forty-five years, considered some of the arguments put forward by the math lobby—for example, that math sharpens the mind. “I agree that really doing well at it sharpens your mind for dealing with mathematics. But there is no evidence whatever that mastering mathematics makes you agile and adept in other fields,” he said. Hacker cited the cautionary example of Paul Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense and an architect of the Iraq War: “He was a math major, and his father was a math professor.” Instead, he suggested, schools should offer classes in arithmetic numeracy, insuring that students master the ability to read a corporate report or to parse the federal budget. Higher math, Hacker conceded, is one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. “I would really love for everybody to appreciate mathematics—its glories, its goals,” he said. “But this isn’t being done by making people slog through polynomials year after year.”
When Tanton took the floor, he paced, TED-talk-like, and spoke in a rapid-fire Australian accent. “I have never used the quadratic formula in my personal life,” he acknowledged. “I don’t think I have ever used it in my research life. But learning the formula wasn’t the point. It was the story of quadratics. And, from that story, I know I can nut my way from most any problem to do with that subject.” Algebra II, he said, need not be too high a bar to set for most students. “The issue is: How do we teach the subject? Do we teach with beauty and joy and wonder and humanness?” Tanton offered one of his own methods for attaining joy and wonder: as a teacher—in a private school, exempt from state standards—he handed out math quizzes that gave both a problem and its answer, but also provided a large white space for students to show how to get from one to the other.
There were a few questions from the audience. A middle-school teacher asked how she might add joy to the curriculum given the demands of the Common Core standards. “Write to your congressman,” Hacker suggested. A high-school teacher from the South Bronx asked whether eliminating mandatory math would only exacerbate the achievement gap. Tanton agreed that it would. “Where’s the line?” he asked. “Do we have it that in grade seven, grade eight, people self-identify as ‘I am going into a career that doesn’t need math—therefore, I will stop it when I am twelve’?”
The math-phobic reporter asked Hacker whether he thought math really is harder than other classes that students are required to take. “Unqualifiedly, yes,” he said. “Every other subject is about something. Poetry is about something. Even most modern art is about something.” He looked around, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Math is about nothing,” he went on. “It sounds like ‘Seinfeld.’ Math describes much of the world but is all about itself, and it has the most fantastic conundrums. But it is not about the world.”
Tanton was asked how he would counsel the parent of a grade-school student who found no joy in the math curriculum. “Is it taught with context and relevance and meaning?” he asked, sympathetically. On being assured that it was, and that it nonetheless remained stubbornly joyless, Tanton looked taken aback. “Can you let it go? Just have a break from math?” he suggested. The reporter said that she would do so, and would cite his authority in her very next exculpatory note to the teacher. ♦This is a smooth looking GNOME Shell theme using new features like inset.Wallpaper by Bo0xVn [link] Please avoid a manual install and use the GNOME Tweak Tool, it's much easier.You can use the gnome-shell theme extension for easier switching of themes.Make sure you have user-theme-extension installed. Load the GNOME Tweak Tool and go to Shell Extensions and click the "Use Theme Extension" switch. Now go to "Theme" and click the Shell Theme box and locate your theme zip. Now you can select the theme in the dropdown box. Make sure you selection the right version for the GNOME version you have, otherwise the theme will not show properly.If you run GNOME 3.4, just extract the 3.4 version to ~/.themesGPLGNOME 3.0/3.215th Oct 2011- Added GNOME-Shell 3.2 compatibility7th April 2012- Added GNOME-Shell 3.4 compatibilityWelcome to TV Episode Guides! Here you can keep track of your favorite TV series so that you never miss an episode. We also have reviews, trivia, and links to sites like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon where you can start watching episodes instantly!
View Every Episode of your Favorite Show:
I marathoned through the first season of Community (I love that show). After I finished, I read some fan-blogs that made references I didn’t get. Turns out I had managed to miss an episode (it was “Beginner Pottery”, a modern classic). This motivated me to start an episode guide website that helps people keep track of their favorite tv shows.
Is Your Favorite Show Airing Tonight?
Not sure if a show is airing a new episode tonight? Our episode guides have lists of every episode, as well as their original airdates. If you’re watching a show live, or marathoning it on Netflix, our episode guides will keep you on track. PVR’s can be unreliable (don’t get me started talking about mine!).
Watch Episodes Online Instantly:
Our episode guides contain instant viewing options, where we shows you where you can start watching a series instantly. Whether the series is on Netflix, Vudu, or Amazon Instant Video you can watch your favorite series right away.
Episode Trivia:
Want to know more about Breaking Bad’s bathtub scene? We also feature trivia about certain episodes and seasons that can enhance your enjoyment of the series.On March 9, a very influential geostrategic and ideological adviser of the Putin regime, Aleksandr Dugin, published his game plan for domination of Europe. The plan, which Dugin calls “the Russian Spring,” is presented as one of three scenarios for resolution of the current Ukrainian crisis. The other two, in which the Kremlin blinks in the face of Western pressure, result in thermonuclear war or complete global chaos.
Following is Dugin’s plan for the Russian Spring. (The translation is mine. The original, published in Russian, may be viewed on Dugin’s Facebook page.)
Scenario Russian spring 1. Kiev takes a waiting position, concentrates its troops on the border with the Crimea, and threatens, but takes no direct action. The U.S. strongly pressures Russia, freezing accounts, and actively wages information war, but they and NATO avoid direct clashes. Kiev receives substantial support from the West, but focuses on domestic issues. The border with Russia is closed.
The referendum [in the Crimea on whether to join Russia] passes with minimal problems. The vast majority vote for joining Russia. No country recognizes the referendum except Russia. Russia raises the question of retaliatory actions if it receives Crimea into Russia. Both chambers of the Duma promptly ratify the annexation. Crimea is returned to Russia. Russian forces enter. The West rages strong pressure on Russia. Militants in the North Caucasus and the fifth column in Moscow are activated. Putin is supported by everyone. His popularity among the people climaxes. This helps him cope with internal challenges.
Advertisement
Advertisement
2. In eastern Ukraine, Kiev starts to take tough punitive measures. There is a straight nationalist dictatorship. Individuals attempt to attack Crimea or commit acts of sabotage. They start taking revenge on Russians and the Russian-speaking east and south for the loss of Crimea. This leads to the onset of resistance. The second phase of Ukrainian drama begins: The Battle for New Russia. People wake up at once and quickly. Ukraine establishes a state of emergency, in connection with what is defined as “Muscovite aggression.” The last traces of democracy are abolished. Elections are held in May in wartime.
3. The nationalists arrange a series of terrorist attacks in Russia. In Russia itself, the regime evolves, and starts to clean out the fifth column. 4. In Novorossia, resistance increases and gradually moves to the phase of direct rebellion against the Kiev henchmen. There is a bloody civil war. Russia deploys massive effective support structure; symmetrically the West supports Kiev. At a certain moment, in response to the sabotage in Russia and bloody actions of the nationalists and the repressive apparatus of Kiev against civilians and the east of Ukraine, Russia sends its troops into the east. The West threatens nuclear war. This is the existential moment for Putin. But he cannot stop. Going hard (possibly with heavy losses), Novorossia is liberated. The Left-bank Ukraine is conquered, with its border along the Dnieper. A new government is founded — for example, Ukraine or Novorossia. Or a version of Crimea may be repeated. 5. The Right-bank Ukraine, which does not recognize secession (as Yugoslavia under Milosevic and later Serbia against Kosovo), forms a new de facto Ukraine-2 state. NATO bases are immediately located on its territory, stopping the possibility of Russian move to Kiev. 6. The new rigidly nationalistic Ukrainian government quickly comes to a crisis. Direct clashes begin between ethnic groups (Ruthenians, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, other minorities) and on political grounds (power loss blamed for half the territories of Ukraine). The state weakens. The process of new secessions begins. 7. Russia does not stop there, but carries activity into Europe, acting as the main element of the European Conservative Revolution. Europe starts to crack: Some countries are behind the U.S., but more often begin to listen to Russia. Against the background of the financial crisis, Russia’s position becomes more attractive. Russia takes on the protection of multipolarity, continentalism, and new conservatism (the Fourth Political Theory). 8. In western Ukraine, Ukraine-2, a pro-European (pro-German) political force comes to power that begins to soften anti-Russian policy and moves away from the U.S. 9. Across Europe, the de-Americanization process begins. An autonomous European armed force is created independent of NATO on the basis of the German Armed Forces and the French. 10. A new great Continental Association is formed, as a confederation of Europe and Eurasia, the European Union and the Eurasian Union. Russian, Ukrainians and Europeans are on one side of the barricades, the Americans on the other. American hegemony and dominance of the dollar as well as domination of Atlanticism, liberalism and the financial oligarchy is ended. A new page in world history begins. The Slavs are reunited not against Europe, but with Europe in the framework of a multipolar polycentric world. From Lisbon to Vladivostok.While improving our continuous delivery system we decided to streamline the process for iOS and Android. Since our iOS team enjoyed using fastlane we decided to give it a try for Android as well. If you take a look at the fastlane page you will notice that there are currently only 2 Android tools. Supply and Screengrab, both neat actions to automate uploading your app to Google play. But we wanted to do some more automating. Before you can upload an app to Google Play you need a signed and zip-aligned APK. As most Android developers know building an app ready for uploading to the store can be tedious. There are a few ways to do so.
Android Studio wizard: Build -> Generate Signed APK Running a Gradle task with Gradle setup to sign and zipalign the APK Command-line using jarsigner and zipalign
gym
snapshot
deliver
gym
sign_apk
zipalign
alpha
fastlane alpha
gradle assemble
fastlane action sign_apk
By default it will look for the default unsigned release APK to sign.
The path to the key-store is required and the password to unlock it (Java keystore generated with keytool or a key-store generated with Android Studio)
or a key-store generated with Android Studio) The alias of the key in the store it needs to use and the password to unlock it. (In case the key-pass is not provided it will try to use the store-pass)
Time Stamping Authority is optional and is never used when building a signed APK with Gradle.
It provides a new environment variable with the path to the signed APK.
lane :sign_apk_lane do | options | sign_apk ( alias: "android-fastlane-example", storepass: options [ :storepass ], keystore_path: "${HOME}/keyvault/android.jks", tsa: "http://timestamp.comodoca.com/rfc316", signed_apk_path: options [ :signed_apk_path ], keypass: options [ :keypass ] ) end
Zipalign
zipalign
zipalign
The zipalign command takes an apk_path as input and renames the unaligned apk to *-unaligned.apk
Alpha lane
supply
supply
fastlane_version "1.97.2" default_platform :android platform :android do desc "Alpha release app. Deploy a new version to the Google Play Store - Alpha channel" lane :alpha do | options | gradle ( task: "clean" ) gradle ( task: "assemble" ) sign_apk ( keystore_path: "${HOME}/keyvault/android.jks", alias: "android-fastlane-example", storepass: options [ :storepass ], tsa: "http://timestamp.comodoca.com/rfc316", ) zipalign ( apk_path: " #{ lane_context [ SharedValues :: SIGNED_APK_PATH ] } " ) gradle ( task: "test" ) supply ( track: 'alpha', apk: " #{ lane_context [ SharedValues :: SIGNED_APK_PATH ] } " ) end end
fastlane alpha storepass:'abc123!'
fastlane alpha
Setting up fastlane
fastlane/ations
Sample
Summary
It’s immediately obvious that the first option isn’t suited for a CI environment. That leaves option 2 and 3. If you know some scripting and Gradle, you can write some cool scripts that allow you to avoid checking in the key-store and passwords into version control. But this method requires you to do the Gradle setup for every project you do. The goal was to streamline the process for iOS and Android so let’s take a quick look at how they do it. By just taking a quick look at fastlane you’ll see that most likelywould be used for building,for taking screenshots andfor uploading to the App Store. The equivalent ofwas missing from the tools in fastlane to achieve our goal. In order to solve this I wrote 2 fastlane actionsand. With these two scripts we were able streamline the process. If you want to do arelease to Google Play or iTunes Connect you want to be able to do this by simple triggeringso anyone that needs to be able to do this can do so with ease. For both iOS and Android this needs to build the app, sign it and upload it to the Alpha channel of its store. So let’s take a look at what goes on under the hood. If you create a new Android Gradle project it comes with a few tasks preset for you. Without adding any new tasks you can build an APK by simply running. This will build apks for all the configs and build flavors you have. If we take a quick look at the documentation fastlane provides for sign_apk, you can more or less figure out how it works.For example triggering it from a lane might look like this:This is a much more straightforward action as most of you will probably already be familiar with thecommand. (Beware thecommand was removed from the platform-tools folder and thus the PATH must be set correctly so the zipalign command can be found).Now that we have a signed and zip-aligned APK it’s ready to be uploaded to Google Play with the fastlane action. More information on how to setupcan be found here A Fastfile with an alpha lane for Android could look like this. It cleans the Gradle project, builds, signs and zipaligns the APK, runs tests and uploads it to Google Play Alpha channel.or simple by runningand waiting until fastlane asks for the password. If you want to use fastlane for your Android projects you can find instruction to install fastlane here and how to setup fastlane here If you want to use the scripts discussed in this post simply copy the scripts from fastlane actions to thefolder in your project structure. A sample Android project with the fastlane setup as described above can be found here Although fastlane is not yet equipped with the same tools for Android as it is for iOS, we enjoyed the experience and will continue to work with fastlane for both iOS and Android in the future. This solution suits our needs. There is always room for improvement. Feel free to recommend improvements or make a pull request!What is BASICSploit?
BASICSploit is a primary homebrew entrypoint for the game SmileBASIC on Nintendo 3DS.
Requirements
SmileBASIC version 3.2.1/US. Only this version is supported for now, some others will surely be added later.
A 3DS firmware between 9.0.0 and 11.0.0
A little bit of patience
How to install BASICSploit
First time
Download the latest version of the Homebrew Starter Kit: https://smealum.github.io/ninjhax2/starter.zip Extract it to the root of your SD card. Create a project named BASICSPLOIT in game.
Create a new file named DOWNLOADER.
Write by hand to the previous created file the downloader script corresponding to your version.
Make sure you're connected to the internet and launch the script. It should download all the necessary files and then run the in-game menu.
Once the in-game menu is open, choose the "Download/Update" option to download the hax payload.
Once the payload is downloaded just launch it with the first entry of the menu.
Second time
If you already downloaded the files with the downloader, launch the script named BASICSPLOIT. This should run the in-game menu.
Scripts
You can find here the different scripts for the different versions of the game : --Please select a game version-- 3.2.1
CreditsThe only way to get out of debt is to understand why you’re in debt in the first place.
And the truth is…
You will not save money when you get your next raise. You will not save money when your car is paid off. You will not save money when your kids are supporting themselves someday. And you wouldn’t even save a dime if I handed you $100,000 in cash right now.
How do I know this?
Because saving money has very little to do with the amount of money you have. In fact, you will only start to save money when saving becomes an emotional habit – when you start treating the money you handle everyday differently.
So this is why you are in debt:
You buy miscellaneous crap you don’t need or use. – Stop buying ‘stuff’ on impulse! Avoid the mall! The mall is not a source for entertainment. It’s a source for personal debt. There’s no reason to tease yourself by staring at a bunch of brand new crap you don’t need. And as you know, the novelty of a new purchase wears thin long before the credit card bill arrives.
– Stop buying ‘stuff’ on impulse! Avoid the mall! The mall is not a source for entertainment. It’s a source for personal debt. There’s no reason to tease yourself by staring at a bunch of brand new crap you don’t need. And as you know, the novelty of a new purchase wears thin long before the credit card bill arrives. You use credit to purchase things you can’t afford to buy in cash. – If you can’t pay for it in cash today, don’t buy it today! It’s as simple as that.
– If you can’t pay for it in cash today, don’t buy it today! It’s as simple as that. You think of certain product brands as fashionable status symbols. – A car gets you from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ A purse holds your personal belongings. A pair of sunglasses shades your eyes from the sun. A shirt keeps you warm. If you’re paying premium prices just to get a fashionable brand name labeled on each these products without any regard for how well the products actually serve their practical purpose, you have a problem.
– A car gets you from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ A purse holds your personal belongings. A pair of sunglasses shades your eyes from the sun. A shirt keeps you warm. If you’re paying premium prices just to get a fashionable brand name labeled on each these products without any regard for how well the products actually serve their practical purpose, you have a problem. You buy a brand new car every few years. – See my previous point. A car is a means of transportation to get you from one place to another. If you’re buying a new car every few years even when your old car works fine, you’re likely trying too hard to impress the wrong people… and you’re going broke in the process.
– See my previous point. A car is a means of transportation to get you from one place to another. If you’re buying a new car every few years even when your old car works fine, you’re likely trying too hard to impress the wrong people… and you’re going broke in the process. You buy things you could have borrowed from a friend or rented. – After you bought that DVD, how many times did you actually watch it? Do you really want a 20 inch chainsaw collecting dust in your garage? So you own a pressure washer you only use once every three years? You get the point… borrow and rent when it makes sense.
– After you bought that DVD, how many times did you actually watch it? Do you really want a 20 inch chainsaw collecting dust in your garage? So you own a pressure washer you only use once every three years? You get the point… borrow and rent when it makes sense. You pay retail prices on everything you buy. – If you’re paying retail prices, you’re getting screwed. You can easily save well over $1000 a year on general purchases by waiting for sales and shopping at discount outlets.
– If you’re paying retail prices, you’re getting screwed. You can easily save well over $1000 a year on general purchases by waiting for sales and shopping at discount outlets. You own (or rent) way more house than you need. – When you buy or rent a house that’s bigger than you need, you end up wasting lots of money on larger monthly payments, higher upkeep costs, higher utility bills, and lots of random ‘stuff’ to fill up the extra empty space.
– When you buy or rent a house that’s bigger than you need, you end up wasting lots of money on larger monthly payments, higher upkeep costs, higher utility bills, and lots of random ‘stuff’ to fill up the extra empty space. You don’t follow any sort of formal budgeting plan. – Do you assume that if you wait around and make more money your finances and credit debt will magically resolve themselves? I’m sorry to say, you’re dead wrong! It takes a lot of planning and proactive budgeting to erase a pile of debt and build a nest egg of wealth. So start now!
– Do you assume that if you wait around and make more money your finances and credit debt will magically resolve themselves? I’m sorry to say, you’re dead wrong! It takes a lot of planning and proactive budgeting to erase a pile of debt and build a nest egg of wealth. So start now! You don’t automate 401K |
, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we've been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we're running an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective.
It was my daughter Parker who picked up Stardew Valley first. She's 13, smart, beautiful, furious, funny, clumsy as a newborn giraffe. She loves videogames the way I love videogames, but loves none of the videogames I love — not the shooty ones or the dark ones or the violent ones.
Stardew Valley is something different. The game is essentially a farming simulator — you grow crops and sell them, tend animals and make cheese from their milk or mayonnaise from their eggs. You fish sometimes, talk to the people who live in town, deal with the magical apple monsters who have taken over the town's community center and demand tribute in the form of a hundred small quests. It exists like an indie re-incarnation of Harvest Moon, the game which introduced the world to farming sims in the 1990's, and there's an entire generation of gamers who love it unreservedly just for that — for being a polished new version of something they loved like crazy-go-nuts back in the day — but on the surface, it's a game that doesn't seem to have a lot going on.
It drove me crazy the way Parker played. I would watch from the couch as she wandered aimlessly around her small, cluttered house or doodled around her asymmetrical mess of a farm — her movements a kind of digital Brownian motion born of a hundred distractions. She would water two or three plants, then run off to chase her dog, come back, water a little more, go look at butterflies or just leave. Go off onto the paths that run between her Kawaii Farm and Pelican Town a couple screens away to pick flowers, talk to people or poke through their trash cans.
"Parker," I said to her, frustration putting an edge on my words. "What are you doing?"
And she looked up at me and said, "Just playing. You want to try?"
So I did. I made a farm of my own — Butcher Holler — and the two of us played side-by-side for two in-game years. The core of Stardew Valley's story is simple: You are an office drone, just tappy-tapping away at your computer day after day, year after year until, finally, it all becomes too much. You walk away, get on a bus and travel to the farm that your grandpa left to you years ago in Stardew Valley.
And look, I've had my fair share of cubicles. I know that urge to pack it all up and move on. I took Grandpa's offer seriously. He'd left me a farm, but it was a disaster. And it was up to me to whip it into shape.
So I cleared the land. I tilled the soil. I figured out which seeds had the highest return on investment and planted them in neat rows for easy watering. Parker, meanwhile, tended a tiny patch of strawberries and collected flowers. She went down to the beach and picked up shells, but refused to fish even though it was the most effective method for earning money in the early weeks of the game. She showed me the sewer where the monster lives, and the mines which were full of treasure. She didn't like going down into the mines because she'd freak out whenever something attacked her and, also, she'd lost her sword somewhere, or sold it, or given it away.
'See?' I said. 'Look at that. That's one day's work.'And she scoffed. 'Sure,' she said, "but who loves you?"
So instead, she followed behind the children, Jas and Vincent, and told me how Jas's parents were both dead. How Penny teaches them at the museum because there's no school in Pelican Town and how Alex, the jock, is a lot sadder than he seems because his father was an abusive drunk and his mom died, and now he lives with his grandparents but doesn't like to talk about it. I asked her how she knew all this and she told me, "I talk to them."
In winter nothing grows, so I ground my way through the mines, clearing them level by level, while Parker redecorated her house and made friends with mopey Abigail with the purple hair and a wizard who lived in the forest. Spring came again. My farm was large. The chests in my house were overflowing with gold ore and rubies from the mine. One afternoon I called Parker over to show her how much you can make on a good haul of melons and corn. "See?" I said. "Look at that. That's one day's work."
And she scoffed. "Sure," she said, "but who loves you?"
Relationships in Stardew Valley are expressed in bars full of hearts. I had two with Linus, the homeless guy who lived in a tent on the way to the mines and who I would occasionally give food to. Most of the other people in Pelican Town probably didn't even know my name.
Then Parker loaded up her game. Pulled up her social screen. It was overflowing with hearts. Everyone loved her.
Stardew Valley's story gives you only what you want from it. What you get out of the experience depends heavily on what baggage you're carrying when you first climb on that bus and take the long ride to the coast.
Neither way of playing is right. Neither one is wrong. It's just life, rendered in 16 bits and full of chickens and monsters.
Our games tell two very different stories: Hers is a tiny soap opera full of love, tragedy and sewer monsters; mine a how-to manual on maximizing profit in a small farming community. For me Stardew Valley is a game of control — of small goals and constantly accruing rewards. It is about the comfort of simplicity and repetition, season following season and harvest following harvest. It is not without story the way I play it, but my version of it is a singular story, about a man who walked away from the modern world and came to his grandpa's farm in a town with only four TV channels.
Parker comes to it differently. She is a 13-year-old girl, the between-iest thing in the world. And for her, Stardew Valley is a life simulator — a pixelated, primary-colored safe space where she gets to practice being a grown up. Here, she can turn her coddled pet chickens off for the night when tending to them becomes a drag, and make connections with people who are bound and bordered by the parameters of a game that is so much easier to understand than the lawless chaos of the real teenage world. She knows secrets about Stardew Valley that I never will, because to her, it's a map to a world she is just beginning to understand, while for me, it's a spreadsheet of a system I understood all too well.
Neither way of playing is right. Neither one is wrong. It's just life, rendered in 16 bits and full of chickens and monsters. And it never ends. Every season gives you a new chance to start over. To do things differently.
Which, wizards and sewer monsters aside, is maybe the most magical thing about it.
Jason Sheehan knows stuff about food, videogames, books and Starblazers. He is currently the restaurant critic at Philadelphia magazine, but when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy game (RTS), developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by Blizzard and Interplay Productions. The MS-DOS version was released on 23 November 1994 and the Macintosh version in early 1996.
Although Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was not the first RTS title to offer multiplayer games, Blizzard's game persuaded a wider audience that multiplayer facilities were essential for future RTS titles. The game introduced innovations in mission design and gameplay elements, which were adopted by other RTS developers.
Blizzard's main emphases in these games were on skillful management of relatively small forces and on development of characterization and storyline within and between games played in the same universe. Sales were fairly high, reviewers were mostly impressed, and the game won three awards and was a finalist for three others. The sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, became the main rival to Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer series, and this competition fostered an RTS boom in the mid to late 1990s.
Gameplay [ edit ]
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy game (RTS).[2][3][4] The player takes the role of either the Human inhabitants of Azeroth, or the invading Orcs.[5][6] In the single player campaign mode the player works through a series of missions, the objective of which varies, but usually involves building a small town, harvesting resources, building an army and then leading it to victory.[2] In multiplayer games, the objective is always to destroy the enemy players' forces. Some scenarios are complicated by the presence of wild monsters, but sometimes these monsters can be used as troops.[7][8][9] The game plays in a medieval setting with fantasy elements. Both sides have melee units and ranged units, and also spellcasters.[3]
Modes [ edit ]
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans's gameplay expands the Dune II "build base, build army, destroy enemy" paradigm to include other modes of game play.[2] These include several new mission types, such as conquering rebels of the player's race, rescuing and rebuilding besieged towns, rescuing friendly forces from an enemy camp and then destroying the main enemy base, and limited-forces missions, in which neither side can make further units, and making efficient use of one's platoon is a key strategy element.[10] In one mission, the player has to kill the Orc chief's daughter.[11]
The game also allows two players to compete in multiplayer contests by modem or local networks,[12] and enables gamers with the MS-DOS and Macintosh version to play each other.[11] Multiplayer and AI skirmishes that are not part of campaigns were supported by a random map generator.[2][11][12] The game also allowed spawn installations to be made.[11]
Economy and power [ edit ]
Warcraft requires players to collect resources, and to produce buildings and units in order to defeat an opponent in combat.[2] Non-combatant builders deliver the resources to the Town Center from mines, from which gold is dug, and forests, where wood is chopped.[3] As both are limited resources which become exhausted during the game, players must collect them efficiently, and also retain forests as defensive walls in the early game when combat forces are small.[10]
The lower-level buildings for Humans and Orcs have the same functions, but different sprites.[2] The Town Hall stores resources and produces units that collect resources and construct buildings. Each Farm provides food for up to four units, and additional units cannot be produced until enough Farms are built.[13][14] The Barracks produces all non-magical combat units, including melee, ranged, mounted, and siege units. However all except the most basic also need assistance from other buildings,[13] some of which can also upgrade units.[11]
Each side can construct two types of magical buildings, each of which produces one type of spellcaster and researches more advanced spells for that type.[5] These advanced buildings can be constructed only with assistance from other buildings.[13][14][15][16] The Human Cleric and Orc Necrolyte can both defend themselves by magic and also see distant parts of the territory for short periods.[17][18] The Cleric's other spells are protective, healing the injured and making troops invisible,[17] while the Necrolyte raises skeletons as troops and can make other units temporarily invulnerable, at the cost of severely damaging them when the spell dissipates.[18] The Human Conjurer and Orc Warlock have energy blasts, wider-range destruction spells and the ability to summon small, venomous monsters. The Conjurer can summon a water elemental, while the Warlock can summon a demonic melee unit.[17][18]
User interface [ edit ]
Orcs (red) attack a Human town and its defenders (blue). The flaming building is close to collapse, and the burnt ground to its left is the remains of a razed building. The numbers across the top are the player's reserves of lumber and gold. The unit marked with a light green box is currently selected, and its details appear in the lower left panel. The upper left panel is the mini-map, which shows all the territory fought over, mostly not yet discovered by the player, and enables the player to select a part of the territory to view.
The main screen has three areas: the largest, to the right, is the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating; the top left is the minimap; and, if a building or unit(s) is selected, the bottom left shows their status and any upgrades and the actions that can be performed.[19] The status details include a building's or unit's health, including its progress if being constructed, and any upgrades the object has completed.[10] The Menu control, at the very bottom on the left, provides access to save game, load game and other menu functions.[19]
Initially most of the main map and minimap are blacked out, but the visible area expands as the player's units explore the map. The mini-map shows a summary of the whole territory, with green dots for the player's buildings and units and red dots for enemy ones. The player can click in the main map or the minimap to scroll the main map around the territory.[19]
All functions can be invoked by the mouse. Keys can also invoke the game setup, some of the menu options and some gameplay functions including scrolling and pausing the game.[19] Players can select single units by clicking, and groups of up to four by shift-clicking or bandboxing.[11][19] To move units, players can shift the mouse to select units on the main map, move to the unit menu to select an action, and then back to the main map or minimap to specify the target area; but shortcut keys can eliminate the middle mouse action in this cycle.[10][19]
Storyline [ edit ]
The Orcs originated from another world, Draenor, where the orcs, once a peaceful race, became bloodthirsty from the blood of a pitlord. However, their Warlocks remained aloof, devoting their time to the research of magic. The Warlocks noticed a rift between the dimensions and, after many years, opened a small portal to another world. One Warlock explored and found a region, called Azeroth by its Human inhabitants, from which the Warlock returned with strange plants as evidence of his discovery.[20]
The Orcs enlarged the portal until they could transport seven warriors, who massacred a Human village. The raiding party brought back samples of good food and fine worksmanship, and a report that the Humans were defenseless. The Orcs' raiding parties grew larger and bolder, until they assaulted Azeroth's principal castle. However, the Humans had been training warriors of their own, especially the mounted, heavily armed Knights. These, assisted by Human Sorcerers, gradually forced the Orcs to retreat through the portal, which the Humans had not discovered.[20]
For the next fifteen years, one faction of Orcs demanded that the portal be closed. However a chief of exceptional cunning realized that the Humans, although out-numbered, had prevailed through the use of superior tactics, organization, and by magic. He united the clans, imposed discipline on their army and sought new magics from the Warlocks and Necromancers. Their combined forces were ready to overthrow the Humans.[20]
Development and publication [ edit ]
While the earliest real-time strategy games appeared in the 1980s,[21][22] notably the multiplayer RTS game Herzog Zwei,[23] and others followed in the early 1990s,[24] Westwood Studios's Dune II, released for DOS in 1992, established the pattern of modern RTS games.[4][24] Inspired by Dune II and Herzog Zwei,[25] Blizzard Entertainment was surprised that no further RTS titles appeared in 1993 and early 1994[2][5] – although in fact Westwood had quietly been working on Command & Conquer since the completion of Dune II.[26] To take advantage of the lull in RTS releases, Blizzard produced Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. According to Bob Fitch, the theme for Warcraft had been inspired by taking the vikings of The Lost Vikings and combining with masses of creatures under their automated control similar to Lemmings, with the multiplayer element of having these opposing masses of vikings meet up and fight each other.[27]
While later "...craft" games were famous for complex stories presented lavishly,[28] the first installment of the series had no script and was improvised in the recording studio by producer Bill Roper.[29] The contract composer Gregory Alper wrote music that Blizzard staff found reminiscent of Holst's The Planets.[30] Demos in summer 1994 whetted appetites for the completed game, released for MS-DOS in November 1994[2][5] and for the Macintosh in 1996.[11] The game was published by Blizzard in North America and by Interplay Entertainment in Europe,[1] and Sold-Out Software republished the MS-DOS version in March 2002.
Reception [ edit ]
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans became by far the company's greatest success to date, and for the first time made the company's finances secure.[5] Within one year of release, its sales surpassed 100,000 units.[37] It ultimately sold 300,000 copies.[38] In November 1995 Entertainment Weekly reported that the game ranked 19th of the top 20 CDs across all categories.[39]
The game was released in November 1994.[40] Although reviews did not appear until months later,[5] in Dragon Paul Murphy described the game as "great fun – absorbing and colorful,"[41] and Scott Love praised its solid strategy, simple interface and fantasy theme.[11] Warcraft: Orcs & Humans won PC Gamer’s Editors' Choice Award, Computer Life’s Critics' Pick and the Innovations Award at the Consumer Electronics Show, Winter 1995. It was a finalist for Computer Gaming World’s Premier award, PC Gamer’s Strategy Game of the Year and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences's Best Strategy award.[42] In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Warcraft the 125th-best computer game ever released.[43]
S. Love of MacWEEK found the play hard work, as often two or three of the gamer's units would attack without orders, while the rest still did nothing, and buildings could also lie idle without orders.[44]
In a retrospective review, the J-Man of Just Games Retro said the game is overly slow, as the player must produce a few basic buildings and peasants in order to gather resources, and then start building combat units, while the enemy starts with more buildings and the ability to immediately send out offensive units to undo the player's efforts. He also criticized that the basic units of the two sides are essentially identical and that the interface is clunky, but praised the resource system and effective enemy AI.[10]
GameSpot's retrospective on real-time strategy history said the game's AI was unintelligent and predictable,[2] and Scott Love said a difficulty setting would have increased the game's longevity.[11] Reviewers found the pathfinding poor.[2][45] Both Scott Love and the J-Man said the game runs very slowly during large battles.[10][11]
Some reviewers said the stereo sound helped gamers to locate events that occurred outside the current viewport.[11][33] K. Bailey of 1UP liked units' speech effects, especially in response to repeated clicks,[45] while Scott Love and the J-Man found this monotonous.[10][11] Game Revolution’s review of the Mac version complained that Warcraft: Orcs & Humans’s graphics, which were ported from the DOS version's VGA, did not exploit the Macintosh's superior resolution.[33] However, Game Revolution and Mac Gamer agreed that visual shortcomings did not reduce Mac gamers' enjoyment of the engrossing gameplay. Both also complained that the Macintosh was released about a year later than the DOS version.[11][33] In contrast, a reviewer for Next Generation, while not overlooking the fact that Warcraft II was already out by the time the Macintosh version was released, made no criticism on this point, and asserted that "Amazingly easy to pick up and play, Warcraft still manages to offer enough challenge to keep gaming veterans happy for hour after hour. Completed by sharp graphics, and good voice acting, the only thing holding this game back at all is its somewhat limited play options..."[34]
Legacy [ edit ]
Predecessors and innovations [ edit ]
The first RTS game was developed in the 1970s on a mainframe,[22] and RTS for home computers appeared in the early 1980s.[46] Dune II, released in 1992, established conventions that most subsequent RTS games followed,[47] including the "collect resources, build base and army, destroy opponents" pattern.[3] Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, two years later, was the next well-known RTS game,[2] and introduced new types of missions, including conquering rebels of the player's race and limited-forces missions, in which neither side could make further units.[2][10][11] It also included skirmishes which were single-player games that were not part of a larger campaign. To support multiplayer and skirmishes, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans used a random map generator,[2] a feature previously seen in the turn-based strategy game Civilization.[48][49] In 1995 Westwood's RTS Command & Conquer series adopted the use of non-standard mission types and skirmishes,[50][51] and Microsoft's Age of Empires included these features and a random map generator in 1997.[52]
Modem Wars, released in 1988 for DOS and the Commodore 64, was the first RTS with multiplayer games by means of modems.[22] Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, which allow two gamers to compete by modem or local networks,[12] persuaded a wider audience that multiplayer competition was much more challenging than contests against the artificial intelligence (AI), and made multiplayer facilities essential for future RTS titles.[5]
Realms, released in 1991 for DOS, Amiga and Atari ST, had a medieval theme,[53] with melee and ranged units, and allowed gamers to resolve combat automatically or in a RTS-type style.[54][55] Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was the first typical RTS to be presented in a medieval setting, and its units included spellcasters as well as melee and ranged units.[2]
Sequels [ edit ]
The success of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans motivated Blizzard to publish a sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, in December 1995,[2][45] and an expansion pack, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, in 1996.[5] In autumn 1995 Westwood had released Command & Conquer, and the competition between these two games popularized the RTS genre[45] and defined the genre.[56] Blizzard's new game's enhancements included: naval and air units, supported by new buildings and a new resource, oil;[57] higher-resolution artwork rendered in SVGA graphics; improved sound, including additional responses from units; a much better AI; and new mechanisms such as patroling (moving continuously along a route for surveillance or defense).[58] A further generation of the Warcraft: Orcs & Humans lineage, called Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, was released in July 2002,[59] and gained instant and enduring acclaim with both critics and players.[60]
In April 1998, Blizzard released StarCraft, an RTS with the concepts and mechanisms of Warcraft but an interplanetary setting and three totally different races.[61] Starcraft and its expansion StarCraft: Brood War were well received by critics and became very successful.[62] World of Warcraft, released in North America in November 2004[63] and in Europe in February 2005, was Blizzard's first attempt at a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and used the universe of the Warcraft RTS games, including characters that first appeared in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.[64] WoW was praised highly by critics, was the most popular MMORPG in 2008, [65] and in 2007 became the most profitable video game ever created.[66]
Beyond video games, the extended Warcraft franchise includes board games,[67] card games,[68] books,[69] and comics.[70]
Blizzard style of RTS games [ edit ]
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was a moderate critical and commercial success,[39] and laid the ground for Blizzard's style of RTS, in which personality was a distinctive element. The increasingly humorous responses to clicking a unit repeatedly became a trademark of the company. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans introduced characters that also appeared in the enormously successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. The company's manuals presented detailed backstories and artwork.[45] StarCraft used a futuristic theme, but placed the same emphasis on characterization. In all the Blizzard RTS games and in World of Warcraft, units must be managed carefully, rather than treated as expendable hordes. Blizzard has produced fewer expansion packs than Westwood, but integrated the story of each with its predecessors.[28]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
The manual is organized as two separate books with separate page ranges, but in one binding. Both parts contain common sections such as the technical requirements and game set-up instructions.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (Humans). Irvine, California: Blizzard Entertainment. 1994. (Mac version)
(Mac version) Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (Orcs). Irvine, California: Blizzard Entertainment. 1994. (Mac version)Overseas doctors with an inadequate knowledge of English must not be allowed to practice medicine in the UK, the leader of the British Medical Association said today.
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA Council, said at the association's annual representative meeting in Brighton that tougher checks and language tests are needed to prevent another tragedy such as the death of pensioner David Gray, who was given a lethal injection of a painkiller by Daniel Obani, a German locum doctor, during his first shift in the UK.
"It cannot be acceptable for poorly trained, badly regulated doctors whose knowledge of English is about as good as my knowledge of Chinese, to be able to practise, virtually unchallenged, in the UK," said Dr Meldrum.
But he rejected suggestions that the GPs' 2004 contract, which allowed them to opt out of out-of-hours care, was responsible for what happened. "That is rubbish. It has been caused by under-funding and mismanagement of out-of-hours services by too many primary care organisations and by poor enforcement of, admittedly, inadequate regulations," he said.
"My sympathy goes out to the family of David Gray, but sympathy is not enough. We must ensure that the doctors who treat our patients are competent to do so, that they have the necessary language skills, and that they are subject to the same regulation as UK doctors. The BMA will continue its work with the government, the GMC (General Medical Council) and others to make this happen."
Discussions are currently taking place between the government and the council about EU rules which prevent the GMC from testing the language abilities and skills of foreign doctors who want to work in the UK. Niall Dickson, its chief executive, has warned that the rules do not provide patients with the protection they deserve.
In his keynote speech, Dr Meldrum also hit out at NHS privatisation, saying that "we can't go on promoting a failed market philosophy, with its burgeoning bureaucracy, competitive fragmentation and increasingly perverse incentives."
He called for honesty with the public, saying it was wrong to pretend there was enough money to do everything. There were areas where money could be saved, he said, listing what he called ill-conceived plans and dogma-driven policies that the BMA would continue to oppose:
"Incoherent and divisive market-based policies that pit trusts against each other, secondary against primary care, increase costs and, in many cases, duplicate existing services.
"Lucrative contracts for ISTCs – independent sector treatment centres – that are paid for up-front yet don't deliver on activity, often because there was no need for them in the first place.
"And new, so-called GP-led health centres, which often enjoy multiple times the funding per patient of regular GP practices, despite in many cases, very few patients registering with them."
He warned the government that the BMA would defend any attempt to cut doctors' jobs or pensions. "I've said that we should be reasonable and responsible when it comes to pay, but don't underestimate us when it comes to protecting doctors' jobs and pensions. On these, I will not be reasonable, if being reasonable means accepting cuts in the number of doctors or reneging on the recently agreed, revised pension arrangements for NHS staff," he said.
"At a time of recession, of increasing unemployment, of greater hardship and greater stress, the public needs more doctors, not fewer."A day after a group of some 300 protestors went on a rampage breaking shop windows and vandalizing parts of downtown Paris, France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Friday vowed to crackdown on "visionless people inspired solely by violence."
For two weeks disenchanted youths protesting against the Socialist government's labor law reforms have been holding nightly protests in Paris's Place de la Republique square and other cities across the country.
The Nuit Debout (Up All Night) movement has been largely peaceful, but on Thursday night police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse a small group of violent protestors who broke off from Republique square. Several were arrested.
The vandalism occurred hours after French President Francois Hollande vowed during a two-hour televised debate to stick with the new labor laws.
Watch video 03:06 Share @dwnews - France rocked by #NuitDebout protests Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1IWmB France rocked by #NuitDebout protests
Earlier on Thursday protestors scuffled with baton-wielding police, who fired tear gas.
Some demonstrators with the leaderless movement told BFM-TV broadcaster the Nuit Debout movement was not associated with violent protestors.
While the budding youth movement was triggered by divisive labor reforms, the protests that began on March 31 have since morphed into a broader social phenomenon against the political status quo and a neoliberal economic system that has spread inequality and unemployment.
All night sit-ins have been held in Paris's Place de la Republique square since March 31.
The nascent movement has drawn comparisons to the Occupy Wall Street movement four years ago and the anti-austerity Indignados movement in Spain five years ago. It has also started to gain traction in other countries in Europe.
Paris police said there were no plans to break up the nightly protests, although a state of emergency remains in effect following November's terror attacks. The state of emergency gives the government the power to break up gatherings, but an increasingly unpopular Hollande would like to avoid an incident ahead of elections next year.
Answering a question about Nuit Debout during last night's debate, Hollande said: "I find it legitimate that the youth - in relation to the world as it is, in relation to politics as they are - want to express themselves and want to have their say."
General assemblies have been formed to discuss ideas and organize.
cw/kms (dpa, Reuters)Who: Sony Playstation, BBH New York
Why we care: While virtual reality is still a bit of a curiosity to many people, perhaps the biggest potential many see for it is in gaming. Sony Playstation has been pushing its PSVR system hard, rolling out games at a furious pace–now with about 100 different titles available. Earlier this year, Senior VP and Head of Playstation Network Eric Lempel told me that marketing VR can be a challenge. “This is something new that the majority of people out there don’t really know what it is, or they’ve experienced some form of it that isn’t quite Playstation VR,” he said at the time. “So going into this, there were a few things we wanted to make sure we did, which was trying to pass along some of the magic of the PSVR experience through a spot.”
The new Skyrim ad keeps that theme going, and Lempel says the goal was to really lean into the sensory experience of VR.
“We’re using some of the same tactics–there’s still a good portion of experiential where people can go out and try VR, because that really is the best way to understand what it is,” says Lempel.This week the Republican Study Committee reintroduced legislation called the American Health Care Reform Act (AHCRA). The bill first debuted in 2013, but with Republicans now in control of the House, Senate, and White House, the likelihood of ObamaCare repeal and replacement — and public interest in conservative replacement plans — is at an all-time high.
Some Americans, especially those harmed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through premium spikes or cancelled plans, may ask why the GOP wants to replace the law at all. Why can’t we simply repeal it and go back to the system we had before?
ADVERTISEMENT
It boils down to this: The system before ObamaCare was distorted by other outdated laws, leaving some Americans with poor and limited insurance options. We needed healthcare reform in 2009 — just not the healthcare reform that we got.
Before the ACA, too many Americans felt trapped in jobs because their employer provided their health insurance benefits. Some without employer-provided insurance had trouble finding affordable options, so they went uninsured or underinsured and risked bankruptcy. Others were over-insured and consumed more health services than they needed.
All of these problems needed solving before the ACA, and Republicans will still need to address them should the ACA be repealed. Importantly, Republicans should also work to craft a policy that responsibly transitions those Americans who’ve come to depend on ACA plans to the new system.
How will they do it? The specifics vary from plan to plan, but nearly all replacement plans include a universally available tax deduction (as in the AHCRA) or tax credit for health insurance. This policy is an attempt to level the playing field for people who do not currently enjoy employer-based health insurance benefits.
Since the WWII era, our policies have favored employer-centric health insurance by providing an unlimited tax exclusion for these on-the-job benefits. Meanwhile, folks without benefits have been paying for health insurance with post-tax dollars.
We would all be better off with a level playing field. For one thing, this would reduce “job lock” in an ever uber-ized gig economy. Gone are the days when people worked 30 years in the same full-time job with great benefits. Today, no one should feel trapped in a particular job simply because insurance is too hard to get elsewhere.
For another thing, by making it more attractive for people to buy insurance on their own (instead of through employer-centric groups), we could greatly increase the number of buyers — decision makers — in the health insurance market, which would spur competition.
In other words, rather than selling to your boss, health insurance companies would have to sell their policies directly to you, meaning they’d have to compete to offer you the plan that suits your family best at the best price.
Some Republicans want to take other steps that they hope would make insurance markets more competitive, including allowing the sale of insurance across state lines and allowing small businesses to pool together to negotiate rates. But the most important step conservatives can take to make insurance plans more competitive is to repeal the ACA’s harmful and unnecessary regulations.
Before the ACA, state insurance commissions determined what plans were acceptable to be sold in their states, and what coverage plans had to provide.
The ACA added a federal layer of regulation in an attempt to standardize plans, but it went too far. The law took away popular, more basic (and affordable) insurance plans (which is why so of these plans were cancelled in 2014 as the ACA took effect).
The AHCRA, like some other conservative plans, proposes to address the problem of pre-existing conditions by reviving and expanding an older idea: state-based high-risk pools.
These pools offer targeted relief (subsidized coverage) to those who really need it. This is a much better approach than the ACA’s requirement that insurance companies “take all comers,” which has sadly resulted in sicker pools and higher premiums for everyone.
Whatever replacement Republicans ultimately put together, it should include the grandfathering of ACA plans and subsidies during a transition period. This will allow the new system to begin working alongside the old (ObamaCare), without ripping the carpet out from beneath anyone.
There are many proposals on the right, and they vary in important details, but the basic premise is the same from plan to plan: Conservatives want to replace the ACA with economically sound reforms that make the market for health insurance more competitive and free, which would lead to lower premiums, making it so that more Americans could afford to buy insurance.
Regardless our political leanings, we should all welcome these ideas into this critical debate.
Hadley Heath Manning is the director of health policy for the Independent Women's Forum, a non-partisan research and educational institution dedicated to improving the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, POLITICO, Roll Call, Real Clear Policy, National Review Online, and Huffington Post, among others.
The views of Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.The new Moto X packs plenty of improvements -- but is its camera actually any better than the original's?
Last year's Moto X, after all, had lots of good things going for it -- but image quality wasn't its greatest strength. The new device comes with a higher-megapixel shooter and plenty of lofty claims, but the real test is how it delivers in the real world.
I took the new Moto X and the first-gen model out and about to find out. A few quick notes before we begin:
The photos in each of the following sets were taken seconds apart, with as close to identical framing and positioning as I could manage. I took two back-to-back photos with each phone to compensate for any incidental issues like my hand moving; if I saw any difference between the two, I selected the better image to show here.
I set the new Moto X to use its highest possible resolution -- 13 megapixels, which produces a 4:3 image (as opposed to the 16:9 image generated if you opt for the 9.7-megapixel setting). That aside, I left both phones |
this group, but new taxa were recently described, e.g., Acamptonectes densus, Aegirosaurus sp., Athabascasaurus bitumineus, Caypullisaurus bonapartei, Maiaspondylus lindoei, Leninia stellans, Malawania anachronus, and Sveltonectes insolitus (e.g., Fernández, 1997; Kear, 2003; Fernández and Aguirre-Urreta, 2005; Maxwell and Caldwell, 2006; Arkhangelsky et al., 2008; Maxwell and Kear, 2010; Sues et al., 2010; Zammit et al., 2010; Druckenmiller and Maxwell, 2010; Fischer et al., 2011a, 2011b, 2012, 2013a, 2013b; Zammit, 2012). Thus, the number and diversity of Cretaceous ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur species are much higher than traditionally thought (Motani, 1999; McGowan and Motani, 2003; Fischer et al., 2012, 2013a, 2013b; Zammit, 2012).
Reports on South American Ichthyosaurs
Reports on South American ichthyosaurs are rare. Most descriptions are from the Tithonian–Valanginian Vaca Muerta Formation of the Neuquén Basin in western Argentina (e.g., Gasparini and Fernández, 1997, 2005, 2006; Fernández and Aguirre-Urreta, 2005; Fernández, 2007; Fernández and Maxwell, 2012). Ophthalmosaurus monocharactus was described from the Tithonian of the Los Catutos area of Neuquén (Gasparini, 1988), and two incomplete forefins of Platypterygius hauthali are known from the Barremian of Santa Cruz Province in southern Argentina (Fernández and Aguirre-Urreta, 2005), while a nearly complete skull of Platypterygius sachicarum was documented from the Barremian–Aptian La Paja Formation in Colombia (Páramo, 1997). Isolated fragmentary vertebrae and teeth are also reported from northern and central Chile (Suárez and Bell, 1992; Gasparini and Fernández, 2006).
From southern Chile, Shultz et al. (2003) reported on a fragmentary ichthyosaur skeleton that was collected in Torres del Paine National Park adjacent to the South Patagonian Ice Field. The specimen consists of 17 vertebrae with associated neural arches preserved within a large erratic block of glaciofluvial sediments. The remnants could neither be assigned to a genus or species nor be dated precisely (Shultz et al., 2003). In 2003, however, an expedition to the Tyndall Glacier organized by researchers of the Dirección de Programas Antárticos of the Universidad de Magallanes and the Centro de Estudos del Cuaternario at Punta Arenas discovered an outcrop area ∼10 km to the west of the Shultz et al. (2003) locality, where sediments similar to the erratic block contain numerous ichthyosaur remains including articulated skeletons associated with fragmentary material (Fig. 1).
Here we report on the fossil assemblage and the geology of this newly discovered fossil deposit in the vicinity of the Tyndall Glacier. In an area of ∼5 km2, abundant articulated and sometimes virtually complete ichthyosaur specimens were found which were tentatively assigned to four different species of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs (Pardo et al., 2012). Isolated bones of ichthyosaurs, well-preserved teleost and ganoid fishes, belemnites, ammonites, inoceramids, and plant remains are also abundant. The concentration of skeletal remains of ichthyosaurs in the Tyndall area is unique. Forty-six articulated specimens were discovered during three field campaigns of one to three weeks each. The abundance of ichthyosaur remains comes along with an extraordinary preservation of the specimens, occasionally including the presence of soft tissue and embryos. This makes the Tyndall fossil deposit a combination of concentration and conservation Lagerstätte (Seilacher et al., 1985; Allison, 1988a; Briggs, 2001) and places the Tyndall locality among the best fossil deposits worldwide for Cretaceous marine reptiles.
The present paper summarizes the geologic conditions of the site and presents a scenario regarding the formation of this unusual fossil deposit. We suggest that both the concentration of ichthyosaurs and their excellent preservation directly relate to the regional geology, and more specifically to the deep-water turbidite deposition in the area and location in a submarine canyon.
Area Investigated
The study area is located in Torres del Paine National Park, Ultima Esperanza Province of southern Chile, along the eastern rim of the Tyndall Glacier (51°8′20″S, 73°16′50″W), a lobe of the South Patagonian inland ice shield (Fig. 1). The strata in this region are gently folded and exposed along the east and west flanks of a north-south–trending anticline over at least 5 km in the north-south direction. The regional north-south strike is associated with the uplifting Andean orogenic belt. Exposure quality is generally good because of the barren vegetation and freshly exposed surfaces due to the meltdown of the glacier (see below). Unfortunately only a minor part of strata could be surveyed because of limited time, bad weather conditions, and difficult access (cliffs, rivers, waterfalls).
Sedimentary rocks in the Tyndall area were exposed during the last two decades by the constant retreat of the glacier (Fernández Torres, 2012, and references therein). Evidence for previous ice coverage of the Cretaceous sediment sequence is ubiquitous and includes erratic blocks and boulders, unsorted unconsolidated sand and gravel resulting from moraines, and polished glacial pavements with striae and pluck marks.
Geological Setting
Sediments exposed in the Tyndall area range from the latest Jurassic (Tithonian) to Early Cretaceous (Berriasian to Albian) and represent obducted remains of the Early Cretaceous Rocas Verdes back-arc basin (e.g., Katz, 1963; Dalziel et al., 1974; Prieto, 1994; Cañón, 2000; Wilson, 1991; Fildani and Hessler, 2005; Galaz et al., 2005; Charrier et al., 2007; Calderón et al., 2007; Fildani et al., 2008; Romans et al., 2010; Fig. 2). This oceanic basin reflects the early extensional phase of proto-Andean evolution and developed as a consequence of the initial breakup of southern Gondwana and formation of the South Atlantic Ocean basin (Fig. 3). During the Late Jurassic, marine mud-dominated and coarse volcaniclastic rocks of the Tobifera Formation filled an interconnected system of grabens (Gust et al., 1985; Wilson, 1991; Shultz et al., 2003), while ophiolitic rocks in the Cordillera Sarmiento, south and west of Torres del Paine National Park, represent the obducted remains of the floor of this back-arc basin (Wilson, 1991; Fildani and Hessler, 2005; Calderón et al., 2007; Romans et al., 2010). Regional extension persisted into the Early Cretaceous as indicated by shelf to deep marine slope and hemipelagic deposits of the Tobifera and Zapata Formations (Wilson, 1991; Fildani and Hessler, 2005). The Tobifera Formation is a siliciclastic unit with interlayered silicic volcanic rocks near the base. A Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian) age was inferred by Fuenzalida and Covacevich (1988) based on ammonites, belemnites, and inoceramids, and by Allen (1982) based on radiolarians.
The overlying Zapata Formation is dominated by gray to black mudstone with disseminated pyrite and rhythmically interbedded thin sandstone beds. The sediments were interpreted to represent hemipelagic depositional environments low in oxygen, with water depths of at least 2500 m (Fildani and Hessler, 2005). However, the basin bathymetry was likely variable, and Fildani and Hessler (2005) worked in a distal depositional area with almost no sandstone reported. In other regions of the Rocas Verdes Basin, a bathyal setting was interpreted from microfossils (e.g., Ceccioni, 1957; Cortes, 1964). The sandstone-prone deposits described here from the Tyndall area are also consistent with a more proximal and likely bathyal setting.
Lithologies of the Zapata Formation are similar to those of the Tobifera Formation, only differing by the absence of volcanic strata. Ammonites, belemnites, and inoceramids are present throughout the Zapata Formation and suggest a late Tithonian to Aptian-Albian age (Katz, 1963), although documentation of the faunal assemblage is poor. The Punta Barrosa Formation overlies the Zapata Formation with a gradual transition, manifested by an increase in abundance and thickness of individual sandstone layers intercalated with mudstone. This increase in sand is associated with regional compression and the onset of the Andean orogeny (Fildani et al., 2003; Fildani and Hessler, 2005). The closure of the Rocas Verdes Basin was accompanied by the collision of the Cape Horn microplate with South America (Dalziel, 1981). Rapid contraction and uplift along the western basin margin imparted a regional low-grade metamorphism to the Rocas Verdes sediments (Fildani and Hessler, 2005). The compressive regime and concurrent foreland subsidence persisted in the Magallanes Basin throughout the remainder of the Cretaceous and into the Paleogene (Fildani et al., 2009; Ghiglione et al., 2009; Romans et al., 2008, 2010, 2011).
In the Tyndall area, the Late Jurassic to early Late Cretaceous Rocas Verdes sequence is more than 1000 m thick (Katz, 1963; Wilson, 1991). Within this expanded sediment sequence, our research focused on the fossil-rich unit with ichthyosaurs, which is ∼80 m thick (Fig. 4), but its precise lithostratigraphic range and position within the overall sediment sequence is not known. It is here tentatively assigned to the Zapata Formation, based on geological mapping in the area (Wilson, 1991; and this study), the absence of volcanism except for occasional thin layers of andesitic tuff (Katz, 1963; Fildani and Hessler, 2005), and ammonites discovered by us in the field. The presence of Lissonia riveroi, Favrella americana, Pseudofavrella cf. robusta, Pseudofavrella cf. garatei, Crioceratites andinum, Crioceratites diamantensis, Aegocrioceras sp., among other ammonites, places the ichthyosaur-bearing sediment sequence in the Valanginian and Hauterivian (e.g., Aguirre-Urreta and Rawson, 1997, 2010; Amaro Mourges, 2004; Aguirre-Urreta et al., 2007a, 2007b), coinciding with ages suggested earlier for the Zapata Formation by Katz (1963). The fossil-rich member gradually overlies a >30-m-thick unit consisting predominantly of sandstone and minor mudstone representing proximal slope environments. It underlies an expanded mudstone-dominated unit of bathyal to abyssal origin.
RESULTS
Sediments and Facies
The ichthyosaur-bearing unit of the Zapata Formation is ∼80 m thick and consists of thin- to medium-bedded sandstone alternating with siltstone and claystone (mudstone). CaCO 3 contents are generally low. Lenticular chaotic breccia units, up to several tens of meters thick, are interlayered within this monotonous sequence (Fig. 4). Here we summarize facies associations and discuss depositional environments, but a full revision of the Tyndall sediment sequence is beyond the scope of this paper.
Siliceous Claystone and Siltstone Facies
Clay- and siltstones are dark gray, brown, and black, and occur throughout the sequence forming units between a few millimeters and several meters thick. The high amount of silica in the mudstone is likely of volcanic as well as biogenic origin, produced by the hemipelagic rain of siliceous planktonic organisms (e.g., radiolarians), which are common in regions of high surface productivity (T e division of Bouma, 1962). These sediments are considered as an autochthonous “background facies”, characterizing the deep marine basin, although turbiditic mud (E t of Bouma, 1962) can indicate rapid settling of muddy turbidity currents (cf. Lomas, 1999; Talling et al., 2012). Siliceous clay- and siltstones are generally laminated at millimetric scale, even though homogenous and graded-laminated mudstone units also occur.
Bioturbation is minimal and restricted to a few layers and types of traces. Where present, these traces form a patchwork of monotypic masses, likely representing opportunistic colonization of an otherwise hostile sea floor. Simple bedding-oblique and bedding-normal unbranched tubes, up to 50 mm long and 2–4 mm in diameter with small pellets along their walls, are considered Ophiomorpha. Chondrites and helical spreite structures of Zoophycos were locally identified. Similar trace fossil assemblages have variously been interpreted to be a normal component of slope and deep-sea fan deposits (e.g., Uchman, 2001; López Cabrera et al., 2008; Uchman and Wetzel, 2012; Hubbard et al., 2012) and can be assigned to the architypal Zoophycos ichnofacies of Seilacher (1962). Graphoglyptids, considered to be common in basin-floor fan deposits, have not been identified in the Tyndall ichnofacies. Their characteristic absence is attributed to unstable environmental conditions (e.g., currents, sedimentation) and the presence of relatively abundant food sources on the slope (Hubbard et al., 2012).
The abundance of pyrite in the mudstone is consistent with the predominance of a dysaerobic sea floor (e.g., Wignall and Newton, 1998). Pyrite forms through sulfide reduction, enhanced by abundant organic matter. In the Tyndall mudstone facies, pyrite forms small concretions and even shiny crusts between individual layers, but the major part of pyrite present is finely disseminated in the sediment. Pyrite concentrations commonly occur around articulated ichthyosaur specimens as an underlying sheet. When split with the hammer, the sediments have the odor of hydrogen sulfide, indicating high organic-matter content. Rock colors vary from light to dark gray and black, but intensively red or yellow colors also occur as a result of the oxidation of Fe sulfides.
There is no evidence for an active colonization of the sea floor other than rare opportunistic trace fossil associations and inoceramids. Inoceramids are sessile bivalves known to have lived under unfavorable benthic environments and even anoxic conditions, either due to the incorporation of chemoautotrophic bacteria (MacLeod and Hoppe, 1992; Fischer and Bottjer, 1995; Lazo, 2006; Ifrim et al., 2011), or by enlarging their gill structures (Knight et al., 2014). Their low diversity (usually monotypic) but high abundance in a few layers of the Tyndall mudstone facies imply opportunistic proliferation and may reflect short intervals of favorable bottom conditions, allowing for the establishment of benthic communities. Alternatively, these rare colonies may point to the presence of short-lived seeps of nutrient-rich pore fluids venting methane- or sulfur-charged pore fluids, as known from modern accretionary prisms and variously suggested for the fossil record (e.g., Kiel, 2010, and references therein).
The ubiquitious presence of mudstone lamination, abundance of pyrite, presence of Chondrites, and the absence of benthic encrusters as well as infaunal elements (Wignall, 1993) suggest that dysaerobic to anaerobic conditions prevailed on the sea floor of the Tyndall deep marine basin during the Early Cretaceous, as previously postulated for the Zapata Formation by Fildani and Hessler (2005). Soft substrates and turbid bottom waters may have imparted further stress reflected in the paucity of macrofossils and bioturbation in this facies.
Pyroclastic Facies
Green to gray homogenous clay-rich finely arenaceous layers are interbedded occasionally in the mudstone facies and range from 1 to 100 mm thick. They are crystalline and andesitic in composition, and are here interpreted as altered pyroclastic horizons recording synsedimentary active volcanism in the region. Overall, bentonites make up only a minor proportion of the stratigraphic package. Their presence does therefore not oppose assignment of the ichthyosaur-rich Tyndall unit to the Zapata Formation, a unit that is supposedly poor in evidence of volcanic activity (Katz, 1963; Fildani and Hessler, 2005).
Sandstone Facies
Sandstone is gray and forms layers between <10 mm and >1 m thick. No pronounced facies variations are apparent across the outcrop area at Tyndall, but individual layers are difficult to follow due to complicated outcrop access and the lack of stratigraphic markers. Sandstone components are lithic and include feldspar, quartz, mica, as well as abundant lithoclasts of eroded and redeposited volcanic ash (tuff) and siliciclastic sedimentary and contact metamorphic siliceous rocks. Volcanic and sedimentary rock fragments are commonly present and generally subangular, whereas clasts of metamorphic rocks are rare and better rounded.
Mudstone rip-up intraclasts are commonly clustered in the lower part of thicker sandstone beds. They derive from intensive bed disruption and partial or complete erosion of underlying beds through the passage of erosive currents (Fig. 5A). Mudstone pebbles are enriched within lags, or along amalgamated sandstone-to-sandstone contacts; others are present floating in a fine-grained sand matrix.
Sandstone beds are laminated and homogenous (turbidite divisions A and B of Bouma, 1962) and exhibit occasional normal grading from medium- to fine-grained sand; inverse grading is rare. These units record high rates of suspension settling from turbulent currents (Bouma, 1962; Lowe, 1982; Talling et al., 2012). More complex grading profiles are rare and mostly attributed to bed amalgamation.
Sandstones are well lithified and erosion resistant due to their siliceous cement. Macrofossils in the sandstones include belemnites, ammonites, fishes, wood, as well as articulated ichthyosaurs, whereas inoceramids are characteristically absent. The faunal content of the sandstone facies thus differs from the mudstone. Mudstone interbedded between sandstone layers is similar to the mudstone facies described above.
Indistinct or diffuse bed contacts exist and indicate gradual changes in the depositional regime, but most layers show sharp erosional bases or irregular contacts. Loaded contacts were attributed to water escape and indicate rapid deposition of sand onto an undercompacted, semi-liquid mud (Lowe and LoPiccolo, 1974). Erosional scours, including flute casts, are also characteristic of bed bases.
The most common organization among thicker sandstone beds involves a homogenous, coarse-grained basal zone grading into parallel-laminated medium to fine sand, capped occasionally by a cross- and ripple-laminated top (T a–c divisions of Bouma, 1962). Lateral variations in internal stratification features or thickness of individual layers were not observed within outcrop distances of tens of meters, and it is unclear at present whether sand bodies are laterally homogenous or lenticular. However, this facies intercalates with chaotically bedded units and mudstone facies, in which the sand-to-mud ratio is low. These features are indicative of a steep depositional setting, perhaps within a submarine canyon (e.g., Hubbard et al., 2008, 2014; Fildani et al., 2009; Romans et al., 2008, 2011).
Lenticular Breccia Facies
Breccia units are disorganized, and are composed of poorly sorted sharp-edged polygonal to well-rounded pebble- and cobble-sized clasts and large blocks with diameters exceeding 1 m, consisting of fine-grained gray sandstone, silicified siltstone, and reworked lithified breccia (Figs. 5B–5C). Lithologies thus suggest an intrabasinal origin of eroded and redeposited lithified sediment. The matrix ranges from sandstone to microconglomerate. Belemnite rostra are abundant, and wood and abraded or shattered bones are also present in clasts as well as in the matrix.
Most breccia units are chaotically bedded, but a few organized layers also exist, characterized by diffuse stratification and clast alignment. Thickness ranges between a few hundreds of millimeters and several tens of meters. The geometry of these breccia units is clearly lenticular and channelized, and their bottom surfaces sharp and erosive (Figs. 5B–5C).
The lack of sorting and paucity of internal organization in the breccia units suggest that motion within the depositing flows was somewhat inhibited and not fully turbulent (Talling et al., 2012). This facies is largely attributed to slumping and sliding-rafted sediment blocks that accumulated at the bases of channels in a steep slope environment (e.g., Middleton and Hampton, 1976; Lowe, 1979, 1982).
Deposition of lenticular breccia units is commonly associated with channelized slope settings, such as slope canyons, gullies, or proximal submarine fans (e.g., Hubbard et al., 2008, 2014; Romans et al., 2008; Fildani et al., 2009).
Chaotically Bedded and Injected-Sediment Facies
Disorganized sections of clay- and siltstone (mudstone) as well as sandstone facies represent a volumetrically small yet sedimentologically important component of the Tyndall sediment sequence. They are associated with undisturbed fine-grained deposits above and below and show similar primary sedimentological characteristics. Distorted strata range from <1 to 10 m or more thickness and display soft-sediment deformation from nearly intact and displaced to chaotically folded and deformed (Figs. 5D–5F). The disorganization resulted from complex sliding and/or slumping processes that did not lead to complete disaggregation of material during transport (e.g., Romans et al., 2008), The sediment was still unconsolidated, or only partly consolidated, when sediment gravity flows initiated at the shelf edge or upper slope (Piper and Normark, 2009). Contorted strata are mass-transport and debris-flow deposits common to turbidite-dominated slope strata. They are attributed to a variety of possible slope depositional settings and result from a combination of factors, such as a high rate of sedimentation, trap of pore fluid, and a steep slope geometry leading to repeated collapse of the sequence (Morris and Busby-Spera, 1990; Shultz and Hubbard, 2005; Posamentier and Walker, 2006; Kane et al., 2007; Armitage et al., 2009; Obermeier, 2009; Hodgson et al., 2011).
Injectites are also common and include bedding-normal lenses of homogenous sandstone (sills) totally enclosed in laminated mudstones, as well as vertical dikes, or Q-fissures (Wendt, 1971), in at least two localities (Figs. 5G–5H). The latter cut to more than 5 m through the host rock and are filled with sandstone, abundant belemnite rostra, abraded ichthyosaur bones (e.g., phalanges), and other vertebrate debris. These dikes formed rapidly by liquidized injection sourced from the base-of-turbidite lag (Figs. 5G–5H). The abundance of injectites and slump structures throughout the section indicates major seismicity and tectonic instability along a deep slope, which is a typical feature of deep-water fan deposits (Lowe and LoPiccolo, 1974; Obermeier, 2009).
Depositional Setting
The ichthyosaur-bearing unit at Tyndall accumulated in a deep-water environment characterized by laminated mudstone and a wide range of coarse-grained sediment gravity deposits transported into the basin from coast areas. The association of turbidites and a variety of mass-wasting deposits, as well as injectites, is consistent with deposition on steep and unstable slopes with rapid sediment accumulation and high pore-water content (Posamentier and Walker, 2006; Obermeier, 2009). Fine-grained siliceous clay and siltstone facies represent the deep marine “background”, including deposition from muddy, turbulent currents (Bouma, 1962; Posamentier and Walker, 2006; Talling et al., 2012). The restriction of bioturbation and benthic macrofauna suggests stressed sea-floor environments (Hubbard et al., 2012).
Unstable tectonic conditions and synsedimentary load-related movements along a steep slope are plausible interpretations for the active margin setting, which was transitioning between the Rocas Verdes back-arc basin and compression-initiated Magallanes foreland basin in the late Early Cretaceous (Prieto, 1994; Cañón, 2000; Galaz et al., 2005; Fildani et al., 2003, 2008; Fildani and Hessler, 2005; Calderón et al., 2007, Romans et al., 2010).
Slope channel processes are suggested by well-preserved vegetation remains, such as leaves and abundant small- and large-sized woody detritus, most of it devoid of biocrusts. This debris indicates a well-vegetated source area and is consistent with substantial fluvial input to the basin. The tectonically active marine platform was likely narrow, resulting in a steep paleorelief that enhanced transfer of coarse-grained detritus and debris to the deep sea (cf. Covault et al., 2011). The abundance of floral remains in specific layers may also result from a concentration in maximum flooding events (e.g., Savrda, 1991; Savrda et al., 1993).
Based on sedimentological characteristics of the Zapata Formation we conclude that the Tyndall ichthyosaur-rich sediments were deposited in a deep-water slope environment and likely in an active submarine canyon (Stow, 1985; Lomas, 1999; Adeogba et al., 2005; Paull et al., 2005; Posamentier and Walker, 2006).
Paleobathymetry is difficult to estimate due to the absence of characteristic faunal elements, but bathyal to abyssal depths of several hundreds to >2000 m have recently been proposed for the Zapata Formation by Fildani and Hessler (2005). Along with the aforementioned sedimentological characteristics, the absence of calcareous microfossils, the superficial dissolution of calcitic belemnite rostra, and the complete dissolution of aragonitic shells (e.g., ammonites) suggest deep-water bathyal conditions.
Fossil Assemblage
Belemnites
Belemnites [Belemnopsis (Belemnopsis) cf. launcelotiHowlett 1989, Belemnopsis (Belemnopsis) cf. alexandri Willey 1973] are rare in mudstone facies but common to abundant in turbiditic sandstone and debris-flow facies throughout the Tyndall section. Records include complete rostra up to 150 mm long as well as fragmented specimens. In the sandstone layers, most belemnites are embedded parallel to stratification, but oblique or even vertically embedded specimens are also common, indicating either transport within the turbidity current, or deposition in soft sediment after the coarser sand had settled. These specimens are mostly complete, but single specimens broken in two or three pieces were also found during our surface survey (Figs. 6A–6B). Aragonitic components, i.e., the proostracum and phragmocone, are always dissolved. In at least two instances, synsedimentary dikes (Q-fissures) are filled with hundreds of belemnite rostra (Figs. 5G–5H).
Assignment of the Tyndall belemnites is difficult as a result of superficial dissolution of calcitic guards and their preservation as sections in sediment surfaces polished by glacier activity. Three-dimensional extraction of rostra was not achieved due to the resistant siliceous bedrock. Nevertheless, longitudinal sections resemble B. (B.) launcelotiHowlett 1989 and B. (B.) alexandri Willey 1973. These taxa were interpreted to indicate Valanginian to Hauterivian ages on the western Antarctic Peninsula (Howlett, 1989).
Bivalves
Inoceramids [Neocomiceramus curacoensis (Weaver 1931), “Inoceramus” sp. cf. I. anomiaeformis Feruglio, 1936–1938] are present throughout the section and are generally associated with the background dark-colored siliceous mudstone facies. In some rare cases, their aragonitic shells are partially preserved though superficially dissolved, but most individuals are preserved as internal molds. Isolated specimens, up to 10 mm in diameter, are common, as well as clusters of 10 or more individuals that are similar in size. In one locality, a siliceous mudstone bedding plane of >10 m2 is densely covered by a monospecific shell assemblage of Neocomiceramus. Another surface is covered by tiny individuals, each of ∼3 mm maximum diameter. These monospecific high-abundance associations of equal-sized individuals in the Tyndall deep marine mudstone may have resulted from a massive and coeval larval settlement on the substrate, indicating opportunistic proliferation under unfavorable bottom conditions (e.g., Oschmann, 1993).
The range of Early Cretaceous inoceramids from Patagonia is poorly known to date, but Neocomiceramus curacoensis was recently described from the Neuquén Basin of west-central Argentina and there attributed to the Hauterivian to Albian, and possibly even the Valanginian, by Lazo (2006). The taxon was there interpreted to periodically flourish on low-energy muddy offshore substrates under restricted oxygen levels, which is similar to the depositional conditions interpreted for the Tyndall fossils. “Inoceramus” anomiaeformis was originally described from the Hauterivian of the Santa Cruz Province of the Austral Basin (Lazo, 2006, p. 1122).
Other bivalves observed are epizoans, associated with and attached to detrital wood fragments. We identified juvenile ostreids, inoceramids, and pectinids reaching size maxima of ∼5 mm. The absence of larger-sized individuals, especially of oysters, suggests a limited drift time (e.g., a few weeks). Wood-boring bivalves such as teredinids are absent.
Ammonites
Ammonites are present throughout the section. They were mostly observed in gray turbiditic sandstone but also occur occasionally in dark-gray mudstone units indicative of basinal depositional conditions. They are preserved as external molds of the phragmocone, or as internal molds of the collapsed periostracum. Their aragonitic shells are generally dissolved. Vertically and diagonally embedded specimens occur in sandstone units, indicating either gravitational sinking of shells into a soft water-rich sediment, or transport and deposition in a turbulent suspension. Even in the latter case, fragmented material is rare and some individuals are characterized by a preserved body chamber.
The ammonite assemblage includes Lissonia riveroi, Favrella americana, Pseudofavrella angulatiformis, Pseudofavrella cf. robusta, Pseudofavrella cf. garatei, Crioceratites andinum, Crioceratites diamantensis, and Aegocrioceras sp., among other taxa (Figs. 6C–6F). Similar associations were previously reported from Valanginian to Hauterivian strata elsewhere in the Austral and neighboring basins (Neuquén, Chañarcillo) of Chile and Argentina (e.g., Aguirre-Urreta and Rawson, 1997, 2010; Amaro Mourges, 2004; Aguirre-Urreta et al., 2007a, 2007b), as well as from the Antarctic Peninsula (e.g., Thomson, 1982).
Actinopterygians
Complete and fragmentary teleost and ganoid fishes referred to Semionotiformes and Pycnodontiformes (Fig. 6G) are locally preserved in turbiditic siltstone and sandstone beds, but are also common as discrete coprolites containing concentrations of fish bones. The fish record includes incomplete specimens with preservation of delicate details including the lepidotrichs of the fins. A light blue stain on some specimens (Fig. 6G) is interpreted as an early diagenetic phosphatization, but the verification of this assumption is pending. To date only fusiform fishes have been discovered, suggesting a more benthic assemblage. The size of the fishes did not exceed 300–400 mm.
Ichthyosaurs
Collection methods. Ichthyosaur remains are mostly exposed in polished sections due to the glacier abrasion but are principally preserved in three dimensions. Due to the exceedingly hard matrix, an extraction was extremely difficult and only achieved for five specimens. Therefore, most data were collected in the field. The outlines of bones exposed on the surface were traced 1:1 on transparent foil. The data set comprises field number, GPS value, biometric data, the directions of skull and belly, and taphonomic or anatomic specialties if present. In addition, photos were taken of each specimen, especially of diagnostic body areas, i.e., fins and skull. For extraction we used a high-performance diamond disc mounted on a fuel-driven rock cutter, and complemented the extraction with a pneumatic hammer drill, placing lines of bore holes under the specimens and then removing the sediment between them with hammer and chisel. Mechanical preparation with air abrasive and hand tools was initiated at the laboratory of Heidelberg University, Germany, but was impossible due to the exceedingly hard sediment and relatively soft bone. Chemical preparation of these specimens with acetic acid was not possible due to paucity of carbonate in the matrix.
Material. We have discovered 46 articulated ichthyosaur skeletons to date (Fig. 7; Table 1), including numerous specimens that appear to be virtually complete as discussed below, even though parts of the skeleton are commonly covered by sediment or have been eroded (Figs. 8–10). They were identified as Ophthalmosauridae (Table 1) and are probably referable to four different taxa: Platypterygius hauthali v. Huene, 1927, Platypterygius cf. hauthali, Platypterygius sp., and Ophthalmosauridae indet. (Pardo et al., 2012; Figs. 8–10). The specimens range in size from ∼0.5 to >4 m in length (Table 1). One adult specimen preserves remnants of three embryos inside the ribcage. Fragmentary skeletons are as abundant as isolated bones. In contrast, articulated but isolated body parts are very rare.
Preservation and taphonomy. All complete and nearly complete skeletons are preserved in fine-grained sandstone layers of turbiditic origin, with bed thicknesses between a few tens of millimeters to 0.2 m. Complete crania with teeth, vertebral columns with the tail bend including the tiny terminal vertebrae (Figs. 6H, 9), articulated flippers, girdles, and thoracic elements are arranged almost in their original anatomical positions (Figs. 8–10). These skeletons are compacted, and some elements show micro-fracturing or plastic deformation, especially in the thoracic region, or are slightly dislocated, due to a late diagenetic sediment compaction collapse onto the embedding plane. The excellent state of preservation and articulation displayed in these specimens indicate that they were embedded soon after death.
One nearly complete specimen (TY09) preserves two coprolites, one of which is lying adjacent to the gut while the second morphologically identical coprolite is lodged in the assumed position of the rectum (Fig. 10). This find provides strong evidence for the hypothesis that the intestinal tract of this animal was either active at the time the carcass was embedded in the sediment or that high water pressure expelled the coprolite from a freshly killed individual.
Another specimen, a bone assemblage interpreted as a regurgitation pellet |
the Eurozone crisis - are neck and neck. For New Democracy supporters, who were hoping for a clear win, it will be a nervous few hours. Their leader Antonis Samaras had portrayed this election as a choice between staying in the euro or going back to the drachma. But that's not how Syriza and its supporters see it - they believe it's about promoting a different kind of economic policy to help Greece out of a spiral of recession and unemployment. Syriza supporters gathered at Propilea in front of Athens University began to chant slogans when the first exit poll numbers were revealed. For now, the politicians are watching and waiting and probably biting their nails. Whoever wins, however narrowly, gets an extra 50 seats in parliament. It could be the decisive difference. But the winner still needs to put together a coalition government which is strong enough to last - and that may not be so easy.
He also said Greece would "honour its obligations".
The BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says that suggests Mr Samaras wants to press ahead with spending cuts demanded by the country's international creditors.
European leaders have warned that if a new Greek government rejected the bailout, the country could be forced to abandon the single currency.
While the radical-left Syriza and other smaller parties have opposed the bailout, New Democracy and Pasok said they would keep it in a renegotiated form.
Germany's Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said he viewed the election result as a decision by the Greek people "to forge ahead with the implementation of far-reaching economic and fiscal reforms in the country".
Eurozone finance ministers said in a statement that such reform was "Greece's best guarantee to overcome the current economic and social challenges and for a more prosperous future [for] Greece in the euro area".
They said they expected representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - the so-called Troika - to return to Athens as soon as there was a Greek government in place.
Germany Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle suggested Athens might be given more time to comply with its obligations.
"There cannot be substantial changes to the agreements, but I can well imagine talking again about timelines," he said.
Mr Tsipras, the Syriza leader, congratulated Mr Samaras on his apparent victory, and said he had the right to try to form a government.
But he appeared to rule out joining such a coalition, saying Syriza would "not sacrifice our position" of opposition to the austerity programme.
Difficult talks
If the projections from the interior ministry are proved correct, New Democracy should be able to build a majority coalition with the socialist Pasok, benefiting from a rule which gives the leading party 50 extra seats in the 300-seat chamber.
However, coalition talks may not be easy. After a first, inconclusive election six weeks ago, each of the main parties tried but failed to form a coalition government.
Election outcomes If pro-austerity parties (Pasok and New Democracy) form coalition Could have best chance of re-negotiating bailout
May say austerity measures need longer time-frame
But may need a third party to form majority If anti-austerity parties (Syriza and others) form coaltion Syriza threatening not to honour bailout
If so, Greece could be forced out of euro
Reintroduction of drachma would lead to devaluation, inflation and business failures
But could allow economy to grow If there is a hung parliament Third round of elections needed
More political uncertainty
Restricted access to bailout funds Q&A: Greek parliamentary election
The leader of Pasok, Evangelos Venizelos, proposed a broad four-party coalition including New Democracy, Pasok, the Democratic Left and Syriza.
"No decision can be taken without this national unity," he said.
Analysts suggested Mr Venizelos had doubts over the viability of a coalition with a narrow majority.
When his party was in power it suffered numerous defections and rebellions as it tried to impose unpopular austerity measures.
Our correspondent, Mark Lowen, says that with such a strong showing by Syriza, Greece could be in for an autumn of discontent by opponents of the bailout deal.
Four other anti-bailout parties look set to take between 60 and 70 seats. They include the far-right Golden Dawn, which looked set to secure about 7% of the vote.
Sunday's vote is being watched around the world, amid fears that a Greek exit from the euro could spread contagion to other eurozone members and deepen the turmoil in the global economy.
Tough austerity measures were attached to the two international bailouts awarded to Greece, an initial package worth 110bn euros (£89bn; $138bn) in 2010, then a follow-up last year worth 130bn euros.
Polls suggest most Greeks want to be rid of the bailout and its onerous conditions, but want to stay in the euro.
Various European leaders have warned they cannot do both.Sharon DeWitte is a biological anthropologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. Dr. DeWitte studies infectious disease through the lenses of bioanthropology, paleodemography and paleoepidemiology. An expert on historical disease outbreaks, Dr. DeWitte's research on the Black Death (the bubonic plague in medieval Europe) has been highlighted in the New York Times, American Scientist, and Time Magazine, and in a TED educational video.
Ana Duggan's Interests are broadly encompassed by molecular anthropology, evolution and population genetics, by the historical inferences we can make from genetic analyses. Her current research interests involve using ancient DNA studies to reconstruct the genome of historical pathogens to examine the evolution and epidemiology of disease in ancient human populations as well as the population history of Native American groups from Canada's East Coast.
Jeanne Serb is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and Director of the Office of Biotechnology at Iowa State University. Dr. Serb is broadly interested in the origins of biological diversity, with a particular interest in the evolution of eyes. Her lab takes a multidisciplinary approach to research, using data that includes behavioral assays, morphological measurements, genome analysis, and phylogenetic inference.Apple, Alphabet's Waymo, Tesla and dozens of other companies would like some changes to California's self-driving car policies.
The companies -- along with dozens of other organizations like Lyft, Uber, Ford and Toyota -- submitted comments to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which were then posted online. The suggestions range the gamut from deciding when a driver should have to take control of the autonomous vehicle to recommending paying customers be allowed to ride in self-driving cars.
The DMV told CNET that it's currently reviewing the public comments received on the proposed autonomous vehicle regulations. If it decides to make changes to its regulations, it will hold a 15-day public comment period for organizations and individuals to weigh in.
Autonomous car technology has become a big focus for companies such as Google and Uber, and speculation about Apple's self-driving car plans have been swirling for months. It's unclear whether the company wants to build an autonomous vehicle of its own or if it wants to power the infotainment and other systems of a car. Apple obtained a permit earlier this month to test self-driving cars in California.
Apple -- in its letter signed by Steve Kenner, its director of product integrity -- said it's "investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation." It wants to see changes to three California policies related to "disengagement reporting," definitions, and testing without safety drivers.
Apple's letter
One of Apple's criticisms focused on current and proposed disengagement reporting requirements, which explain when a driver has to take control of the self-driving car. Apple said the metric isn't transparent enough to make consumers comfortable with the technology. The company believes the correct metric for evaluating automated vehicles should include data on successfully prevented crashes and traffic rule violations.
Now playing: Watch this: Google's Waymo wants you to test its self-driving cars
California's current regulations would make companies detail how many times humans had to take over control of the system because of a system failure or traffic, weather or road situation, according to Reuters.
Apple wants disengagement to be defined as "an unexpected event or failure that requires the safety driver to take control of the vehicle in order to prevent a crash or traffic violation." It also said disengagements shouldn't be reported for system errors or failures, the end of a test or experiment, or several other scenarios.
The other two changes Apple requested relate the definition of development vehicles and testing without a safety driver.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other comments
Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Alphabet, had some issues with regulations related to driver v. no driver as the key distinction, the definition of "remote operator," liability, and information privacy.
"We're encouraged by the DMV efforts to develop regulations for autonomous vehicles that would help California remain a leader in the development of self-driving cars," Waymo said in a statement. "Waymo looks forward to deploying this life-saving technology in the state."
Tesla, whose founder -- Elon Musk -- wants to make self-driving semis and buses, argued that vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds shouldn't immediately be banned from testing or deployment on public roads. It also said it shouldn't be prevented from selling a non self-driving car that previously was tested as an autonomous vehicle.
"This prohibition appears to have been written without consideration for vehicles that were used as autonomous test vehicles but contain only production hardware and, once loaded with production software, are indistinguishable from production vehicles," the company said. "This is the case with many Tesla autonomous test vehicles."
Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Uber, meanwhile, said paying members of the public should be able to ride in autonomous test vehicles with drivers. The ride-sharing service got in trouble with California late last year for putting self-driving cars on the road and for picking up paying customers without permission of the DMV.
Within hours of the self-driving car launch in San Francisco in December, California's DMV told the company it was breaking the law and needed to halt the program until it got a permit. Uber refused to back down and said it would keep the cars on the road. After a week of back-and-forth between Uber and the DMV, along with an intervention from California's Office of the Attorney General, the DMV announced it was revoking the registration of 16 of the company's autonomous vehicles.
Uber didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Uber's main rival, Lyft, said language requiring autonomous car companies to notify local authorities about tests is "ambiguous" and could create confusion and delays in the testing process. It proposed that the DMV could operate a webpage where manufacturers could post notices regarding their proposed testing areas. "Such a website would not only streamline the notice requirements, but also increase public access to this information," it said in its letter.
Lyft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Car laws
The state of California has been working on autonomous vehicle regulations for nearly two years. In mid-December 2015, it released its first draft for review. In September 2016, it released its revised draft. After taking into account feedback, California published its latest proposed regulations on March 10, which set off a 45-day public comment hearing.
Along with big tech companies, other commenters during that time included insurers, car dealers' associations, "a concerned citizen" and Fathers Against Drunk Driving.
The DMV plans to summarize and respond to all comments when it submits its regulations to the Office of Administrative Law for approval. If the OAL approves the regulations, they become law that go into effect 120 days after their approval. The DMV estimates the regulations could be in effect by the end of November, a spokesperson said.
Reuters earlier reported the news.
Does the Mac still matter? Apple execs tell why the MacBook Pro was over four years in the making, and why we should care.
Solving for XX: The industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech."
Update at 4:30 p.m. PT to add comment from Waymo.Looming cuts in Medicare payments to doctors could cause a “catastrophic” drop in health care services to seniors unless Congress approves a 13-month, $15.4 billion temporary fix this month, the president of the American Medical Association said Monday in San Diego.
The pay cut scheduled to take effect Dec. 1 would reduce Medicare physician payments by 23 percent for the rest of the year and an additional 1.9 percent beginning in January.
If the cuts are implemented, some doctors may be forced to limit the number of Medicare patients they see or face going out of business, said AMA President Dr. Cecil Wilson.
“This crisis can only be prevented if Congress takes quick action to prevent this cut,” Wilson said at a news conference at the San Diego Marriot Hotel, where the association is holding its semiannual policy meeting this week.
Medicare payments to physicians are calculated on a formula called “sustainable growth rates” approved by Congress in 1997. The amount is set each March, based on the gross domestic product. Every year since 2003, Congress has overridden the formula to prevent cuts to physician reimbursements.
That happened again this year, when the formula translated into a 21.2 percent cut to physician payments. Three times last spring, Congress delayed implementing the cut. In June, lawmakers voted nearly unanimously to extend the same rates for six months and added a 2 percent payment increase for June-November.
Both Republicans and Democrats call for an overhaul to the formula to help control escalating Medicare costs, particularly as the first baby boomers start qualifying for Medicare in January. But neither party has spelled out a long-term fix.
The AMA’s call for a 13-month extension of the existing payment schedule includes a 1 percent increase in payments. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of the proposal at $15.4 billion.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday that President Barack Obama viewed the issue as urgent, so physicians aren’t in limbo over how they will be paid.
“On Thursday, I attended a Cabinet meeting where the president stressed that preventing these potentially disastrous cuts must be one of our top priorities,” she said in a speech at the annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C.
“The American Medical Association has proposed a 13-month extension. And I hope that Congress will act quickly to pass it, so that our doctors and seniors can have some peace of mind while we work on a long-term fix,” she said.
Whether Republicans will vote for another extension remains unclear, after campaigning during the November election for budget cuts to reduce the federal deficit.
“Doctors throughout San Diego County would have found it difficult to accept patients with Medicare if the 21.2 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement rates would have gone into effect in June 2010,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach. “To prevent these cuts, I joined a broad coalition of my colleagues to extend the Medicare reimbursement rates.
“While this short-term fix was necessary, it is imperative that Congress act quickly to put in place a long-term solution. Otherwise many seniors could be left in fear of losing their doctors as another reimbursement crisis looms.”
A spokesman for Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Alpine said temporary fixes don’t address needed reforms.
“The best approach is a permanent correction but, until that occurs, temporary patches are the only option,” said Hunter spokesman Joe Kasper. “ I must emphasize: A patch is only acceptable if the cost is fully offset and it does not add to the deficit.”
The AMA’s campaign for a 13-month extension, rather than a shorter extension until Congress reconvenes next year takes advantage of a lame-duck session in which both the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by Democrats likely to follow the president’s lead. That will change next year, when Republicans assume the majority in the House.
The Democratic leadership will put the Medicare physician cuts due to take effect Dec. 1 and Jan. 1 on the legislative agenda this month, spokesmen for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told Bloomberg News in e-mails Monday.
Wilson said uncertainty over Medicare payments particularly threatens doctors whose practices included a large percentage of Medicare patients.
“A poll earlier this year showed one out of five doctors is already limiting care to Medicare patients because of the threat of future cuts and Medicare mismanagement,” he said.
During the three weeks in June when the extension had expired and a new one hadn’t yet been approved, surveys showed 57 percent of medical practices limited care to Medicare patients, Wilson said.
Wilson said the AMA will launch a nationwide ad campaign to pressure Congress to take action before the Thanksgiving recess. Asked how the cost might be funded, Wilson said he didn’t underestimate the challenge but that it was the responsibility of Congress to find a way. “This is their responsibility,” he said.‘More openness toward multiracial people is next policy target'
By Kim Se-jeong
Kim Hee-jung, minister of
gender equality and family
The government will put a greater focus on correcting prejudiced views of multiracial families and boosting the public's receptivity of them, said Minister of Gender Equality and Family Kim Hee-jung in a recent interview.
Her remarks show the ministry's policy focus shifting from the current policy of helping marriage migrants adapt to life here over the last decade.
"The policy has come a long way, but what's more important now is for Korean society to embrace these multicultural families more heartily," Kim said. "We will make greater efforts to raise public awareness that these families bring openness and flexibility to Korean society."
One such effort was the revision of the Multicultural Families Support Act passed earlier this month. The new law stipulates that services for multiracial families would no longer always be free.
A majority of immigrant wives in Korea are from other Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Mongolia and Japan. While Koreans often regard them as lower-class citizens in need of help, many are reluctant to help them, believing that the immigrant population places a burden on their own opportunities for welfare.
One support program for marriage migrants is a home-visit service, in which Korean language instructors and social workers visit the family to teach the Korean language or give counseling to make cultural integration smoother.
"So far, all foreign spouses received the home-visit service for free regardless of income level," the minister said. "But under the revision, this will change and multiracial families in mid- and high-income brackets will pay for the service. I believe this will help people see these families as more than just recipients of social benefits."
The revised law also makes it mandatory for teachers and heads of childcare centers and kindergartens to take action to protect children from multiracial backgrounds from discrimination. The ministry is working on more details.
Past and future
As the marriage immigrant population grew, so too did the need for effective policies.
According to the ministry, there are almost 300,000 migrant spouses in Korea, mostly women, and they are estimated to have had around 200,000 children. The ministry expects 1 million people will have multiracial families by 2020.
The government began to offer support programs for them in 2006 when the flow of marriage migrants reached its peak, with bachelors in rural areas looking for wives from other Asian countries.
The growing trend had various downsides, such as family conflicts arising from the foreign spouses' difficulties adapting to a new culture and relationship.
The government began offering help to marriage migrants through 217 multicultural family support centers. The centers have proven effective, helping reduce such conflicts.
Marking the 10th anniversary of the government's policy for multiracial families this year, Kim said the future policy focus for the next 10 years will be on children, especially those who join their parent in Korea later after the parent married a Korean citizen.
"These children are more vulnerable to identity crises, and it's very critical to help them grow without major trouble," she said.
One of the support programs is the Rainbow School, with 17 branches around the country offering information about Korea, Korean language education and academic assistance to new arrivals.
The ministry also runs a multi-language program, aiming at increasing fluency of multiracial children in Korean and the language of the immigrant parent. "We hope these children will be a bridge between Korea and the country of their parent," the minister said.
Some 6,800 children have participated in the multi-language program, and the government will make a database of the participants' profiles to support their further academic and job careers.THE Israeli judicial system has long flaunted its liberal credentials against Binyamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition. But in his documentary, "The Law in These Parts", Israeli film-maker Ranaan Alexandrowicz offers an uglier portrait of the jucidiary, arguing that it has sanctioned many of the more insidious aspects of Israel's 44-year military rule of the occupied territories, from the construction of Jewish settlements to the long-term detention of Palestinians without trial.
Mr Alexandrowicz's film opens with an assistant erecting a makeshift court out of a desk and a black chair, echoing Israel's construction of military courtrooms after its conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. For the next 90 minutes he subjects nine retired military judges to a dead-pan, close-up cross-examination as each take a turn in the chair.
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
As Mr Alexandrowicz acknowledges, much of the justice he inflicts on the judges is as rough their own. Their trials are brief; as one judge notes, his court was so swamped during the first Intifada (between 1987 and 1993) that he could hear 200 cases a day. And the evidence, as in many in camera courts, is partial. "The defendant has an interest to lie," says one judge, explaining why he preferred the word of interrogators and collaborators to that of the accused even when he could see evidence of confessions extracted under torture.
Many of the judges would make sophisticated dinner-party guests. Some are octogenarians proud of a lifetime of government service. In their wheelchairs, they evoke sympathy. Yet Mr Alexandrowicz chips away, exposing how they compromised their notions of equality before the law to grant Jewish settlers in the occupied territories full rights while subjecting neighbouring Palestinians to military decrees. To deal with the workload, one judge obtained a military ruling to extend detention without trial from 4 days to six months, with no access to a lawyer for a month and a half. "Military amendments are a bit easier than passing a bill through three readings in parliament," he chuckles. In similar ways, these men and their counterparts creatively interpreted international law to sanction house demolitions, deportations, extra-judicial killings and the classification of Palestinians returning home as infiltrators.
Towards the end of the film, Mr Alexandrowicz turns his spotlight from the judges to Israeli society as a whole. "We were doing it for you," pleads one, "to protect you so that you can watch this film." Judge Meir Shamgar, who rose through the military ranks to become a venerable Supreme Court chief justice, insists that the military courts protected Palestinians from the whim of military commanders. "Would it be better had there been no law?" he snaps, in a rare instance where his dispassionate guard falls.
Summing up, the director concludes that Israelis have accepted that safeguarding their own freedom depends on denying that of others. But he warns viewers that the values Israel upholds in the occupied territories have seeped into Israel itself.
"The Law in These Parts" opened in cinemas in America this month. Earlier this year it won the 2012 Sundance Awards for best foreign documentary.Mitch Boyer’s Dachshund Vivian is like many Dachshunds. She is a big dog trapped inside a small dog’s body. To help her, the writer and photo illustrator decided to use his skills to turn Vivian into the dog she thinks she is. The results are these brilliant comical photos.
Mitch says, “Initially, I was inspired after finding Romain Laurent’s quirky photographic style. In one of his music videos, a giant head is laying on the boardwalk in Coney Island, while singing. That image stuck in my mind and was the seed that led to the rest of this project.
“Like many Dachshunds, my dog Vivian thinks she’s much larger than she actually is. I thought it would be fun to make a photo series where her physical size was just as large as her personality.”
The photo series has become so popular, Mitch has now turned them into a children’s book. Vivian the Dog Moves to Brooklyn is about a big dog moving to the big city. Mitch hopes the book will help children going through big changes, such as moving, by watching and learning as Vivian learns to love her new home. The pair have launched a Kickstarter campaign to get their project off the ground.
Vivian’s not the first dog to get the supersizing treatment. See Juji, the giant Goldendoodle.Starbucks won't pay back barista tips Schultz tells workers that he plans to fight court order
Thousands of Starbucks employees got a personal message from their upset boss, who said the company was being "grossly mischaracterized" in the media over a recent tip pool controversy that could cost the company more than $100 million.
Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz, in a voice-mail message to employees Wednesday night, called last week's ruling by a California judge "extremely unfair and beyond reason" and said he wanted employees to know the truth.
"I want to personally let you know that we would never condone any type of behavior that would lead anyone to conclude that we would take money from our people," he said.
In a separate statement, the company also said, "Contrary to some reports, Starbucks has not taken money from any of its partners, and nor is there money to be refunded or returned from Starbucks." A spokeswoman said Thursday that Starbucks Corp. has no intention of ending the practice of sharing tips among baristas and shift supervisors in California while it seeks an injunction.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett, in her ruling last week, said there was "uncontroverted testimony that Starbucks continues to utilize the distribution of tips from the tip pool to compensate shift supervisors as well as baristas." Cowett ordered Starbucks to pay thousands of California baristas $86.7 million plus interest for breaking the law.
Cowett ruled that Starbucks had illegally forced baristas to share tips with shift supervisors, and the judgment could rise to nearly $106 million. The judge found Starbucks violated California law because "agents" of the company, or, in this case, shift supervisors, were sharing tips with baristas. Similar lawsuits were filed this week in Massachusetts and Minnesota, with threats of more suits in other states, including Washington.
In Washington, the Department of Labor and Industries doesn't regulate tips except to make sure they aren't used to offset the state minimum wage.
Earlier this month, Starbucks agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to about 350 assistant managers who claimed in a federal case in Houston that they were forced to work off the clock. The company, which is in the middle of a turnaround effort, faces similar workplace lawsuits in California and Florida.
Meanwhile, a hearing is set for May 1 before Cowett on how the California tip money should be distributed.
At all 7,087 Starbucks' company-owned U.S. stores, patrons can leave tips in a jar, and the money is pooled at the end of each week. The shift supervisor and baristas then divide those tips based on the number of hours worked.
Stacey Krum, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said the company is not involved in distributing the tips. That is left up to the employees.
David Lowe, an attorney for the baristas, said during the trial it was disclosed that a shift supervisor has direction over baristas and that California law specifically says a supervisor who directs others can't take part in tip pools.
"They are saying the press is mischaracterizing this, but the verdict says the plaintiff class was entitled to restitution," Lowe said. "To me, this is fairly obvious. They seem to want to make it a bigger story."
Lowe added that Starbucks is just being defiant, and the company has an attitude that "they are just above the law."
When asked why the company continues to share tips with shift supervisors in California despite the court order, Krum said it's because Starbucks is appealing the ruling.
A. Eric Aguilera, another attorney for the baristas, said he found Starbucks' statement about not refunding money puzzling.
"The court has ordered to refund more than $100 million," Aguilera said. "I don't know what they are doing.... It's clear from the beginning they broke the law, and all they can say is, 'Judge, it's not fair.' "
Krum said the statement and comments from Schultz were intended to provide clarification on an issue that has gained widespread notoriety and has become a hot topic among employees.
The company on Thursday issued a transcript of Schultz's phone message after it released another statement on the tip pool issue Wednesday evening. Schultz last Friday also sent a letter to employees saying the company didn't intend to change its tipping policy.
Schultz, in his voice mail message, said the company had been "grossly mischaracterized" in the media. He didn't specify any news organizations.
"When I read these headlines about Starbucks skimming or stealing from our partners it's just beyond my comprehension how irresponsible it is," Schultz told the employees.
Schultz, who regained control as chief executive of the Seattle coffee giant earlier this year, also complained about media coverage of Starbucks when reporters a year ago began documenting the company's stock slide. And Schultz last year created a firestorm when a Valentine's Day memo was leaked in which he wrote about the "watering down of the Starbucks experience."
The company's stock has lost more than 44 percent in the past 12 months as the company has faced challenges from a sluggish economy and rising dairy costs. Shares closed Thursday at $17.62.
Schultz ended his voice-mail message by saying, "Hopefully we will get through this in a way in which the truth will win out."
Patricia Edwards, a retail analyst with Wentworth, Hauser & Violich, said the controversy shouldn't hurt Starbucks because it historically has had a good relationship with its employees.
"One incident does not a reputation make, but multiple incidences are a different story," Edwards said. "It's a matter of how they deal with it. The ball is in Starbucks' court, or the tip is in their jar, as the case may be."By Tim Hanley
DC’s overall percentage of female creators ticked down slightly in March while Marvel’s took a sizeable, record setting jump. We also take a look at another record setter, this year’s Eisner nominations.
DC COMICS
After a higher start to the year, DC seems to be settling into the low teens, an area noticeably below their past bests. In March 2016, DC Comics put out 74 new comic books featuring 667 credited creators, 578 men and 89 women. Here are their charts:
DC’s overall percentage of female creators fell 0.3%, a fairly inconsequential drop that nonetheless resulted in a relatively low total for the publisher. The numbers were up and down across the board, with small drops for cover artists, pencillers, inkers, and editors, and small gains for writers and letterers. The biggest swing was female colorists, who tumbled 7%, followed by female assistant editors, who rose nearly 4%. The changes all combined to a slight decline overall.
The Past Year at DC: March isn’t looking much different from February, with both months among the lowest totals of the past 8 months:
The “Convergence” bumped April and May numbers aside, the second half of 2016 was much higher than usual for DC, and their current dip seems to be turning into a trend.
MARVEL COMICS
Meanwhile, Marvel’s set a new company record for female creators. In March 2016, Marvel released 81 comics with 720 credited creators, 585 men and 135 women. Let’s look at the numbers:
Marvel’s 3.7% jump took them to 18.8% female creators overall, a new high for the publisher. As with every March at Marvel, their numbers were bolstered by variant covers celebrating female characters and creators; female cover artists jumped 6% from February. But female writers, pencillers, and inkers all saw small gains, along with an increase of nearly 7% for assistant editors. Colorists and editors dropped slightly, but the sizeable gains won the day.
The Past Year at Marvel: This chart shows the significance of Marvel’s new high, relative to their past high but also the past six months:
Marvel’s noticeably above their previous best of 17.2%, and well ahead of the initial months of their new, post-Secret Wars line up. The real question is whether they can keep it up; the chart also shows that past highs are no guarantee of high numbers the following month.
THE EISNER AWARD NOMINATIONS
The nominations for the 2016 Eisner Awards, the comic book industry’s highest honours, were unveiled a couple of weeks back, and the announcement touted a “Record Number of Nominations for Women.” The release went on to say, “The biggest news this year is that 49 women have received a record 61 nominations (compared to 44 last year) and are represented in 27 of the 30 categories. In fact, women make up the majority of nominees in seven categories.” All of this is true, but raw numbers can be tricky. More female nominees are great, but if a higher number of men were nominated as well then the representation by percentage may not have changed very much.
But the percentages show that the Eisners have indeed set a record for female creators. The following graph charts the percentage of women nominated for Eisners for the past three years, and then back biannually from then all the way to 2004. The percentage is based on total nominations, so for example Colleen Coover got three separate nominations this year and gets credited for each of them in the tabulations. Here’s a look at how this year stacks up:
So that’s quite a jump. The overall total, 27.5%, is impressive in and of itself; women accounting for more than a quarter of the nominations is a massive change given that their percentage was in the single digits just a few years ago. Moreover, the change from last year to this year is sizeable. A jump of 8.5% is huge; there were several years where the Eisners didn’t even have 8.5% female nominees overall! The past few years of nominations have highlighted a dramatic shift in the industry, none more so than this year.
By category, women were nominated in nearly 75% of the categories last year. This year, there are female nominees in 27 of the 30 categories, or 90%. That’s quite a comprehensive field. Women are making comics at every level of production, in every genre and form, and are earning nominations accordingly.
For the past couple of years, we’ve compared the stats for the Eisner Awards to the Hugo Awards, the highest accolades for science fiction and fantasy which get announced around the same time. The comparison hasn’t been particularly favourable. Last year, when a campaign by conservative writers hijacked the Hugo nominations to ensure that white, male voices would finally be recognized in science fiction and fantasy, the Hugos still had a higher percentage of women nominated than the Eisners did. That was a real buzzkill for what had been a record setting year for the Eisners.
But the tables have turned this year. Female representation at the Hugo Awards actually increased from last year, despite a similar conservative hijacking. The percentage of women nominated for Hugos rose from 22.7% in 2015 to 26.3%, but women taking 27.5% of the Eisner nominations puts the Eisners on top. While topping the hijacked Hugos isn’t the most impressive of achievements, it nonetheless underscores how far the Eisners have come. Just two years ago, the percentage of women nominated for Hugos more than doubled those nominated for Eisners. The game has definitely changed in the wider world of comics, though growth in the superhero genre remains slow.
To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here. You can visit Tim at Straitened Circumstances and follow him on Twitter @timhanley01. His first book Wonder Woman Unbound is available now, and his new book Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet’s Ace Reporter was released in March 2016.
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
(Last Updated )
Related Posts
None foundThis show was broadcast April 7, 2014.
It is now archived here — Use Player Coming up today and every Monday at 9:00 am Pacific – 12 Noon Eastern – 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Tuesday.
Former White House Policy Analyst Barbara Honegger Blows the Cover on the Pentagon Attack!
BARBARA HONEGGER, MS, a former White House Policy Analyst, Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy during the Reagan administration, and Director of the Attorney General’s Anti-Discrimination Law Review at the Department of Justice, also served as Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School, the premiere science, technology and national security affairs graduate research university of the Department of Defense. Due to her access to high-level military and civilian officials, Ms. Honegger has been able to piece together the inside story of the Pentagon attack on 9/11. Ms. Honegger’s pioneering book October Surprise, on the deep story behind the Iran side of the Iran/Contra scandal, now vindicated by formerly classified documents, led to a full-subpoena-power House of Representatives investigation funded at the level of The 9/11 Commission. Her most recent publications are “Behind the Smoke Curtain: What Happened at the Pentagon on 9/11, and What Didn’t, and Why It Matters” : http://tinyurl.com/smokecurtain …as well as Chapter 13 of The Toronto 9/11 Report, a summary of the evidence for inside explosives at the Pentagon. Barbara Honegger was the only invited expert witness to testify at both the Toronto and Vancouver 9/11 Hearings, the two recent major 9/11 Truth events worldwide. She gave two invited presentations, on the Pentagon attack and on the real perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, at the main conference for the 12th Anniversary of 9/11 held Sept. 14-15, 2013 in Washington, D.C. (www.dc911conference.org). Ms. Honegger is one of the founding |
2018 10:47 Team Sonnenwagen Aachen HUAWEI Sonnenwagen Germany 10/14/2018 10:50 MTAA Super Sol Invictus MTAA Super Charge Australia 10/14/2018 11:05 PrISUm Penumbra United States 10/13/2018 13:25 SunSPEC SunSPEC5 Singapore 10/13/2018 12:49 UiTM Eco Photon TUAH Malaysia 10/14/2018 11:20 UNSW Solar Racing Team Sunswift Violet Australia 10/13/2018 09:51 Flinders Automotive Solar Team Investigator Mk III Australia 10/13/2018 14:53 University of Tehran Solar Car Team Persian Gazelle IV Iran 10/16/2018 17:00 Durham University Electric Motorsport DUSC United Kingdom 10/14/2018 12:52 STC-2 Nikola Nikola Thailand 10/13/2018 11:40 ITU Solar Car Team B.O.W. ISTANBUL Turkey 10/14/2018 12:16 RVCE Solar Car Team ARKA India 10/16/2018 17:00 Lodz Solar Team Eagle Two Poland 10/13/2018 15:05 TAFE SA SAV Australia 10/13/2018 10:51 National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (KUAS) & St. John's University Solar Car Team Apollo VIII Taiwan 10/14/2018 08:46
See also [ edit ]
Other solar vehicle challenges [ edit ]
Movie [ edit ]
Race the Sun, a movie loosely based on a participating teamRelated: Kurt Eichenwald: Let's Repeal the Second Amendment
My wife has breast cancer.
I write this, with her permission, while sitting in the hospital waiting room as she undergoes surgery. Afterward, there will be another surgery, radiation, and probably chemo, but what else might be in the offing is guesswork at this point. I’ll know more this afternoon, when the operation is over.
Theresa discovered the lump four weeks ago while we were watching television. Fortunately, as a doctor with excellent health insurance, she was able to take quick action. The next day, she had a mammogram and sonogram. Soon after, a radiologist biopsied the growth; we were notified that it was malignant in a call from her doctor seconds before a flight attendant told us to shut off our phones in preparation for takeoff. We quickly met with the surgeon and scheduled today’s operation. Before Theresa left the office, she had a blood test for genetic markers. The next day, an M.R.I.
The whirlwind of activity sometimes allowed us to sidestep our feelings; at the beginning, the diagnosis seemed more like a list of things to do rather than a potentially life-threatening condition. There was, of course, denial. When we informed our sons of what was happening, Theresa wasn’t able to use the words “breast cancer.” I did, and she later told me that, when I said the term, she felt like I was talking about someone else.
Of course, there was fear: she worried about the possibility of a mastectomy, I only worried that she would die. And finally, in that very short time frame of a few weeks, we reached some level of acceptance.
But there were other feelings that struck us hard: fury, dismay, contempt. Not at our situation, but at the realization that untold thousands of women would not be as lucky as Theresa. Instead, they will die because of conservatives’ endless efforts to block poor women from having access to mammograms, breast exams and treatment. Theresa detected her cancer early enough that we feel confident she will survive. But we’re both aware that, right now, there are other women who don’t know they have this vicious invader growing inside them and will not find out until it is too late. Their husbands and loved ones will not have the chance, as I do, to sit in the waiting room of the hospital, and instead will stand at the entryway of the funeral home.
Many Republicans, either out of self-delusion or deceit, deny they are causing any such thing. But there is no question that, in their obsession with zygotes, embryos, and non-viable fetuses as part of their supposed pro-life stance, they are effectively murdering real, walking, talking women—mothers and daughters, grandmothers and sisters, all sacrificed on an altar of Pecksniffian hypocrisy and contemptible disregard by people who have the insurance, connections, and available health care to feel certain their politics won’t kill their loved ones. Perhaps Theresa and I are re-directing our anger from the cancer, but so be it; our rage has focused on the financially comfortable, morally blind, and arrogantly self-righteous who tyrannically conspire to rob poor women of years of life they might otherwise have. It is for this reason that Theresa is willing to disclose her condition, in hopes that, in doing so, we will help highlight how politicians are blithely choosing to kill women who are not as fortunate as she is.
We live in Texas, a state that often makes us proud of its communities and ashamed of its politicians, and have been dealing with our breast-cancer scare at the same time Republicans in the state House have been rushing forward with the now-infamous anti-abortion legislation (or, as I prefer to call it, the forced-birth bill). For a moment, forget the scientific nonsense and bogus assertions that have fed this debate—that rape kits used by law enforcement to collect evidence can prevent pregnancy, that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks (contrary to scientific evidence), that proof of that pain can be seen in the “fact” that male fetuses masturbate at 20 weeks, that the American economic crisis was caused by abortions, that an abortionist distributed ineffective birth control to teenagers so he could make millions of dollars performing the procedure, and on and on.
Related: Kurt Eichenwald on the Lunacy of Texas’s Gun Laws
What is scary here is not that kind of silliness, but what it shows about a scientific debate devoid of science: the advocates *just don’t care.Like a boy trying to justify what he wants to believe, rather than forming belief around demonstrable facts, the Texas legislators and their mostly G.O.P. counterparts around the country aren’t making arguments. They’re just saying thingsbased on a woeful ignorance of the issues involved.*And small wonder: working in the Texas state legislature is a part-time job, involving people whose knowledge comes not from public-policy analysis but from all sorts of other professions. Lawyers, farmers, real-estate title searchers, and the like. One of the primary supporters of the House bill, Rep. Cindy Burkett, is the owner of three Subway sandwich restaurants. Given that she and other legislators are ignoring the recommendations and input from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, where have they learned about medical issues in public policy?
Apparently nowhere. Let’s set aside the 20-week debate, since that is unrelated to the issue of access to breast-cancer screening and other women’s-health care. Also, it is a topic I think honest people can have reasonable disagreements about. Instead, let’s talk about the other rules in this legislation that will kill people.
One of the requirements of the legislation is that any facility performing abortions must have a doctor on staff who has admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles away that has an obstetrical or gynecological health service. This is something that the Texas Hospital Association says is a bad idea. But when asked in the course of the House “debate” to define the words in this requirement, Burkett could not even explain what admitting privileges are!****She, like the other forced birthers in the debate, just picked up the idea from the anti-abortion crowd that advanced it in states around the country as a means of shutting down clinics that provide the procedures.
But her lack of knowledge is nothing compared to that of Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, the bill’s author and the primary proponent of both the “rape kits can stop pregnancies” and “fetal pain at 20 weeks” nonsense. (She is also the legislator who, famously in Texas, opposed state funding of prenatal care—essential for the health of babies—because fetuses “aren’t born yet.” The sanctity of life, it seems, is not as important as the sanctity of tax dollars.) If the consequences of her ignorance were not so dire, Laubenberg could perhaps be forgiven for it. As she has zero medical training and her sole background credit is as a city-council member in a town of just under 4,000 people, there is no reason to expect that she would know anything about health issues.
And boy, did it show: when questioned by her colleagues earlier this month about what the bill contained, she was not only unable to answer questions, but she seemed unfamiliar with the legislation. She didn’t comprehend how doctors receive admitting privileges. While the legislation requires significant, expensive, and often financially impossible upgrades in the facilities that provide abortions, she refused to consider amendments to provide the clinics with money to meet new standards. She dismissed concerns that the bill would shut down health clinics as “hypothetical” (even though her forced-birther allies proclaim that is the reason for the clinic restrictions). And, whenever she faced a difficult question, she simply refused to respond.
Since you don’t understand the issue beyond your desire to limit abortions, Rep. Laubenberg, let me put the meaning of what you have done in clear terms: through your ignorance or incompetence or general lack of interest in the well-being of people who don’t look like you or have your size bank account, you will be responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of Texas women. You, Rep. Laubenberg, will be a murderer, no different than some street punk who shoots up a liquor store. His weapon is a gun; yours, a smug satisfaction with your limited understanding of health policy. If Theresa and I were among the rural poor, she would now almost certainly be one the many people you would kill as a result of her inability to gain access to breast screenings. And for that, you deserve not only our contempt, but the contempt of every decent human being with the humility and intelligence to recognize the impact of the legislation you have “written,” yet aren’t bright enough to understand.
Here is reality: Women’s-health clinics have been under assault for years. The legislature already barred Planned Parenthood—the conservative’s abortion boogeyman—from the state’s Women’s Health Program because it funds abortion clinics. Abortions make up just 3 percent of the services the organization performs (a number that was lyingly transformed in a speech by United States Senator Jon Kyl into 97 percent; an aide to Kyl later famously proclaimed that the falsehood “was not intended as a factual statement.”) Planned Parenthood estimates that 130,000 women in Texas go without preventive health care, like breast-cancer screenings, due to the cuts to women’s-health-care funding.
Such services are now available at other clinics that are not affiliated with Planned Parenthood, but not for long under the dictates of Laubenberg and her murderous allies. Since few of the clinics in Texas meet the strict and almost unprecedented standards in the legislation—nor do they have the money to meet the demands—many will have to close, even though abortions have proven to be among the safest procedures conducted in the state.
I just took a break. Theresa is still in surgery, and Dr. Aditi Anand, her pathologist, stopped by the waiting room to discuss her case with me. After our talk, I mentioned what I was writing and why. Dr. Anand’s eyes flashed. Not only did I strike a nerve, but she told me of a problem I didn’t know about that is caused by the onslaught against health clinics that provide abortions: even when doctors are willing to provide the services for free, the actions of the Texas legislature are all but guaranteeing that poor women at risk of cancer will not be able to find them.
Dr. Anand told me she is part of a Texas group known as the Bridge Breast Network, a coalition of physicians, mammographers, pathologists, and surgeons who have all volunteered to provide care for women who suffer from breast cancer. In other words, the treatment is available for these women— not because the state government makes the effort to help, but because the doctors are willing to donate their services. But the linchpins of this whole system, Dr. Anand said, are the clinics that provide referrals—the very clinics Texas is shutting down.
“These women go to Planned Parenthood and other clinics where women who have no insurance go, and they get referred to the Bridge,” she said. When these clinics get closed down, there is no way for these women to go anywhere. “This is just a strata of society that isn’t savvy, that nobody thinks about, nobody fights for, nobody cares about.”
When the clinics close, “the clients cannot reach you,” Dr. Anand said. “They are going to have advanced disease.”
Dr. Anand left and another hour has passed. It is now late in the afternoon, and Theresa’s surgeon just came out to the waiting room to speak with me. The operation went well, she told me. The bleeding was controlled, although the tumor was large enough that Theresa will likely require chemo starting in the next few weeks. Still, while there will be a need for a second surgery, there was no sign that the cancer had spread. We had caught it early enough, thanks to our own knowledge and our access to top-flight medical care.
The surgeon told me that I would be able to see Theresa in the recovery room in about 45 minutes. She left, and I closed my eyes. Then, to my everlasting shame, I thanked God that we aren’t poor. I don’t want my wife to die of breast cancer, the way so many other Texas women soon will.
Follow @KurtEichenwald on Twitter.
Related: Tracing the Life of Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, and Why She’d Favor an Abortion BanPhotos by Edith Valle
Martín Hernandez Rodriguez (red shirt), Saul Nicolás Coronado (black shirt), and Gabriel Rodriguez Flores (white shirt) are a dance crew from Buenavista.
Last month we went to the dusty city of Matehuala, Mexico, in the northern state of San Luís Potosí on the high plateau of the Huasteca Potosina, in search of the pointiest long-toed cowboy boots ever made. Over the past year, the botas vaqueras exóticas phenomenon has overrun the rodeo dance floors and clubs of this area, much to the dissatisfaction of Mexicans who critique the fashions of their countrymen on hotly trafficked style blogs.
But we were told we were too late, that the wrongly maligned wearers of what are by far the most wondrous footwear we’ve ever seen had been replaced with short, square, “pig-nosed” boots by stubby contrarians.
We’d seen the occasional report about the exotic pointy-boot trend making its way stateside, spreading into Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and other places where big groups of immigrant Mexicans have taken root, and we expected that the odds were pretty low that the style had phased out of Mexico completely. So we made our way to Mesquit Rodeo and Desierto Light, two cowboy venues in Matehuala, where party promoters host dance-offs to music known as tribal guarachero. Essentially, this sound is a combination of thumpy house music, ancient Hispanic chants and flute work, and Colombian dance songs known as cumbia.
Los Hermanos’ boots.
Custom glitter boots from Zaragoza de Solís.
In Matehuala, guarachero has become an unlikely style of music where a bunch of people who in theory should not get along come together and get along. It’s also the music preferred by the men and boys in the long and pointed boots.
Participants in these dance contests spend the days and weeks prior choreographing intricate footwork routines and fabricating their own outfits with cheap paint and fabric. The grand prize, beyond the enthusiastic crowd’s affection, is either a bottle of whiskey or a few bucks.
A separate contest, we were pleased to discover, is held for the longest, most ornate and pointed boots, which are also spotlighted in public song-and-dance programs. The exotic boots are made by modifying boring normal ones with materials bought in local hardware and craft stores. The fanciest are adorned with LED lights or mirrors, while others incorporate paint and every color of sequins. They all get the glitter treatment no matter what. It was explained to us that some boots have measured upward of five feet in length.
So maybe the rumor that people were bored of these boots was nothing more than hateful slander by jealous losers with no long boots of their own.
Custom boots made for the crew Los Parranderos.
Homemade botas exóticas from Zaragoza de Solís.
Gabriel Amaro Barajas, aka Minri, told us that it is in part a competitive argument, that the people of Matehuala wrongly took credit for the creation of the botas vaqueras exoticas. He explained that when Matehualan creations were unable to keep up with the sparkly likes of his own, they pretended to be done with the scene altogether. Minri appears in a picture on
Chuntaritos.com, a site dedicated lousy fashion, and is identified as having “the most pointy boots of 2010.” There are more than 100 comments railing on his five-foot winners, which in person are so long that he is forced to tie them to his belt in order to walk. He assured us that his crew, Barrio Apache Hyphy, started the trend—not in Matahuala but in the small neighboring community of Zaragoza de Solís.
“Those from Matehuala don’t use these boots anymore because they couldn’t compete,” Minri said. “They can’t beat us.”
We asked him what he thought the opinion of the general public might be.
Gustavo, 11, and Carlos Mendoza, 15, are known as Los Hermanos. They took second place in the dance contest finals.
“When people see someone walking with pointy boots,” he said, “they say, ‘No way, that guy is insane! Why do you wear those boots?’ But I say that everyone wears his own style, right?”
Minri introduced us to a few others from his crew. There was Francisco the Cell Phone Guy, a group called Los Pachangueros, some kids from Guadalupe, and a couple guys called Los Carnales, from the ranch of San Francisco. They were all sporting pointy boots.
We also met a different Francisco, an 18-year-old kid who, together with his wife, sells prepaid phone cards and cases for mobile phones in a tiny store in a market nearby. Usually he can be found strolling around proudly downtown wearing aqua-colored skinny jeans and spectacular boots decorated with red beads. They’re at least a couple feet in length, maybe longer.
Besides making his own boots, Francisco also crafts boots that he puts up for sale—he’s created more than 100 pairs to date, by his estimation. He’s even seen his creations in the US in pictures on websites.
We asked him what he thought about the dustup between pro- and anti-pointy-boot factions.
“Everyone does his own thing,” he said. “To me, these are the best boots—that’s it. I like these very much, and I dance with them. I don’t care what people think. As long as I like it, I don’t give a damn. That’s what I think.”
Luis Angel Castillo Sierra from Buenavista..
Our favorite pair of glitter boots from Zaragoza de Solís.
Martín Cerda Cruz, of the Barrio Apache Hyphy crew.
Jesús Briones, from Zaragoza de Solís, is another member of the Barrio Apache Hyphy crew.Fall in the D.C. area is exciting, to say the least. From the festivals to fashion shows and gameday events, I’m a bit overwhelmed with everything that’s happening in the area right now! I’m thinking I need to make a fall bucket list so I can keep track of all these fabulous functions I want to attend. For all my local readers, what are your favorite events around town this season?
One thing I hate about fall/winter pieces is that they seriously lack in color, so the pop of red in this jacket was a pleasant surprise. I can already tell that I’ll be rocking this jacket quite a bit this fall! It’s super versatile; I can dress it up for work with a dress and heels or dress it down for the weekend with some flats and jeans.
Need help building your fall wardrobe? I’m giving away a $40 gift card to H&M! To enter, make sure to fill out the form at the end of this post!
jacket – h&m ( similar ) // skirt – forever 21 ( similar
*The H&M Gift Card Giveaway is open to U.S. residents only!
Keep up with River City Chic on Facebook Twitter and Bloglovin ‘!Announcements Get the latest news on the development of Tower Unite and other PixelTail games related announcements.
General Talk about Tower Unite and other PixelTail Games related things.
Roadmap: Trello Updates
http://www.trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap Read & comment here on the latest Trello developments of Tower Unite.
Developments More in-depth work in progress updates from the developers working on Tower Unite.
Suggestions Post suggestions & feedback on ways we can improve Tower Unite! Input is always welcome here.
Support Need help with running Tower Unite? Have questions about your compatibility with the game? Need someone to assist you?
Bug Report Please report bugs with Tower Unite here. Please read the guidelines before making a bug report!
Community Showcase Here you can post about things you've seen, done, or created in Tower Unite / GMTower.
Introductions New? Introduce yourself to the friendly Tower Unite community!
Community Polls Every so often we'll be posting a new community poll to gauge the community interest in specific new features or upcoming events.
Meta Discussion about the forums itself and how we can improve this site.
Off Topic Discuss anything not related to anything!Michigan wolf hunt Lori Hol.JPG
Lori Holm hugs her dog Mickey outside her Ironwood home. Holm witnessed a wolf staring down the small Sheltie. The incident became distorted by lawmakers who used it to ask Congress to remove wolves from endangered species status.
(Cory Morse | MLive.com)
Use this searchable database for details on wolf attacks from 1996 to now.
IRONWOOD, MI -- Mythical moments are born from small facts. They can become untruths. This is an example. The wolf and the dog are nearly nose to nose, perhaps five feet apart, eyes locked. Normally the small black and white Sheltie would be yapping. Not now. Neither moves. There is no noise. Until a scream pierces the late-winter morning. Lori Holm exits her tri-level home’s patio door to see the standoff. “It was a big wolf,” Holm recalls standing on the same spot on their expansive lawn where the incident happened three and a half years earlier. “When I was screaming at him the wolf turned and took a couple steps. My dog turned to come back, and the wolf did too.
CRYING WOLF
An MLive.com investigation into Michigan's first managed wolf hunt.
SUNDAY:
•
See details:
•
•
A Michigan myth:
MONDAY:
John Koski, Part 1:
•
Con essay:
•
Pro essay:
Local reports:
TUESDAY:
Ironwood:
•
John Koski, Part 2:
Local reports:
WEDNESDAY:
“I was screaming the whole time.” This true incident outside Holm's home daycare became the foundation of a Michigan myth, an MLive Media Group investigation found. Here is the
state senators passed on May 31, 2011, seeking to remove wolves from protected status. The House passed an identical resolution a month earlier. “Wolves appeared multiple times in the backyard of a daycare center shortly after the children were allowed outside to play. Federal agents disposed of three wolves in that backyard because of the potential danger to the children.” The paragraph was based on Holm’s experience. But there were no children in the backyard. There was a single wolf, not three. No wolves were shot there, on that day or any day. This is the story of how Holm’s scare was transformed into something else. It is the story of how Michigan lawmakers embraced an account that never happened, and it is the story of how they sent it to Congress for consideration – opening the door for a hunt.
No backyard shooting
It was March 30, 2010. Holm’s daycare, in Ironwood Township about a mile north of the city’s eastern border, had just opened.
Lori Holm stands near where she witnessed a wolf staring down her pet Sheltie.
Five children ages 5 and younger were inside eating. Holm had let her Sheltie outside, and checked out her front-facing patio door to see how “Mickey” was doing. Their yard is expansive, about 20 acres on their 120-acre lot. Looking to her right, she spotted the wolf and her dog, perhaps 20 feet away, close enough to see the wolf was wearing a radio collar used to track pack movements. “Oh my god, oh man, that was too close for comfort, especially when I have little kids,” says Holm, 44, her brown hair blowing in the breeze as she recalls the moment. On April 12, 2010, Holm again saw two wolves, running along a brush line at the rear of her property. It was early evening; the daycare was closed. She again reported the incident to authorities. Don Lonsway, a wildlife wolf specialist with U.S. Department of Agriculture, has shot many nuisance wolves. He confirmed the separate instances, and that no wolves were killed in Holms’ yard.
Don Lonsway, a widlife biologist and wolf expert, examines a wolf he shot at an Upper Peninsula farm. Lonsway shot three wolves, months after Lori Holm saw several of the animals, after residents of another subdivision complained.
In fact it wasn’t until November, seven months later, when multiple complaints came in from the nearby “Resettlement” neighborhood, that he took action. Lonsway scouted a wolf trail along the five-acre property owned by Bob Butler, a relocated Detroit-area resident and retired banker. Butler’s property is located about three-quarters of a mile from the Holms’ place through the woods. Lonsway shot three wolves there – one on one day, two on another - three days apart. “They certainly were not shot in the backyard of a daycare,” says Lonsway, noting he does surveillance on where to take out problem wolves. “Shooting around a daycare center probably would not be at the top of the list.” So how did an incident involving wolves, killed seven months later, get transformed into the dramatic shooting in the backyard of a daycare where children had just been let out?
A mystery to most
“I have not heard about that specific instance,” says Ironwood City Manager Scott Erickson. Neither had Mayor Kim Corcoran, nor City Clerk Karen Gullan. Former state Rep. Matt Huuki, R-Atlantic Mine, introduced the resolution with the false tale in the House. “The exact daycare where that was, I know I was told but that was a while ago,” he says, between phone calls from customers at Matt’s Auto Glass and Body Shop, on the Keweenaw Peninsula near Houghton. He suggested talking to the resolution’s author. “He was very much involved in the resolution, willing to give his experience in the whole process.” Judge Anders Tingstad Jr. is chief of courts for Ontonagon and Gogebic counties. This is a place where facts matter. Tingstad clearly recalled the incident, and ghostwrote the resolution. “Some of my finest writing,” he said. The judge had heard details of the incident from others. Lori Holms’ husband, Jeff, heads maintenance at City Hall. “She let the children out, after about an hour wolves show up at the brush line where they mow the grass,” Tingstad said. “She finally reported them and the wolf people whacked them all.” Later, told Holms and a federal wildlife agent confirmed no wolves were shot in the yard, Tingstad is surprised. “There were no wolves shot in the backyard?” he asks. “I apologize, because in writing that, it’s the way I understood the story. I’m sorry if I got that wrong.”
State Sen. Tom Casperson, R- Escanaba, introduced a resolution for Congress that misstated the facts of a wolf incident.
Recanting lawmakers' resolution?
State Sen. Tom Casperson introduced the resolution in the Senate. It ultimately passed both chambers and was forwarded to Congress, asking members to remove wolves’ protected status. Casperson, R-Escanaba, has been the Legislature’s foremost proponent of the upcoming hunt. He said he was shocked to hear the incident described in his legislation is not true. “That wasn’t what I was told. That’s how we got it from the city,” Casperson said, adding he’d renounce details in his own resolution if he can confirm the inaccuracy. “I would be happy stand up and retract that, because I am convinced we have got to be telling the truth.”
-- Email statewide projects coordinator John Barnes at jbarnes1@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.Minister for Families and Children Jenny Mikakos and Director of Secure Services at the Department of Health & Human Services Ian Lanyon speaking to the media about the Parkville Youth Detention Centre riots. Credit:Paul Jeffers The report describes how the overzealous use of "lockdowns" – where young prisoners are locked in their cells for long periods due to endemic staffing problems – was "increasing tension... and contributing to the level of risk". "Almost every level of Secure Services [which runs youth jails] has expressed concern at … the lack of staff and subsequent lockdowns have been a contributing factor" to the March 2016 riots. "On the day that I visited Remand South [at Parkville], it was in lockdown all day due to the lack of staff. Practice appears to be to rotate lockdown days across the centre." Mr Muir declared that youth justice staff "can not be expected to house the mix (remand/sentenced), complexity and severity of offenders in the current set of facilities," while also detailing serious staff and management failings.
Paramedics enter the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre in Parkville on November 14, 2016, after riots. Credit:Pat Scala The 61-page report was ordered after wild riots at the Parkville facility on March 6 and 7, 2016, which were filmed by television news crews and involved a small group of inmates climbing onto a roof and destroying property with poles. Mr Muir sent his report to the Andrews government in May, six months before the November riots destroyed a third of the precinct and prompted the state government to send young inmates to the Barwon maximum security adult jail. The government has refused to release the details, which also allude to the damning findings of an earlier 2015 secret report that Mr Muir also wrote for the state government on the same issue. The leaking of the report comes as Mr Lanyon, the man who has run Parkville for the past few years, has been moved from his job as the director of Secure Services into head office as a special advisor for Youth Justice Operations.
Mr Lanyon has been a polarising figure since he became a director, partly because of his attempts to rid the system of what he viewed as bad habits and dead wood. Youth Affairs Minister Jenny Mikakos – who only last week said she believed Mr Lanyon was doing "a very good job in difficult circumstances" – simply said through her spokesman: "As is standard practice, the government does not comment on staffing appointments made by the departments". A department spokesman said the change was part of a broader "system overhaul". "Recent events have highlighted the need to overhaul Victoria's youth justice system to best meet the needs of the community and young people... Mr Lanyon's policy and operational experience will be invaluable in this role providing expertise as we design and implement a new operating model and new infrastructure." The Muir report highlights how factors under the government's control, in addition to an unruly teen inmate population, are contributing to Victoria's youth justice crisis. But his report cautions against some of the tough-on-crime responses being proposed by youth justice staff union, the CPSU, and says it is "vital" to focus on the rehabilitation of young offenders.
Multiple government sources said Mr Muir's findings could apply to the riots in November and earlier this month. The findings raise serious questions about the government's decision to use the Grevillia wing of Barwon prison to hold young inmates. This has been controversial because Grevillia is plagued by lockdowns, staffing problems and poor facilities – factors which Mr Muir said had led to the Parkville crisis. Mr Muir blamed the March 2016 riots at Parkville on "the failing of infrastructure" to contain offenders who showed behaviour that "will almost certainly occur again". "A rising degree of tension in the [Parkville youth justice] Precinct over the issue of lockdowns as the result of staffing shortages … was a contributing factor" to the March 2016 riots, he wrote. "Inconsistency in practice between staff can be a trigger for escalated behaviours of clients. Inconsistency in practice can be exacerbated through the lack of permanent, experienced and competent staff such is the situation at PYJP [Parkville Youth Justice Precinct]." While he praised some of the staff at Parkville, including the centre's emergency response team, he also found that in some sections of the facility, inmates were "left to run around and break ranks with little control or discipline exerted by staff".
Mr Muir's report savages the state of buildings at the Parkville facility, saying the major problems he identified in his confidential 2015 report were not only "still held" but were worsening. "The site is in need of total redevelopment," he wrote, stressing that "hollow-core wooden doors in various parts of the precinct" were "totally unsuitable for a custodial environment." Ms Mikakos said several improvements were being made, including more staff, a new facility to replace the old Parkville centre, and a wide-ranging review to fix any other gaps in the youth justice system. Got a tip for the investigative team? email nmckenzie@fairfaxmedia.com.auLast week, the CEO of Tim Hortons laid out part of his case for why the chain needs to be able to hire temporary foreign workers. This is what Marc Caira told Bloomberg News: “If you don’t have access to some of the foreign workers where they are required, it will ultimately also impact on the Canadians that work in that area, because we can’t really deliver on the promise that we want in terms of delivering quality service.”
Translation: Let us import these workers, or the double-double gets it.
When you’re a national icon, on par with the beaver and hockey, it makes sense to play to your base when embroiled in a scandal like the temporary foreign worker (TFW) imbroglio. So, in the wake of Employment Minister Jason Kenney tightening the rules for companies using foreign labour—including a ban on using TFWs for low-wage restaurant jobs in areas where unemployment is six per cent or higher, and caps on the number of TFWs at work sites—the company has warned of longer wait times and mixed-up orders, perhaps on the assumption that Kenney lies awake at night wondering if your Extreme Italian sandwich did indeed arrive with the onions held.
And yet Caira is not wrong, in that Tim Hortons is a Canadian icon a great number of Canadians don’t want to work for. It’s not just Timmies that’s having trouble finding domestic workers, of course. Across the country, restaurants complain they can’t fill openings. Much of the focus has rightly been on the question of whether restaurants should be paying more to attract Canadian workers. But at the core of the issue is a problem that’s been mostly overlooked: Many restaurant chains now rely on a business model based on blanketing the landscape with locations in order to generate growth. It’s a fundamentally flawed strategy, and Tim Hortons is only the most obvious example.
You can see this play out by looking at the chain’s same-stores sales figure, which reflects the performance of only those stores that have been open for at least 13 months. It’s a handy measure that lets investors peer through all that dust from new-store construction to gauge the underlying health of a chain. In the case of Tim Hortons, average same-store sales have been deteriorating for years. In its most recent quarter, Tim Hortons posted overall sales growth in Canada of five per cent. But same-store sales grew just 1.6 per cent. Were it not for the 160-odd new stores added over the previous 12 months, Tim Hortons sales and profits would likely have been considerably less.
Tim Hortons’ chief coffee slinger knows he has a problem. In February, while unveiling a new growth plan, Caira warned that opening more stores can’t be the company’s only path to growth. More product innovation is needed, he said, and he vowed that Tim Hortons’ long-struggling expansion into the U.S. would finally start to pay off, with profits rolling in by 2018.
Then, to no one’s surprise, Caira announced another massive round of expansion: 500 more stores in Canada over the next five years. (The chain already operates 3,600 locations here, almost all of them owned by franchisees, up by half from a decade ago.) The message was clear: The old growth strategy may be broke, but while we fix it, here’s another restaurant 500 m closer to wherever you happen to be right now.
More from Maclean’s:
Now here’s why this matters to the TFW debate. A growth model that relies on opening vast numbers of new stores every year also relies on nearly unfettered access to cheap labour to keep profit margins from getting crushed. Tim Hortons has regularly said as much in its annual reports, in the section where it lists all the potential risks to its business: Any labour shortage due to “the cessation or limitation of access to federal or provincial labour programs, including the temporary foreign worker program,” could lead to declining revenues, profits and brand reputation.
In the past, Tim Hortons has said it employs around 4,500 temporary foreign workers, equal to about five per cent of its 100,000-strong workforce. That may not seem like a lot |
what he can, and leaves it to future generations of science writers to scour untapped realms of meme-space and rescue forgotten babies floating in their bathwater.
Further Reading
Aunger, R. (2000). Darwinizing culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blackmore, S. J. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dyson, F. (1999). Origins of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fracchia, J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1999). Does culture evolve? History and Theory, 38, 52-78.
Gabora, L. (2006). Self-other organization: Why early life did not evolve through natural selection. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 241(3), 443-450.
Gabora, L. (2008). The cultural evolution of socially situated. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(1-2), 104-113.
Gabora, L. (2011). Five clarifications about cultural evolution. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 11, 61-83.
Holland, J. (1975). Adaptation in natural and artificial systems. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Kauffman, S. (1999). Darwinism, neoDarwinism, and the autocatalytic model of culture: Commentary on Origin of Culture, Psycoloquy, 10(22), 1−4.
Langton, C.G. (1992). Life at the edge of chaos. In C. G. Langton, C. Taylor, J. D. Farmer & S. Rasmussen (Eds.) Artificial life II. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Mayr, E. (1996). What is a species, and what is not? Philosophy of Science, 63(2), 262-277.
Temkin, I. & Eldredge, N. (2007). Phylogenetics and material cultural evolution. Current Anthropology, 48(1), 146-153.
Vetsigian, K., Woese, C., & Goldenfeld, N. (2006). Collective evolution and the genetic code. Proceedings of the New York Academy of Science USA, 103, 10696-10701.
Von Neumann, J. (1966). The theory of self-reproducing automata. University of Illinois Press, Chicago.Quote Katushe Quote: Originally Posted by And how will I be doing the mission of killing 40 mobs as walker if I don't want to buy one with shards? I hate those walkers since I can't strafe and they can't jump AT ALL. Which means everything trips them and they are a horrible experience to walk in. Yea, I know, I am not forced to do that. That means I don't want the achievement.... BUT I DO!!
BOOOO!!!
That's all I have to say.
And to those who are saying that they are too slow and clunky...... Did you not SEE them moving Slow and Clunky in Eps 5, 6 and Eps 2(the for leg walkers). Those things are HEAVY and require aLOT of power to move.
Yea i get that we as 'beings' with more limberness can do this but come on........... Walkers NEVER did this in anything that I seen with them so why should they do it in game now?
On Topic, I think that people should have taken a bit of critical thinking in these missions. Yea it does seem like you have to pay shards for missions but I get we all have bad mojo about BW and their need to make our lives hard but I think that reacting this way was a bit overblown. OK this is off topic but I have to ask since SOO MANY people are ************ about it. Where is any Star Wars movie, Television show or comic or novel or ANYWHERE does it say that a Machine that has only 'forward' movement has a Strafe or can Jump?And to those who are saying that they are too slow and clunky...... Did you not SEE them moving Slow and Clunky in Eps 5, 6 and Eps 2(the for leg walkers). Those things are HEAVY and require aLOT of power to move.Yea i get that we as 'beings' with more limberness can do this but come on........... Walkers NEVER did this in anything that I seen with them so why should they do it in game now?On Topic, I think that people should have taken a bit of critical thinking in these missions. Yea it does seem like you have to pay shards for missions but I get we all have bad mojo about BW and their need to make our lives hard but I think that reacting this way was a bit overblown. Seething hate, rage ANGER I will harness unlimited power.I live off the sufering of the weak, their pain gives me strength, their agony gives me life and their death feeds the force from which I keep their suffering never-ending.Inside the secret and violent world of Gaston Glock, maker of the most popular firearm in U.S. law enforcement.
He is the man behind the gun. You don't mess with Gaston Glock. His most trusted associate tried. Lured into a dimly lit garage in Luxembourg by his colleague Charles Ewert, the Austrian Glock stopped to look at a sports car at Ewert's suggestion. Suddenly, a massive masked man leaped from behind and smashed a rubber mallet into Glock's skull. Ewert fled to the stairwell. "I am a coward," he later told. With Glock off balance, the attacker landed another crushing blow. "I was fighting for my life," recalls Glock, 73, during a rare interview with the press.
Springing up on legs toned by miles of daily swimming, Glock thrust his enormous fist into his assailant's eye socket. As the would-be assassin staggered, Glock pounded again, knocking out a few of the man's teeth. The bloodied attacker staggered, then collapsed on top of Glock "with his arms outstretched like Jesus," according to John Paul Frising, Luxembourg's deputy attorney general, who brought attempted murder charges against the attacker, the French-born Jacques (Spartacus) Pêcheur, 67. This was how the police found the two men at 9:30 a.m. on July 27, 1999.
Glock says he lost a liter of blood from cuts and abrasions and that he suffered seven head wounds. Yet as soon as he reached the hospital he summoned his personal bankers at UBS and Banque Ferrier Lullin. The banks held $70 million in cash, and Ewert had access to it all. By 12:30 p.m. Glock managed to move $40 million to a Swiss account. But by then Ewert had blocked the other $30 million with a court order. As he nursed his injuries, Glock wondered how he could have trusted the wrong man.
On Mar. 12 Ewert and Pêcheur were both found guilty of attempted murder following a three-week, nonjury trial in Luxembourg. Ewert received 20 years--the maximum punishment currently available. Pêcheur received 17 years for his role as the would-be assassin. The normally gregarious Ewert barely reacted at all, sitting motionless when the verdict was read. Pêcheur sighed and lowered his head. "It is a good day," said a pleased Glock who himself is constitutionally disinclined toward emotional displays. Yet Glock added ominously, "It is one step in a war," referring to future charges that may be brought against his former colleague and friend. Both Pêcheur and Ewert plan to appeal.
To appreciate the magnitude of this betrayal, consider that the relationship between the two men had been close and was a factor in the success of Glock GmbH. Ewert, a business consultant who once worked for the Luxembourg stock exchange, worked with Glock for 15 years as Glock's little-known gun became the sidearm of choice for U.S. law enforcement.
The U.S. police business was once dominated by Smith & Wesson and Beretta. Then in 1985 along came Glock with a gun made from a nylon resin that was tough enough to be made into most parts of a pistol (except the carbon steel barrel). The Glock was also revolutionary for its simple design--34 parts, compared with 60 or so for the Smith & Wesson.45 caliber semiautomatic--and its 24-ounce weight, to 25.4 ounces for the Smith & Wesson. A Glock shooter experiences a softer recoil because the gun's polymer frame flexes slightly when it's fired. Glock fans include the New York City police, U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and many international antiterrorist units.
These days Glock GmbH has an estimated $100 million in sales, two-thirds of it from the trigger-happy United States. A gun that retails for $500 can be manufactured for $75, and the company has a pretax margin nearing 60%, estimates John Farnam of Defense Training International, a LaPorte, Colorado, small arms instructor.
Success hasn't made Glock, a highly secretive man, any more trusting of the people around him. He has a few high-profile friends. Among them: Pope John Paul II and Jörg Haider, former leader of Austria's ultraright Freedom Party and a Hitler admirer. At his lakefront mansion in Velden, Austria, Glock's favorite room is in the basement, where he can control his home's inner workings, including the temperature of the tiles in his upstairs bathroom. He flies his own Cessna Citation jet wherever he travels. "There are fewer crazy people in the air," he says.
From his headquarters in Deutsch-Wagram, near Vienna, Glock has run through seven U.S. sales managers in 11 years. Last month his top lieutenant in the U.S., Paul Jannuzzo, a tightly wound former New Jersey prosecutor and 12-year veteran of the company, resigned as general counsel and chief operating officer. "Jannuzzo went crazy," says Glock, without further explanation. (A source close to the company says Jannuzzo was frustrated and had tried to quit before.) Jannuzzo, 46, and Glock clashed and agreed to part ways after the annual Shot Show gun convention in Orlando, Florida, last month. Glock had hoped to retain Jannuzzo as his general counsel while assigning the operational duties to another employee. Jannuzzo will remain Glock's outside counsel and declines to comment on the situation, though he earlier told FORBES GLOBAL, "Mr. Glock does not shy away from a fight."
He should know. Jannuzzo spearheaded Glock's efforts to kill the Clinton Administration's voluntary gun-control effort in 2000--it was that or face a multitude of tobacco-like government-sponsored lawsuits. "Extortionist," is how Glock refers to the measures that would have introduced an oversight committee, as well as restrict how guns are sold. (The company's obstinacy resulted in 28 liability suits filed by municipalities claiming that Glock is responsible for murders committed with its weapons; 11 suits remain.) Jannuzzo also led a successful patent infringement suit against Smith & Wesson, which created a gun that looked a lot like a Glock--"I felt like my wallet was stolen," Glock hisses--and resulted in an undisclosed multimillion-dollar settlement. And Jannuzzo acted as pit bull in notifying 12 record labels that the company objects to artists using the word "Glock" in rap songs such as Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit," mainly out of fear that Glock's name will become a generic term for handgun.
Glock is now more than ever a one-man show. His two sons, Robert and Gaston Jr., and his daughter, Brigitte, have company jobs but limited authority. When asked what her role is, Brigitte cracks in German, "Being my father's personal slave." Who has input into product development? Showing rare humor, Glock smiles: "You might call it a very small committee.'"
And so it has been since the beginning. Back in 1981 Glock was producing plastic grenade shells for the Austrian army, in addition to plastic curtain-rod rings. One day he overheard two colonels complain that no gun existed that could meet their specifications. When Glock offered to make one, they laughed at him.
"You do not laugh at Mr. Glock," says Christopher Edwards, the burly former deputy sheriff of Jefferson County, Kentucky, who now runs Glock's training program in Smyrna, Georgia. "He takes that personally."
Glock never doubted he could make a superior gun. "That I knew nothing was my advantage," he says. He worked on his weapon nightly in his basement. He test-fired it with his left hand so if it blew up, he could still draw a blueprint with his right. "I learned to stay out of his way," smiles his wife, Helga. The firearm surpassed all competition, and he received the army's order for 25,000 guns in 1983.
But Glock was eager to grow. Two years later he traveled to Luxembourg, a country where holding companies are not subject to income or capital gains taxation. During a chance encounter on a street in the city of Luxembourg, Glock asked a businessman if he knew someone who could help him expand his fledgling enterprise. "I am your man," said Charles Ewert, who claimed he had internationalconnections.
He also had a reputation that Glock had not been aware of. Ewert had a habit of forming offshore companies to hold business interests for people who requested that sort of thing, earning him the sobriquet "Panama Charly." The two agreed that Glock would employ Unipatent, a shell company Ewert owned, to hold the shares of subsidiaries Glock set up to sell his guns. Unipatent, it turns out, had a dubious history. Ewert had bought the shell, which was once owned by Hakki Yaman Namli, a Turkish financier. Namli controlled the First Merchants Bank in Cyprus, and was convicted, along with the bank, of laundering $450 million in 2000. (The conviction was overturned a year later.) During the trial Namli insisted the bank was owned by Ewert.
Whatever his connections, Ewert became a public face of Glock outside Austria. Glock himself concentrated on manufacturing. In 1985 the company opened a U.S. subsidiary in Smyrna to promote sales to policemen. Good move. With the rise of drug-related crime, cops did not want to be outgunned by criminals and were trading in their six-shot revolvers for semiautomatic pistols. The Glock 17 held 18 rounds and, because it was cheap to make, few competitors could beat it on price. Its relatively few parts also made it simple to service.
Ewert opened offices in Hong Kong, France, Switzerland and Uruguay. Glock was pleased and told his family and executives that if anything ever happened to him, they should go to Ewert. "I was considered the eldest son," says Ewert, now 49.
All that changed in the spring of 1999. Glock received a call from a Geneva employee Ewert had fired. He claimed that Ewert had siphoned off corporate funds to buy a house in Switzerland, and hinted at other misdeeds. Glock brushed off the allegations as sour grapes. But to put his mind at rest, he asked Ewert for a meeting. That's when he got the rubber hammer in the head.
After his recovery from the attack, Glock says he discovered that Ewert had created dozens of offshore companies that appeared affiliated with the gunmaker, all with slightly different names and addresses. As much as $100 million, Glock's lawyers allege, had been stolen and shifted into companies Ewert controlled. Beginning in 1989, says Deputy AG Frising, Ewert was progressively taking control of Unipatent and its chief asset, U.S.-based Glock Inc. Glock's lawyers allege that Ewert awarded himself new shares in Unipatent in return for $600,000. Ewert maintains through his attorney that he did nothing without Glock's consent.
Both Ewert and Glock claim ownership of Unipatent. Each accuses the other of owning a phony set of unregistered bearer shares. "Glock says I have less than 5% of Unipatent? Glock is a nut!" says Ewert. "Ewert was never a partner!" insists Glock attorney Johann Quendler, of BKQ, Klagenfurt, Austria.
While Ewert plans his appeal on the attempted murder charges, a police investigation continues in Luxembourg on possible charges for embezzling and fraud, according to Frising. A conviction on those charges could result in monetary compensation to Glock. It's unlikely that Ewert will be a further irritant to Glock, as Luxembourg law mandates that convicts serve at least half of their sentence before being eligible for parole. And should Ewert be free on appeal, he could face extradition to the U.S., where he was indicted on three federal counts of wire fraud in Georgia.
Glock looks forward to getting back to business--making guns and fighting what Jannuzzo calls "dumb-ass lawsuits." He's also aiming at new markets. "Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, South Africa and Hungary all have forces carrying 40-year-old guns," says Glock's marketing director, Herbert Weikinger. But before he can elaborate, Glock sends him out of the room for talking out of turn.
"The attack was the best thing that happened to me," says Glock. "Otherwise, I would have gone on trusting Ewert."In this Oct. 4, 2016 file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange participates via video link at a news conference marking the 10th anniversary of the secrecy-spilling group in Berlin. (AP)
Hillary Clinton and her campaign have sought to cast doubt on the authenticity of thousands of emails leaked by WikiLeaks showing the inner workings of Clinton’s campaign.
It’s not just that they came from Russian hackers in an attempt to meddle in the U.S. election.
But also that they might have been doctored.
Vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine raised the possibility Sunday in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. Before posing a question about the email leak to Kaine, Todd said, "I know you have a blanket statement here: You don’t want to respond because you don’t believe that they have been confirmed."
"Well, you know Chuck, again these are connected to a Russian government propaganda effort to destabilize the election," Kaine responded.
Kaine later added: "The one (email) that has referred to me was flat-out completely incorrect. So I don’t know whether it was doctored or whether the person sending it didn’t know what they were talking about. Clearly, I think there’s a capacity for much of the information in them to be wrong."
Is there?
We can’t answer that question definitively, so we can’t fact-check Kaine’s claim that some of the information in the leaked emails might be wrong. Kaine’s answer can be seen as cover to distract from any controversial stories that may arise from the emails taken from campaign chairman John Podesta’s account.
But it also might be possibly correct in some cases, experts told us. The notion that a large percentage of the information has been altered, however, is less likely.
Cybersecurity experts told us that there is precedent to support Kaine’s claim. While most of the emails are probably unaltered, they told PolitiFact, there is a chance that at least a few have been tampered with in some way.
"I've looked at a lot of document dumps provided by hacker groups over the years, and in almost every case you can find a few altered or entirely falsified documents," said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of cybersecurity firm Taia Global. "But only a few. The vast majority were genuine. I believe that's the case with the Podesta emails, as well."
"I would be shocked if the emails weren't altered," said Jamie Winterton, director of strategy for Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, citing Russia’s long history of spreading disinformation
Experts pointed to the Democratic National Committee email hack that happened earlier this year. Metadata from the stolen and leaked documents showed the hackers had edited documents. For example, hackers were kicked out of the DNC network June 11, yet among their documents is a file that was created on June 15, found Thomas Rid, a war studies professor at King’s College London.
A few weeks later, Guccifer 2.0, the hacker believed to have Russian ties, released documents supposedly stolen from the Clinton Foundation. But security analysts reviewed the documents and found that they actually came from the DNC hacks, not the foundation. And some of the information was likely fabricated, like a folder conspicuously titled "Pay to Play."
In massive document dumps like the Podesta email leak, the risk of encountering altered documents is heightened because it’s easy to slip them in among thousands of genuine documents, said Susan Hennessey, a Brookings Institution fellow and former lawyer for the National Security Agency.
"It is possible the WikiLeaks dump of Podesta’s emails includes forged or altered documents," Hennessey said. "With any large leak, it is wise to proceed with caution and skepticism and verify the authenticity of documents before reporting."
The Clinton campaign, however, has yet to produce any evidence that any specific emails in the latest leak were fraudulent. We asked the campaign, and they directed us to various news reports about the DNC hack, government concerns that Russia might fake evidence of voter fraud, and fake news sites spreading false information about the WikiLeaks emails.
The email about Kaine
Kaine specifically mentioned one email on Meet the Press that referenced him and "was flat-out completely incorrect."
Kaine is talking about an email in the Podesta dump that this month fueled rumors Clinton had picked Kaine as her choice for running mate in 2015. The July 25, 2015, email was from political consultant Erick Mullen, and the subject was "Bob Glennon." The Clinton campaign would not confirm the authenticity of the email or identify who Glennon is.
But the email suggests Glennon had told two Democratic senators — Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — that Clinton had already told Kaine he was her vice presidential pick.
Mullen wrote that Glennon "Won't stop assuring Sens Brown and Heitkamp (at dinner now) that HRC has personally told Tim Kaine he's the veep. A little unseemly."
The email does not, however, indicate whether Glennon’s information was correct, nor do we have anything but Kaine’s word to refute it. We reached out to Mullen, but he declined to comment.
So why doesn’t the Clinton campaign provide some evidence that emails have been doctored, like publishing original emails? Experts pointed to political calculation.
By saying the emails may be inaccurate generally, the campaign can plausibly deny certain facts that the emails reveal. If they offer proof that a particular leaked email is fake, however, that risks giving the impression that any emails they do not refute are accurate. Or they just might not want the original email to become public for any number of reasons.
"It boxes the campaign into a bad spot," Winterton said.Ignoring Innocence The Wrongfully Convicted Forced Into Plea Deals
The case of Demetrius Smith reads like a preposterous legal thriller: dubious arrests, two lying prostitutes, prosecutorial fouls and a judge who backpedaled out of a deal.
It also delivers a primer on why defendants often agree to virtually inescapable plea deals for crimes they didn’t commit.
ProPublica has spent the past year exploring wrongful convictions and the tools prosecutors use to avoid admitting mistakes, including an arcane deal known as an Alford plea that allows defendants to maintain their innocence while still pleading guilty. Earlier this year, we examined a dozen such cases in Baltimore.
Smith’s troubling ordeal, Alford plea included, is a road map of nearly every way the justice system breaks down — and how easily a cascade of bad outcomes can be triggered by one small miscarriage of justice. For Smith, a young black man in Baltimore, it started with a questionable collar. Nine years later he’s still struggling to clear his name.
The Arrest
Smith’s saga began in the summer of 2008 in the low-income, high-crime neighborhood in southwest Baltimore where he lived. A man named Robert Long had been shot twice in the head execution-style that March. Long was a cooperating witness in a police investigation, and the killing had all the makings of a hit.
A man and a female prostitute both claimed to have seen the murder and fingered Smith. At the time, Smith was 25 and had a record of minor drug and assault offenses. When he was arrested about three months after the murder, Smith was adamant that he had nothing to do with it.
At this point, the justice system appeared to work as it should. Smith had a bail hearing before a judge who said the prosecution’s evidence was nothing more than “skeletal allegations.” In a rare move for a murder case, Baltimore District Judge Nathan Braverman released Smith on $350,000 bond.
“It was probably the thinnest case I’d ever seen,” Braverman, now retired, said recently. Smith’s alleged crimes were the most heinous of the cases before him that day, he said, but Smith was the only one granted bail — a sign of how weak the evidence was.
Smith has tried unsuccessfully to get the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office to clear his name in a criminal case in which even a top prosecutor said there were “some issues about the facts.” (Lexey Swall for ProPublica)
But what should have been the first step in freeing Smith from a misguided murder charge instead further ensnared him. Braverman’s bail decision drew sharp public criticism, and Smith was soon back in the sights of the same detective who investigated the murder.
About a month later, Detective Charles Bealefeld arrested Smith again, this time for allegedly shooting a man in the leg during a late-night robbery. Bealefeld, the brother of the then-police commissioner, wrote in his report that “word on the street” was that Smith was the assailant.
Smith lived near the victim and told police he knew the victim’s parents well enough to call them by nicknames. But the victim never named Smith or described his assailant as someone he’d seen before. He said only that a black male in his 20s shot him. Later that night at the hospital, the victim identified Smith from a photo array. Bealefeld then found a second witness, another prostitute, who he said also picked Smith out of an array.
At this point, Smith was convinced Bealefeld was targeting him. He told his lawyers that the detective had admitted during the arrest that he knew Smith didn’t do it. Bealefeld left the Baltimore police in 2008 amid a federal investigation into a racial incident in the department in which he was named publicly by a city councilman and local media. He declined to comment. Bealefeld is now an officer with the Annapolis Police Department.
After Smith’s second arrest, the head of the police union told the local press that it proved Braverman had been reckless in releasing Smith. “It’s frustrating to police officers who did the hard work to get this guy charged,” the union head said, calling for the judge to be banned from presiding over bail hearings.
The Trial
Smith was jailed until his murder trial 18 months later, and unwaveringly maintained his innocence. The cases against him were remarkably similar: The prosecution relied almost exclusively on eyewitness testimony — and in each case a key witness was a prostitute.
In January 2010, Smith went on trial for Long’s murder. Prosecutor Rich Gibson, a six-year veteran of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, hung his case on the testimony of the man who’d first identified Smith as the killer. The witness claimed he’d not only seen the murder from a nearby pay phone, but knew why it was done. Long, he said, had stolen drugs from Smith. Gibson ran with that theory, building Smith’s history of minor offenses into a story of a neighborhood kingpin slaughtering the victim to send a message about what happens to those who steal from him.
The Informant View note
What Gibson didn’t tell the jury was that the witness was an informant for the police whose assistance on multiple cases had repeatedly kept him out of trouble. The witness only told police he’d seen the murder after he was arrested on an unrelated charge, according to police files. And, court records show, the witness had a clear understanding that any breaks he got for his testimony would best be hidden from the defense. At one point, he even wrote the judge in his case directly to ask for a sentence modification for his participation in Smith’s murder trial, saying “as you already know, the detective nor the state’s attorney can contact me about my matter because that would be promising me something for my testimony.”
Even more troubling, there was evidence that the witness wasn’t at the scene of the murder at all. Baltimore has cameras panning much of the city 24 hours a day, and the murder was caught on tape. The shooter couldn’t be seen, but what was clear is that no one was at the pay phone at the time of the shooting, said Michele Nethercott, the head of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore Law School. The prostitute who also said she witnessed the murder wasn’t on the video either, Nethercott said. It’s unclear why the video footage wasn’t addressed in detail at Smith’s trial. Gibson declined to comment about his actions in the case.
The jury found Smith guilty. When he was sentenced to life plus 18 years, Smith told the judge, “They know I didn’t do this.”
That conviction did more than send Smith to prison. It pushed him into choices he never would have made.
The Plea
A year after his murder trial in February 2011, Gibson offered Smith a plea deal on the still pending charges for the shooting. Smith, proclaiming his innocence, reluctantly agreed. The system had failed him so badly once, he felt like he was “in a no-win situation,” Smith told the court.
The deal Smith made is known an as Alford plea. It allows a defendant to say for the record that he’s innocent of the crime but believes the state has enough evidence to convict him. Still, Smith railed against a central piece of Gibson’s evidence — that the victim had identified Smith from a photo array. That didn’t make any sense, Smith told the judge, since the victim “was my neighbor. He didn’t say ‘my neighbor did it.’ He didn’t say, ‘Well that guy across the street did it.’”
Under the plea, Smith would serve 10 years concurrently with his life sentence. But Smith was worried about what would happen when he was exonerated, which Smith fervently believed would happen eventually. If he was no longer serving a life sentence, he didn’t want to be stuck serving the 10 years for another crime he didn’t commit. So, he wanted his plea deal to have an escape hatch: He must be allowed the chance to get out of the 10-year sentence if he was found innocent of the murder.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams called the deal “strange,” but agreed that under those circumstances Smith could come back to his courtroom to revisit the plea. Gibson also agreed, according to a transcript, and that unlike most plea deals he would allow Williams full discretion.
The agreement was also laid out the next day by Smith’s public defender in a court filing. It said that although Williams made no promises about what his ruling would be, the judge would nevertheless be the one to “determine whether to change the sentence” and “the assistant state’s attorney agreed not to oppose the judge’s ruling.”
“I’m copping out to something I didn’t do,” Smith said at the hearing. “I just want to get it over with.”
The Exoneration
Astonishingly, mere months later in the spring of 2011, Smith’s stubborn faith seemed validated.
During a related investigation, the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland had turned up Long’s real killer and informed Baltimore prosecutors that they had the wrong man. Federal agents quickly unraveled the case against Smith. It wasn’t about drugs, as Gibson had argued. Instead, the victim, Long, had been killed in a murder-for-hire plot to keep him from testifying about crimes committed by his boss. Long had also specifically warned the Baltimore authorities not to include his lawyer in a meeting about cooperating because the lawyer worked for his boss. But they did it anyway. Six days after police searched his boss’ home based on Long’s information, Long was dead.
At Smith’s murder trial, however, Detective Steve Hohman had testified that there was no reason to investigate Long’s boss. He left out that police had done several interviews with Long’s associates that pointed to the boss as a suspect, Long’s family had told them that the boss threatened to kill Long days before his death, and the police had requested the boss’ phone records. But that information wasn’t turned over to Smith’s defense, a violation of Smith’s constitutional rights. Gibson told the jury that “no stone was left unturned.”
Federal agents also discovered that the prostitute who’d identified Smith had been six miles away receiving methadone treatment around the time of the murder. She recanted her statement, telling federal investigators that Hohman had yelled, banged the table and generally pressured her into her testimony. (By this time, the state’s other key witness, who supposedly saw Smith from a pay phone, was dead.)
Michele Nethercott, head of the Innocence Project Clinic in Baltimore, helped Smith fight to be cleared of a murder he didn’t commit and then to be released from a prison sentence for another crime he said he didn’t do. (Lexey Swall for ProPublica)
Hohman has since been promoted, and the Baltimore Police Department said it stands by its investigation.
Gibson and the state’s attorney’s office continued to insist to Smith’s lawyers that Smith had been justly prosecuted, according to Smith’s public defender and Nethercott, the innocence lawyer who later took up Smith’s case.
A year and a half went by while Smith remained locked up, serving a life sentence for a murder someone else had committed. Under pressure from federal prosecutors, the state finally and quietly dropped the case against Smith in August 2012.
“What was driving this case really was the U.S. attorney,” Nethercott said recently. The federal government was about to indict and prosecute another person “while Demetrius was sitting there serving life on a theory that was completely different.”
Rod Rosenstein, the top federal prosecutor in Maryland at the time and now the deputy attorney general of the United States, announced that the federal case had “resulted in the exoneration of an innocent man and the conviction of the real killer.”
No such declaration came from Baltimore prosecutors.
“What they were not willing to do,” Nethercott said, “was to say: ‘We clearly made a mistake.’”
Their error didn’t just damage Smith. Braverman, the judge who’d scoffed at the prosecution’s case, had been shortlisted to move up to the circuit court at the time of the bail hearing, according to The Baltimore Sun, but he wasn’t selected. After Smith’s case, the local press closely covered Braverman’s subsequent bail decisions. There was no follow-up acknowledgement from the police or others that his instincts had been right about Smith.
And even though Smith was cleared of Long’s murder, he was still in maximum security prison in Hagerstown, Maryland, serving his 10-year sentence for the robbery shooting.
The Half Measure
In May 2013, as promised, Smith went back before the judge to revisit the terms of that deal. By this time, he’d been in prison for nearly five years.
The case was now being handled by Tony Gioia, then head of the state’s attorney’s conviction integrity unit. Gioia made no mention of Smith’s innocence on the murder charge, telling the judge that the prosecution had “moved to vacate the murder conviction for a Brady violation” by the original prosecutor, Gibson. Brady refers to the 1963 Supreme Court ruling that said prosecutors must turn over evidence of innocence to the defense for a trial to be fair.
Gioia said he’d reviewed the police documents about the shooting, and had “some issues about the facts.” He agreed to modify Smith’s sentence to time served and release him immediately on three years’ probation. Smith was free.
But on paper he was still a convicted felon for the shooting, limiting his ability to get a lease and a job — he had three offers revoked after a background check. Smith wanted a clean record and to be completely free of the system that had now eaten up nearly a decade of his life.
Smith works with Natural Concerns Landscape Contractors in Maryland. Smith had three job offers revoked because his record still lists a felony for a crime he says he didn’t commit. (Lexey Swall for ProPublica)
In the four years since his release, damning new evidence had emerged that echoed the murder case. The prostitute recanted her statement implicating Smith and said she’d been coerced into identifying Smith by Bealefeld, the detective who investigated both of Smith’s cases.
The night of the shooting, the prostitute had told police she heard gunshots and saw a man she’d been with earlier flee the scene. Bealefeld, she said, showed her an array of photos and repeatedly pointed to a picture of Smith, saying “That’s him, isn’t it?” When she continually denied that Smith was the man she saw, Bealefeld threatened to arrest her.
“I was afraid I’d be locked up, and so I finally signed the array as he had directed me,” she said in an affidavit in June 2013.
But the new evidence had come too late. Maryland gives defendants a special path to challenge their conviction with new evidence of innocence, but those who take plea deals are barred. Smith’s Alford plea meant he couldn’t get the conviction vacated.
He had one last option: Ask Judge Williams to modify his plea deal again.
The Final Attempt
With the help of new pro bono lawyers, Smith filed a motion to change his sentence for the shooting from “time-served” to “probation before judgement,” which means a judge withholds finding a defendant guilty so long as the defendant successfully completes a period of probation. Since Smith had finished his three years of probation, the change would essentially wipe the conviction off his record.
On July 28, Smith walked back into Williams’ courtroom in a light blue blazer with hope that the judge would finally end his ordeal.
When Smith’s case was called, a familiar face stood up for the prosecution. Gibson, the original prosecutor, was back and he told the judge he opposed any changes.
“What |
and not instructions to create the '0' register: SSE mask_zeros = ~mask_dots & {'0', '0',..., '0'} = _mm_andnot_si128(mask_dots, _mm_set1_epi8('0')); = {'0', '0', 0x00, '0', '0', '0', 0x00, '0', '0', 0x00, '0', '0', 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00} And, finally subtract this to our original SSE "string" register: SSE ip_int = sse_ip - mask_zeros = _mm_sub_epi8(sse_ip, mask_zeros);
The shifting dance Alright, so now we need to create (1) and (2). (2) is fairly easy, as this is a constant value: SSE mul_ten = _mm_set_epi8(0,1,10,100,0,1,10,100,0,1,10,100,0,1,10,100); (one will notice that _mm_set_XX takes their arguments the "little-endian" way) (1) requires more work. The goal is to make sure that each number of the original string is aligned on 4 bytes. In our case, we need to transform ip_int from: SSE ip_int = {3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 4, 7, X, 7, 0, X, X, X, X} to: SSE ip_int = {0, 3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 0, 4, 7, X, 0, 7, 0, X} <--------> <--------> <--------> <--------> 1st block 2nd 3rd 4th We need to play with the SSE shift instructions to add the zeros needed to build the four blocks. The instruction _mm_shuffle_epi8 permutes the different bytes of a register according to another one. A shift of one byte to the right will be expressed like this: right_shift(reg) = _mm_shuffle_epi8(reg, _mm_set_epi8(14,13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0,0x80)); (0x80 indicates that the byte at this index will be null) For instance: right_shift(ip_int) = {0, 3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 4, 7, X, 7, 0, X, X, X} <--------> 1st block As we can see, this gives us our first block. We can "move" this block in a fresh blank register, and go on: SSE mask_32bit = {0xFFFFFFFF, 0 (32-bit wide), 0 (32-bit wide), 0 (32-bit wide)} SSE ip_final = ip_int & mask_32bit = _mm_and_si128(ip_int, mask_32bit) ip_int = ~mask_32bit & ip_int = _mm_andnot_si128(mask_32bit, ip_int) Here, we got ourselves with: ip_final = {0, 3, 7, X, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0} ip_int = {0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 8, 7, X, 4, 7, X, 7, 0, X, X, X} For the following block, we do not need any shifting, so simply "move" it the same way: SSE mask_32bit = {0 (32-bit wide), 0xFFFFFFFF, 0 (32-bit wide), 0 (32-bit wide)} ip_final = ip_final | (ip_int & mask_32bit) = _mm_or_si128(ip_final, _mm_and_si128(ip_int, mask_32bit)) ip_int = ~mask_32bit & ip_int = _mm_andnot_si128(mask_32bit, ip_int) resulting in: ip_final = {0, 3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0} ip_int = {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 7, X, 7, 0, X, X, X} The third block needs one shift to the right, so let's do it: SSE mask_32bit = {0 (32-bit wide), 0 (32-bit wide), 0xFFFFFFFF, 0 (32-bit wide)} SSE ip_final = right_shift(ip_int, mask_32bit) ip_int = ~mask_32bit & ip_int = _mm_andnot_si128(mask_32bit, ip_int) resulting in: ip_final = {0, 3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 0, 4, 7, X, 0, 0, 0, 0} ip_int = {0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 0, X, X} And the same for the last block: ip_final = {0, 3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 0, 4, 7, X, 0, 7, 0, X} This is the vector we wanted in (1)! What's left to compute are the shift "counts" that we used. As you now have understood, it depends on the number of figures of each block. We need to find a way to compute this one thanks to SSE instructions and what we've got so far, that is a SSE "mask" register that indicates the positions of dots and null bytes. In our example: SSE mask_dots = {0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF}; What we can do is start from this vector to compute the shifting count: first, shift this vector one byte to the left: SSE mask_shifts_count = left_shift(mask_dots) = {0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0x00} create a vector of 2 according to this mask: SSE shifts_count = mask_shifts_count & {2, 2,..., 2} = _mm_and_si128(mask_shifts_counts, {2, 2,..., 2}) = {0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 0} Now, do the same and make sure we do not erase a shift count already set: mask_shifts_count = ~mask_shifts_count & left_shift(mask_shifts_count) = {0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x00} shifts_count = _mm_or_si128(shifts_count, _mm_and_si128(mask_shifts_count, {1, 1,.., 1})) = {1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 0} <--------> <--------> <--------> <--------> So now, we shift our shifts_count vector the same way that we will shift the ip_int vector, that is: take the first 8-bit integer of shifts_count (here 1). It means that the first block needs a one-byte shift to the right. We'll do the same with shifts_count and end up with: shifts_count = right_shift(shifts_count) = {0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2} <--------> <--------> <--------> <--------> then, we take the 4-th 8-bit number of shifts_count, and do the same. In our example, this is the shift count of our second block (0), so shifts_count does not change.
, and do the same. In our example, this is the shift count of our second block (0), so does not change. go on with the 8-th byte, so a shift count of 1, and get: shifts_count = right_shift(shifts_count) = {0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 2, 2} <--------> <--------> <--------> <--------> and, finally, for the last block, the 12-th byte gives us the last shift count, that is 1! Using the last "shift count" and the same operations as above, we finally manage to create (1): ip_final = {0, 3, 7, X, 1, 8, 7, X, 0, 4, 7, X, 0, 7, 0, X}In particular, the publication shares a request sent by member of Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky to the defense minister of the Russian Federation, which, referring to Ageyev's mother, says that after compulsory military service, her son signed a contract a year later to serve in the Russian army and left for service in a military unit located in the town of Bataysk in Rostov region on March 18, 2017, Novaya Gazeta wrote.
He called her from there every week, and on May 5, 2017, he sent her a copy of an order dated May 4 issued to promote him to the rank of private first class.
Ageyev also reported that he was satisfied with the service and did not say anything about plans to terminate the contract. According to the mother, the last time she talked to him on May 30, 2017.
Ageyev's mother contacted the district and regional military registration and enlistment office for more details about her son, but she did not receive any feedback.
Read alsoTwo Russians among members of sabotage group destroyed by Ukraine troops in DonbasAs UNIAN reported, Russian soldier Ageyev was captured by Ukrainian troops near the village of Zholobok, Luhansk region, on June 24. He was part of an enemy special forces group.
Later, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Russian citizen Viktor Ageyev had "retired" the year before.Description: Has it a name? It has. Will you give it to me? Only through the veil.
MormonLeaks has published some new documents that prove
that the LDS Church has performed temple ordinances
for some notable deceased public figures.
The list includes famous non-Mormon people like Albert Einstein,
Bob Marley, Geronimo, Chief Seattle, and Crazy Horse.
At least I'm not on that list.
That'd be insane.
Mein Fuhrer.
You...
You were posthumously baptized, endowed, and sealed to your wife
in 1993. And your new name is Amulek.
Anyone who thinks these "Hitler Reacts" videos aren't funny, get out.
What the actual fuck?!?!
Are you telling me that I'm Mormon now?!
I *hated* Mormons! Everyone knows that! They're the absolute worst!
They're a bunch of self-righteous, bigoted blowhards
who believe in a pedophile prophet
who "translated" a bullshit book about Jews sailing to America before Columbus did.
And then they have the balls to baptize dead people
who never wanted to be Mormon in a million years!
Mein Fuhrer, according to Mormon doctrine, everyone can be saved.
WHY WOULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND GET BAPTIZED FOR ME?
But sir, through the atonement of Jesus Christ--
Anyone who believes in justice would want to see me burn in hell!
And what kind of name of "Amulek"??
Sure, it's not as lame as a name like "Hyrum,"
but why would anyone want to be named after a Bible fan-fiction character
that never even existed? It's garbage!
And what about people I killed like Anne Frank or other Holocaust victims?
Doing Mormon baptisms for them is so culturally insensitive that it's offensive as all living hell!
Same goes for the Native Americans on that list.
First you kill them, then take away their lands, and then you convert them??
And what about Bob Marley?
I'm a huge fan. A die-hard fan.
I love listening to his music while smoking a doobie.
But now....
I have to think about some 12-year-old, white-as-fuck deacon from Orem getting baptized in Marley's name, even though he was Rastafarian.
His views on spirituality and love aren't even remotely close to the corporate culture of Mormonism.
Maybe they're just running out of names to do temple work for,
but I just find the whole thing so insulting
that it's worse than if someone took a dump on his grave!
Don't worry, everything's gonna be alright.
I just feel bad for the poor sap who also gets my name.
My shelf would definitely break if I found out that I got the same temple name as Hitler.
But who cares?
The whole thing is fake.
They must be facing lower temple attendance among members and scraping at the bottom of the barrel
if they're doing temple work for a mass-murderer like me.
So it goes.Black South Carolina Democratic State Representative Wishes Slain Colleague ‘Had a Gun’ His remarks show that in the Palmetto State, prospects for tougher gun laws are slim indeed.
Rep. Todd Rutherford, right, chastises members of the House Judiciary Committee, and the Ad-Hock Committee for their lack of action regarding the impeachment of Gov. Mark Sanford, as Rep. James Smith, left, listens, during a meeting to debate the impeachment or censure of Gov. Sanford, in Columbia, S.C., Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Brett Flashnick)
A South Carolina state senator and pastor held court in the Senate recently, speaking in a booming and unmistakable baritone about an event fraught with political and racial overtones.
It was just the sort of issue politicians would rather avoid.
But the video that had circulated of a white police officer gunning down Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who fled after being pulled over in a traffic stop in North Charleston, demanded state leaders’ attention.
With his signature gentility, Sen. Clementa Pinckney, an African-American Democrat from South Carolina’s southern coast, told a Biblical parable. Then he pushed for leaders to pass legislation that would require police to wear body cameras.
“Today the nation looks at South Carolina and is looking at us to see if we will rise … to be the state that we say that we are,” Pinckney told his fellow senators.
He added: “The Lord teaches us to love all, and we pray that over time justice be done.”
Weeks later, Pinckney, 41, was gunned down along with eight other congregants as he led an evening prayer group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, where he served as pastor.
Again, South Carolina’s leaders are confronted with issues they would rather avoid. And while a debate has already begun over the Confederate flag that hangs in front of the state’s Capitol, the prospect of new gun safety laws has met with far more hesitancy.
It’s certainly not due to the depth of affection for Pinckney, who had held public office for nearly two decades and was respected by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Rep. James Smith, a Columbia, South Carolina, Democrat who serves in the National Guard, tells The Trace he hopes the shooting will serve as a wake-up call for lawmakers on gun safety issues. But he recognizes that while he supports universal background checks for gun purchasers and eliminating the so-called gun show loophole — private sales, such as those at gun shows, are not subject to federal background checks — many don’t agree, even in his own party.
Smith says it will be difficult to bring Republicans and fellow Democrats over to his side. In South Carolina, much as it is throughout the bright-red South, personal and political convictions about the place of guns don’t follow the traditional racial or political lines.
“I can’t explain that,” Smith says of the state’s gun politics. “I can explain myself, as a professional soldier who’s actually used weapons. When you talk to law enforcement, or real soldiers, they all think (fewer gun restrictions) is crazy. It’s important to ensure there’s responsible people who have weapons.”
Smith noted that the state’s biggest advancements on gun control came when the National Rifle Association stood on the sidelines. In 2013, the General Assembly passed legislation that prevents those with mental illness from buying firearms, known as the Alice Boland bill. This year, a reform of domestic-violence laws instituted state-enforced bans on guns for abusers. (The penalties are tiered according to severity of the crime.)
Rep. Todd Rutherford, the House Democratic leader and one of the state’s leading African-American figures (pictured above), tells The Trace the church shooting hasn’t changed his generally pro-gun stance.
“My first thought was ‘I’ve got guns, I wish I was there to stop it,’” Rutherford says of the attack. “I think that most people are so upset because we wish that Sen. Pinckney had a gun. We wish others in the church had a gun to stop this idiot from doing what he did.”
Rutherford stands with most of those in the legislature — Republicans and Democrats — who believe law-abiding citizens should have access to a gun if they want it, with as little government interference as possible. Gun issues are one significant way that South Carolina Democrats, including members of the Legislative Black Caucus, differentiate themselves from the national party.
Earlier this year, the House easily passed a measure 90–18 that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without any training or a permit. The measure is opposed by local law enforcement.
Most Democrats voted for it, as did Rutherford and seven other members of the black caucus. Most of the 18 votes against came from other African-American members. The vote shows how, in the South Carolina, the black caucus is generally split on the issue of gun control. (The House bill is expected to be taken up by the Senate when the legislature reconvenes next year.)
Like Rutherford, Sen. Larry Grooms, a Republican colleague whose district is near Pinckney’s, says his convictions about guns haven’t wavered in the shooting’s aftermath. He says he plans to support the measure to eliminate restrictions on concealed carry.
“People in South Carolina have a general distrust of government more than other states,” Grooms tells The Trace. “If we had the most strict gun laws on the books, would it have stopped (the Charleston shooter)? I don’t think so.”
[Photo: Rep. Todd Rutherford speaks at a 2009 House Judiciary Committee meeting in Columbia, S.C.; AP/Brett Flashnick]Welcome to Breitbart News’s live updates of the 2016 horse race. Though Hillary Clinton tried to depict Donald Trump as a scammer, a new national poll finds that voters think Trump is more honest than Clinton. Trump and Bernie Sanders will campaign in California tonight while Clinton will be in the Golden State from Thursday through Monday.
All times eastern.
10:14: Trump also vows to save the Second Amendment from people like Hillary who “don’t know what they are doing.” Trump says if Democrats nominate the next Supreme Court Justices, America will never be great again.
10:09: Trump says to ask Israel if walls work and says we have “no choice” but to build the wall while the crowd chants “Build the wall!”
10:02: Trump says Hillary is “not presidential material.” He cites Clinton’s failures in Libya. Trump says if anyone other than Clinton exposed national security secrets by using a private server, they’d be in jail for two years or more.
10:00: Trump: “They moved the World Golf Championship from Miami to Mexico City. Can yo believe it?” Trump says “everybody is moving to Mexico” because “our leaders are stupid people… led by our president, if you call him that.”
9:55: Trump says Bill Clinton destroyed manufacturing in America by signing NAFTA.
9:55: Trump urges audience to read Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute’s Peter Schweitzer’s Clinton Cash.
9:54: Trump blasts Secretary Clinton for “surrendering our jobs to China” while the Chinese were funneling huge sums of money to Bill Clinton to give speeches.
“These are crooked people,” he says. “They’ve been crooked from the beginning.”
9:53: Trump says Sacramento has lost nearly one in five manufacturing jobs since Bill Clinton let China into the WTO.
9:45: In Sacramento, Trump says Obama wants to campaign for Hillary to preserve his failing agenda at home and abroad. Trump predicts that Obamacare increases will be so large that “everybody will vote for Donald Trump.” He says Obama is trying to move rate increase to December. He calls Obamacare a “catastrophe.”
9:30: Anti-Trump protesters claiming America was never great:
Anti-Trump protesters claim "America was never great" outside Trump Sacramento airport rally pic.twitter.com/4tyiNADiCe — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
Anti-Trump protester carries Che Guevara flag with the words "hasta la victoria sempre" at Trump Sacramento rally pic.twitter.com/Bk9VsY3D6j — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
9:15: Scene in Sacramento, California ahead of Trump’s rally. Anti-Trump agitators starting to gather at rally site.
Anti-Trump protesters try to intimidate rally-goers with chants of "shame" and "racist" outside Sacramento rally pic.twitter.com/XFmLUe9kmD — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
Anti-Trump protesters trying to squeeze and intimidate rally-goer line outside Trump Sacramento rally #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/Vpu6gO6Tab — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
Law Enforcement forms human barrier between anti-Trump protesters who were intimidating rally-goers in Sacramento pic.twitter.com/PR2ksklrg5 — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
8:30: Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa starting anti-Trump PAC:
Calling Trump a racist and misogynist, Villaraigosa said his committee, called Building Bridges, Not Walls, would focus on organizing immigrants to oppose the presumptive Republican nominee in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida in the campaign for the Nov. 8 election.
8:25: Trump supporters getting ready in Sacramento:
Crazy long lines winding through the parking field outside Trump Sacramento airport rally … Protesters scarce pic.twitter.com/y8bmY3WXIP — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
Larger than life Make America Great Again cap outside Trump Sacramento rally #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/rdreIMagDU — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) June 2, 2016
7:25: In an interview with PBS’s Gwen Ifill, President Obama says he doesn’t mention Donald Trump by name because he seems to do a good job mentioning his own name. When asked if support for Trump is a backlash against his presidency, Obama says Trump is a “more colorful” character than other Republicans. He says Trump’s rhetoric is not dissimilar from what Republicans have been saying for the last seven years.
6:23: Clinton press secretary, on CNN, says she will do a press conference “soon” when directly asked if she will hold a presser before the CA primary.
6:21: Trump now calls “crooked Hillary” a “fraud.”
Crooked Hillary Clinton is a fraud who has put the public and country at risk by her illegal and very stupid use of e-mails. Many missing! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2016
6:19: Clinton press secretary declares nomination is “out of reach” for Sanders:
Clinton campaign aide: "The nomination is out of reach for Senator Sanders" https://t.co/6OZtrg079U https://t.co/Ur26w8bCZD — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 1, 2016
6:12: Sanders points out he has been criticized as “Santa Claus” for wanting to give away “free stuff.” He repeats that he will pay for all of his programs with a tax on “Wall Street speculation.”
6:05: Top Clinton IT aide planning to take 5th at next week’s deposition.
BREAKING: Clinton IT adviser Bryan Pagliano to take 5th at deposition next week, wants to bar video of session https://t.co/jtyyZBoW6j #FOIA — Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) June 1, 2016
5:55: Fed. Judge rejects CA voter registration lawsuit filed by Sanders’s supporters.
5:45: Report: “Bernie or Bust” folks planning protests across from Dem. convention in Philly. One leader urging Sanders supporters to de-register from Dem. party if Sanders doesn’t get nomination,.
5:40: Ridiculous Warriors/Sanders comparisons being made this week. Analogy more apt if Clinton had trailed and then mounted a comeback. The Warriors, who won a record-breaking 73 games and are the defending champions, were never huge underdogs like Sanders.
Last week, Golden State was down three games to one. Tonight, they finished off a great comeback in California. I like comebacks. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 31, 2016
Sanders continues to wear Warriors cap:
Bernie Sanders sporting a Warriors hat, entering a rally in Palo Alto @paloaltoweekly pic.twitter.com/etrHCpfUvA — Eric He (@erichesports) June 1, 2016
5:35: Trump planning U.K. visit after Brexit vote.
5:15: Cory Booker wants to be Clinton’s VP (“vegan pal”):
On VP buzz, @CoryBooker tells @kwelkernbc: "I've already declared that I'm gonna be her VP, her vegan pal & that is where I stand right now" — Monica Alba (@albamonica) June 1, 2016
5:10: Marist CA Poll: Sanders leading Clinton among Hispanics (49-46), voters 18-29 (80% for Sanders), first-time Dem. primary voters (72-28).
5:05: Clinton leading big among those who have already voted in California.
Among those who have already voted in CA, Clinton leads 58%-41% in NBC/WSJ/Marist poll — Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) June 1, 2016
5:04: On “MTP Daily,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon doesn’t accept the premise that Clinton will have the battle Sanders all the way to the convention if she loses California. Despite his candidate’s comments, Fallon says she is not treating California like “it’s a done deal.”
5:00: Marist CA poll: Clinton 49, Sanders 47.
4:45: Sanders doesn’t know how to pander as well as Clinton:
~30 min into Asian-Americans & Pacific Islanders town hall & @BernieSanders has not spoken much about AAs & PIs. Mostly stump answers so far — Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) June 1, 2016
4:39: Trump reportedly planning a trip to Israel before GOP convention.
4:25: Obama refers to Trump’s “provocative” Tweets and warns not to fall for the “okie doke.”
4:23: Obama claims that Trump’s path would lead to fewer jobs and lower wages. But a national poll found that voters trust Trump on job creation:
4:15: Obama says Trump is “crazy” for vowing to dismantle Dodd-Frank.
3:55: What in the world is Hillary Clinton doing?
With Secretary Clinton in Newark. pic.twitter.com/w9Z7Gc482i — Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) June 1, 2016
3:52: Obama claims it is a “myth” that other countries are “killing us on trade.” Obama claims most of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost were not because of trade but because of automation and technology. He also says it is a myth that immigrants are “taking all of our jobs” despite the fact that immigrants–legal and illegal–received most of the net jobs since the recession.
3:45: Obama says the GOP’s basic story is that working-class families have been harmed by a bloated and big federal government run by left-wing radicals like Obama. He adds that Republicans are also saying immigrants are taking jobs. Obama says the GOP’s message is anti-government, anti-trade, anti-immigrant, and anti-change. He also admits that he listens to conservative talk radio and watches Fox News. He says we can’t deport all illegals and put a wall around America.
3:40: In Elkhart, Indiana, a defensive President Obama says pundits say Republicans nominated Trump because of Washington hasn’t paid enough attention to working-class communities. He insists communities like Elkhart haven’t been forgotten in his White House. Obama admits that under his presidency “inequality is too high” and the gap between the rich and the poor is the greatest it has been since the 1920s. He says this “changes our politics” and makes it easy for people to think that the “system is rigged.” He says “there are plenty of politicians that are preying” on these headlines for votes.
3:23: Sanders calls for an end to all fracking:
WATCH: @BernieSanders says Democratic Party platform going into general election should "absolutely" ban fracking https://t.co/orXiuFoQpI — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 1, 2016
3:20: Trump U. Judge now trying to reseal some records.
3:15: Establishment Republican Vin Weber touting Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. But anti-Trump liberal Republicans may end up voting for them instead of Clinton, which would help Trump in some battleground states.
Vin Weber: Gary Johnson & Bill Weld have strong appeal — they're social liberals and fiscal conservatives @MSNBC #AMR — Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) June 1, 2016
3:05: New York City officials reportedly investigating Trump’s use of Trump Tower’s atrium for campaign events:
NYC scrutinizing Trump campaign's use of Trump Tower atrium https://t.co/vKAvjxRHLp pic.twitter.com/cVFVdtDoCk — NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) June 1, 2016
2:46: Trump within margin of error against Clinton in new Michigan poll (Clinton 43, Trump 38.5).
2:43: Interesting: Paul Ryan gave an interview to People on one condition: People magazine could not ask him about Donald Trump:
One condition of the Speaker getting on the phone for the magazine’s special Fathers’ Day gallery was that he not be asked about his party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, whom Ryan has famously declined so far to endorse.
2:35: Clinton campaign vowing to make Trump University a big campaign issue:
Confident that voters don't know enough about Trump U yet. So expect to hear quite a bit more from us on this topic. https://t.co/PdXD0CTBHk — Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) June 1, 2016
In New Jersey, Clinton wastes no time trying to paint Trump as a scammer:
Clinton: "Donald Trump enriched himself at the expense of hard working people… just more evidence that Donad Trump himself is a fraud." — Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 1, 2016
Clinton on Trump: "He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all these people at Trump University." — Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 1, 2016
Sen. @CoryBooker joins Clinton and Bon Jovi at Newark rally. Tells Clinton "you give love a Good name" pic.twitter.com/uLs1U618nt — Laura Figueroa Hernandez (@Laura_Figueroa) June 1, 2016
2:15: National poll: Voters think Trump more honest than Hillary by a two-to-one margin:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 30% of all Likely U.S. Voters think Trump is more honest than most other politicians. Just half as many (15%) think Clinton is more honest than most of her peers.
2:05: Sanders heckling “inevitable” nominee Clinton for coming back to California after she said the race was over and she would be the nominee:
.@BernieSanders says Clinton must have changed her plans to come back to California because she saw polling showing them close — MaryAlice Parks (@maryaliceparks) June 1, 2016
2:00: PGA moving World Golf Championship tournament from Trump’s Doral course to Mexico. On Tuesday evening, Trump quipped that he hoped the PGA has “kidnapping insurance” for the tournament.For decades now, humanities scholars and advocates have been talking about the “crisis” in their disciplines. If the symptoms are arguably lower enrollments, funding cuts and slashed tenure-track lines, then diagnosing the root ailment has become a kind of Rorschach test for observers, with proponents of a great books-style approach often attributing the so-called decline of the humanities to the rise of critical theory. Supporters of theory, meanwhile, say critical approaches have revitalized the liberal arts for identity-hungry students, and that the humanities are battling a larger cultural devaluation of the field.
A new book from Michael Bérubé, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at the Pennsylvania State University, and Jennifer Ruth, associate professor of English at Portland State University, is more sympathetic to the latter argument but largely turns the crisis debate on its head. The crisis in the humanities is not critical theory or lack thereof, and it’s not even numbers of majors, which fell several decades ago but have remained relatively steady since, the book says. (Citing a report by statistician Nate Silver, among other data, Bérubé and Ruth argue that the relative decline of English majors, for example, is modest considering many more students than ever before attend college; that is, numbers of English majors as a share of all majors have fallen in recent years, but English majors as a percentage of all college students has been relatively constant. In 2011, for example, 1.1 out of every 100 21-year-old graduates majored in English, versus 1.2 in 2001 and 1.3 in 1991.)
Instead, Bérubé and Ruth assert in The Humanities, Higher Education and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments (Palgrave Macmillan), the real crisis in the humanities is the large-scale employment of non-tenure-track professors with no academic freedom who are hired, rehired and fired relatively informally and noncompetitively. Bérubé and Ruth also propose a solution to the “deprofessionalization” of the professoriate: a teaching-intensive tenure track that would grandfather long-serving adjuncts but for everyone else prioritize the competitive hiring of those with terminal degrees.
“We propose that many full-time faculty lines off the tenure track be converted to teaching-intensive tenured positions,” the book says. “The tenure process for such faculty would involve rigorous peer review, conducted by their tenured colleagues at the same institution, but would carry no expectations for research or creative activity,” although service would still be required. Another, more traditional tenure track would remain for professors with research responsibilities.
The controversial part, the book continues, “is that not everyone now teaching as contingent, adjunct faculty would be equally eligible for conversion to the teaching-intensive tenure track.… Getting college faculty back on the tenure track, we believe, involves eliminating as much random, ad hoc hiring as possible, thereby diminishing the amount of faculty hiring that works as a patronage system and increasing the amount of faculty hiring that abides by nationally recognized standards of professionalism.”
Moreover, the authors say, “our proposal would give priority back to faculty who have completed the doctorate, on the grounds that (a) the doctorate is the appropriate credential for tenured faculty (except in fields where the [master of fine arts] is the terminal degree)… and (b) we are currently producing cohort after cohort of new Ph.D.s who are dumped into a system staffed by faculty who do not have Ph.D.s that is the structural cause of the crisis in graduate education.”
In an interview, Ruth said she was inspired to contact Bérubé, who is active within the national American Association of University Professors, following the publication of a 2013 AAUP report recommending more participation in shared governance for non-tenure-track faculty members. While Ruth wholeheartedly supported more say for non-tenure-track faculty in university affairs, she said, her own experiences in institutional decision making as department chair led her to believe that shared governance wasn’t possible without the academic |
not happen. Irvine reached an agreement with the Office for Civil Rights to expand its indoor track schedule and to increase its roster.
Irvine officials would say only that they were committed to providing equal opportunities. Ms. Ali said that her office encouraged more meaningful changes but all it could do was force institutions to follow the letter of the law.Text a cell phone from your computer when you do not have access to your cell phone or text messaging service. You can send messages from your computer either through your email or through programs designed for this purpose, such as Google Voice or Pinger for your browser or your desktop.
Sending a Text Message Through Email
Send a text to a cell phone using any email service as long as your computer has an Internet connection.
To send a text via email, use the 10-digit phone number of the person you are texting as the address and the carrier he uses as the domain. For example: (phone number)@.com. After you write your text message, click Send.
Using Google Voice to Send a Text
If you do not already have one, register for a Google account to sign up for Google Voice.
Video of the Day
After registering for Google Voice, you can use a new number or an existing cell phone number to text or call from your computer. Google Voice services are free for calls and text messages in the United States. However, Google Voice charges rates for international calls.
Sign in to your Google Voice account and click Text. Enter the recipient's cell phone number and type your message. Then press Send.
Using Pinger
To use Pinger in your browser or to use the standalone desktop application, you need to register for a free Pinger account. Pinger provides you with a free phone number to send unlimited free text messages from your computer.
Text messaging is always free with Pinger, as is receiving calls. However, you can send calls only to other Pinger numbers for free -- if you are calling a non Pinger number, you must purchase or earn minutes.
Using Pinger on the Web
Sign in to Pinger textfree Web in your browser.
Once you sign in, press the plus (+) sign. Type the phone number or email address to which you are sending a text message and press OK.
Type your message and press Send.
Using Pinger for the Desktop
You need to sign up for a free Pinger account either with the browser-based Pinger textfree Web or with the standalone Pinger desktop application before you can use the text messaging service.
Pinger Desktop is available for free download for Windows 7 or newer and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 or 10.8.
Sign in to the desktop application.
Choose the recipient of the text message, type your message, and press Send.In 2009 the star attraction at the conservative gabfest CPAC was Rush Limbaugh, and in 2010 it was Glenn Beck. This year's scene-stealer couldn't make it in person. That would be Ronald Reagan:
A smiling life-size wax figure of President Ronald Reagan watched over Friday's banquet, continuous loops of his greatest speeches played at a booth in the exhibit hall - "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - and college Republicans who were not even born when the man was in office snapped up Reagan posters.
Tim Pawlenty said that "Barack Obama is not behaving like Ronald Reagan, he's behaving like Jimmy Carter." (Must be the pending solar panels on the White House roof.) "I hate to tell this to our friends at MSNBC: Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan," Newt Gingrich told CPAC. Two weeks earlier, Mitt Romney wrote in a USA Today op-ed: "Reagan's legacy is very much alive. Only amiable dunces cannot see that."
OK, then. The message from the GOP is pretty clear, that America will not move forward unless the Republican Party comes to its senses and nominates a 21st-Century clone of Reagan. A couple of years ago there was a failed push for an ideological litmus test for GOP candidates -- which perhaps fell short because of some evidence that Reagan himself might not have passed it.
Since I spent a good bit of time recently researching the Gipper's actual record for my book -- "Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy" -- I decided to help by preparing this simple, 10-question litmus test for the GOP's Reagan 2.0 -- one that Reagan himself would have definitely scored 100 percent on. Anyone today who scores 10 out of 10 can pass the White House and proceed directly to Mount Rushmore.
1. Will you pledge to create a pathway to U.S. citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants now in the country?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. The 40th president signed the Immigration Reform and Control act in 1986. His former attorney general Edwin Meese said later: "President Reagan called this what it was: amnesty." Ultimately, the law provided a pathway to citizenship and the American middle class for at least 2.7 million workers who were already in the United States.
2. Will you support the concept that accused terrorists should be tried in American criminal courts and not military tribunals?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. In 1987, Reagan administration official Paul Bremer, later to be our grand poobah in Iraq, told the Council on Foreign Relations (PDF file) that ""a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against them."
3. If the federal deficit continues to grow, would you be willing to consider raising taxes to address the problem?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. As is widely known among progressives (but among conservatives, not so much), Reagan signed a series of tax hikes as president, including several aimed at undoing the deficit damage caused after his 1981 tax cut, which delivered its major dollar savings to the wealthiest Americans. Even the Business Roundtable urged Reagan to sign the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, which at the time was the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history.
4. Will you support legislation to end the scourge of assault rifles in America?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did -- albeit after leaving the White House. In 1994, in one of last public acts before disclosing his Alzheimer's disease, Reagan joined ex-presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in pleading with Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons (which they did...for ten years). The letter stated: ""We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons."
5. Will you promise to oppose the use of torture -- no matter what the circumstance?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. In 1988, Reagan signed the International Convention Aganst Torture, which was later ratified by the Senate. The measure states that under "[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
6. Will you appoint Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade as the rule of the land on abortion?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. While it's true that the Gipper appointed extreme conservative Antonin Scalia to the High Court, his other two successful nominations -- Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy -- were the deciding votes in reaffirming Roe v. Wade in the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood V. Casey. Indeed, Reagan shrugged off conservative complaints at the time of O'Connor's 1983 nomination that she wasn't sufficiently anti-abortion. "I think she'll make a good justice," he wrote.
7. As president, will you do what's necessary to save Social Security as we know it?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. For all his early rhetoric about rolling back FDR's New Deal, Reagan shifted gears in 1983 to reach a deal with Democrats to not only keep Social Security afloat for decades to come but actually expanding the program by including federal workers for the first time. He did this by increasing payroll taxes and by taxing the Social Security benefits of the wealthiest Americans.
8. Do you promise not to keep American troops in harm's way in a poorly defined mission?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. In 1983, Reagan sent U.S. Marines to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force aimed at saving a fragile truce between elements of the PLO and the Israeli military. Instead, Americans quickly found themselves terror targets, culminating in the October 1983 bombing that killed 241 of the U.S. troops. By February, Reagan "redeployed" the Marines to ships offshore, later writing "[p]erhaps we didn't appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle."
9. Will you use the power of your office to protect the environment?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did -- at least as governor of California in the 1960s and 1970s. It's true that Reagan's record on the ecology as president was pretty abysmal, but his performance in Sacramento was surprisingly good. From blocking overdevelopment of Lake Tahoe to backing stricter emissions on autos, Governor Reagan endorsed a slew of measures that cleaned up the Golden State back then but would have provoked the ire of Tea Partiers today.
10. Will you make as your greatest priority the elimination of all nuclear weapons from the world?
Because that's what Ronald Reagan did. "My dream became a world free of nuclear weapons," Reagan wrote in his memoirs -- but as commander-in-chief he did more than just talk the talk. As his presidency progressed, Reagan toned down much of his early bellicose rhetoric and focused hard on arms reduction. A sweeping nuclear weapons elimination plan fell just short at his 1986 summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland, but he later reached historic deals on eliminating intermediate-range missiles in Europe and reducing the number of warheads.
I think we can agree in our muddled political environment of 2011 that any candidate who could answer "yes" to all 10 of these questions would make America a much better place than it's become in recent years. Heck, we all know that even Barack Obama on the Democratic side would struggle to get a perfect score, especially on the foreign policy questions. Too bad -- and too bad that today's Tea-addled Republicans would be unlikely to emulate their beloved Gipper on even a single one of these. Who would have guessed that a 10-point progressive roadmap to a new and improved America is a hidden tresure buried within the bronze image of Ronald Reagan?
_______
About author Will Bunch is author of the new Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future, published by Free Press, which examines the calculated effort by the modern right wing to canonize the 40th president, and how that's harmed America on everything from runaway debt to failed energy policies to unchecked greed on Wall Street. He is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and author of its popular blog, Will Bunch is author of the new, published by Free Press, which examines the calculated effort by the modern right wing to canonize the 40th president, and how that's harmed America on everything from runaway debt to failed energy policies to unchecked greed on Wall Street. He is senior writer for theand author of its popular blog, AttytoodThe new rules sought by premier Colin Barnett would have cost the state $7 billion during the boom years, writes Tim Colebatch. Is this an attempt to make the current mechanism for carving up the GST unworkable?
It sounds so unfair. Across Australia, the GST will give state and territory governments an average of $2370 for every resident next financial year. But the umpire has decided that one will get a lot more, some a bit more, some a bit less – and Western Australia will get just $714 per resident, 30 per cent of the national average.
Moreover, the decision comes as the WA budget is being clobbered by plunging iron ore prices. That could cost it $3 billion of revenue in the year ahead, a 10 per cent drop in its entire income. Not surprisingly, Western Australia wants to change the way the grants are calculated.
But hold your tears. As we will see, there are good reasons for the apparent injustice.
First, the rule Western Australia wants to change is the one that’s given it more than $7 billion over the past four years that would have gone to the other states if the GST money had been distributed in the way it now urges.
Second, the system it wants to overthrow – in which the Commonwealth Grants Commission proposes how federal money should be split among the states, based on their relative needs – has subsidised Western Australia by tens of billions of dollars (in today’s money) over the decades, and that money has come from the taxpayers of New South Wales and Victoria.
Third, Western Australia’s actions since 2011 suggest that once it saw that the system would begin working against its interests, it set about escalating the stakes to the point where the distribution of grants would seem manifestly unfair and the system would be scrapped.
Federal treasurer Joe Hockey is sympathetic to Western Australia’s plight. At a media conference last Thursday after meeting state treasurers, he said the state had been hit by “a perfect storm” – a poor GST deal combined with a plunge in iron ore royalties. While keeping his options open and weighing up the pros and cons of overruling the Grants Commission, Hockey’s closing words showed which way he was leaning:
Frankly, the fundamental question is: does it really help the Federation for the first time to have a state receiving 30 cents in the dollar from the GST that is contributed by its citizens?… It might be next year 20 cents, it might be less, but at what point do you say well, this is just a little bit unfair, particularly given what they are going through with their own royalty dropoff in iron ore?
Hockey is certainly right about the perfect storm. In 2013–14, iron ore royalties gave the WA government $5.3 billion, roughly 20 per cent of its revenue. Premier Colin Barnett and his ministers assumed the iron ore price would remain at about A$140 per tonne, and set about merrily spending money in all directions.
They were not the only ones who got it wrong. The Reserve Bank, federal Treasury and the mining companies all assumed that while iron ore prices had gone up in the lift they would, at worst, come down by the stairs.
Now the spot price has plunged to US$47 (a bit over A$60) a tonne. If it stays there, instead of raking in $6 billion in iron ore royalties next year, as it had anticipated, Western Australia will get about $3 billion at best. It has been prodigal in its assumptions and its spending. Now winter has come; the state government is out of money and so, like the grasshopper in Aesop’s fable, it is asking its neighbours, the ants, to give it some of theirs.
The problem is that the distribution of the GST revenues is a zero-sum game. To change the rules to give more money to one state means taking that money from other states. Hockey is entitled by law to overrule the Grants Commission’s judgement in this way, but no government has done so since 1981.
Hockey refuses to discuss his options publicly. But one change being considered is simply to maintain each state’s share of the GST at current levels. That would give Western Australia an extra $494 million in 2015–16, New South Wales an extra $517 million, the Australian Capital Territory an extra $129 million, and the Northern Territory an extra $56 million. The losers would be Queensland ($556 million), South Australia ($284 million), Tasmania ($225 million) and Victoria ($131 million).
Cynics among you might have noticed that, apart from the ACT, the prospective winners under this plan are all Coalition-run states. And apart from Tasmania, the prospective losers are all Labor-run states. A federal treasurer could always find something extra for Tasmania, and take something from the ACT, if he were so inclined.
But the politics of changing the Grants Commission’s recommendations are fraught: above all, because, as Hockey acknowledged, the commission and the other states have made a strong case for why Western Australia should not be given any more than recommended.
Essentially, the commission’s job is to propose how the $57.2 billion the GST is forecast to raise in 2015–16 should be split between the states and territories in a way that ensures each government has the same capacity to provide services to its citizens, whether it does so or not. To this end, the commission compares each government’s spending, cost structure and revenue base in minute detail, making thousands of estimates, then works out what each state needs from the GST to give it the same capacity as the rest.
Until recently, Western Australia had won heavily from this process for seventy years. It was never heard to complain how unfair it was that New South Wales and Victoria should have to subsidise it.
But then came the mining boom. Global iron ore prices doubled, trebled, quadrupled, then quintupled. The state’s iron ore royalties had already soared, from $305 million in 2003–04 to a forecast $2.7 billion in 2010–11, when premier Colin Barnett and then treasurer Christian Porter decided to bump them even higher.
One of the dumb things about Labor’s mining tax was that it reimbursed companies for the royalties they paid the states. That meant, in effect, that if a state raised the royalty rate, the Commonwealth, not the mining companies, paid the bill.
Barnett and Porter seized their chance. They abruptly ended the royalty concessions previously given to BHP and Rio, and doubled the royalty on iron ore “fines” (iron ore in powder form) to the same rate as on lumps of ore. In the four years to 2013–14, iron ore royalties almost trebled and the WA government enjoyed by far the highest per capita revenues in Australia.
Isn’t that what the Grants Commission is meant to even out? Yes, that is exactly what it is doing. The problem is that it bases its findings on an average of its estimates of each state’s relative needs over the past three years. For 2015–16, this means Western Australia’s entitlement is based on its relative needs in 2011–12, 2012–13 and 2013–14.
Barnett and Porter knew that, in effect, the money they raised from higher royalty rates would be theirs only for a few years, and then the Grants Commission would redistribute it away to the other states. The soaring iron ore prices meant that, even with no change in royalty rates, Western Australia’s revenues would be by far the highest of any state. Instead of receiving extra money from New South Wales and Victorian taxpayers, as in the past, it would replace them as the biggest donor state. Had iron ore prices remained in the stratosphere, as most forecast, its royalties would end up being shared with all the other states.
Instead of accepting that, they decided to raise the royalties much higher still, hoping to force a change to that system so they could keep most of the money. When they lifted the royalties in early 2011, Porter estimated that by 2014–15 Western Australia would get only 33 per cent of its per capita share of the GST revenue (in fact, it got 38 per cent). He knew something like this would be the outcome.
“So why did WA do it?” I wrote in the Age at the time. “I suspect it’s a deliberate strategy to change the Grants Commission formulas, by raising the stakes so high that they become politically unworkable.”
I was not alone in that view, and time has confirmed it. When Mike Baird as NSW treasurer and premier tried to get the states to agree to lower the exemption limit for online GST transactions – which Hockey estimates could yield them “billions” in extra revenue – Western Australia refused. It didn’t want to make the revenue cake bigger. It just wanted a bigger share of the cake as it is.
But isn’t it entitled to that bigger share? After all, as Joe Hockey says, 30 cents in the dollar is not much to get back, and its share next year could be even less.
No, says the Grants Commission in its report, with considerable force: “The Commission estimates that over the mining boom, prior to the reduction in its iron ore royalty revenues in 2014–15, Western Australia received around $7 billion additional GST revenue than it would have if fully contemporaneous assessments had been in place.”
The commission specifically warned against taking iron ore royalties out of the equation by which GST entitlements are assessed, saying that to do so “risks the coherence of the system as a whole.”
We can sympathise with current WA treasurer Mike Nahan, who has inherited his predecessors’ mistakes. But in the end, Hockey should tell Western Australia it has to deal with its own problems, as Victoria did in the 1990–91 recession.
It will have to cut some programs, put off some infrastructure works, raise some taxes and run a bigger deficit. Worse things have happened. And eventually, the Grants Commission formulas will rescue it, as they have done in the past. •tech2 News Staff
Microsoft Windows 10 launch is about 10 days away and the latest news from Redmond is that future updates for the Windows 10 Home users will be mandatory, without any option to turn them off. According to its latest release 10240 distributed to testers, there is a clause in the end user license agreement (EULA) that says "By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice."
According to this addition to the clause, you will no longer get options such as 'choose when to reboot', 'choose when to download and install' and 'never check for updates', which you were familiar with in Windows 8.1. Windows 10 updates will be downloaded and installed automatically. As an end user, you will only get the option to choose when to reboot the machine once the updates have downloaded and installed.
For those on a limited data bandwidth, forced updates from Windows can be a matter of concern, as you do not get the option to decide when to download updates. Apart from security patches, some updates come with feature updates and the size of downloads can go into several 100s of megabytes.
Only Windows 10 for business users, ie. those running the Enterprise Edition, get the option to select only security patches update and can opt for Long Term Service Branch (LTSB) which is updated once in every 2-3 years.
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.It was only a small drama, but it encapsulated many of the downsides – and occasional upsides – which the hard winter weather presents to our wildlife.
A fox was creeping along the shore of the frozen lake, a quarter of a mile away. I was watching it at the London Wetland Centre in Barnes, south-west London – the urban nature reserve run by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust – and I imagined it was starving, for as I gazed on it earlier this week, with a panoramic view from the reserve's three-storey Peacock Tower hide, I could see what it was stalking: a bittern.
It had in its sights one of Britain's rarest breeding birds – and also one of the fattest. The brown striped heron-relative (a few of which winter in Barnes every year) would make a decent meal for any carnivore, and because the lake was frozen, the bittern was standing on the ice far more visible than it would be normally, hidden among the reeds.
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
So the fox had the bittern in its sights, for the bittern was visible. But here's the rub: so was the fox. On the snowy lake edge, it stood out a mile (or at least, the quarter of a mile to my vantage point) and it had not got to within 20 yards of its prey when, with a contemptuous flap of the wings, the bittern took off (it was then mobbed by a mad flock of carrion crows, but that's another story).
The point is, a big freeze is generally pretty bad for wildlife – for almost all creatures, food is harder to get and shelter is at a premium. But there can be advantages for some, and one of them is that predators can be much more visible in ice and snow. It's not just foxes. At Barnes this week, there was also the stunning spectacle of a peregrine falcon sitting at the frozen lake's edge, visible to every other bird.
Walking around the snow-covered, 100-acre reserve with Jamie Wyver from the management team and Richard Bullock, the resident ecologist, it became clear, looking at the frozen marsh and icebound water channels and pools, that different living things have different strategies to survive a nasty blast of winter.
With the exception of the occasional, unwelcome fox, most of the reserve's mammals – water voles, hedgehogs and bats – were in hibernation, or at least, snug in deep burrows. It was the birds which seemed to be bearing the full brunt of the freeze, since, with the sole exception of a species of nightjar found asleep in a crevice in California 60 years ago, none of the 10,000 species of birds in the world is known to hibernate.
Faced with Siberian weather, birds have only two strategies: stick it out, or flee. Many choose the latter, and from all over Europe, head south and west; indeed, the four or five bitterns present at Barnes are thought to have come from the Netherlands. Barnes's own great crested grebes have gone, perhaps to the coast.
Smaller birds suffer most in a freeze, for they lose heat and energy more quickly. The Wetland Centre has three feeding stations which are replenished, but staff rely more on their planting policy: they have planted many seed-bearing and berry-bearing plants and shrubs and trees with birds in mind. The berries have all gone now, but we watched as a mixed flock of siskins and goldfinches flew into an alder tree and began feeding.
In the end, though, casualties are unavoidable: in the last really terrible winter, of 1963, Britain lost most of its kingfishers (though they quickly bounced back). The RSPB has already issued warnings about the number of barn owls found dead, unable to hunt mice and voles under the snow.
The staff at Barnes are more concerned with smaller things, such as their overwintering warblers: chiffchaffs and Cetti's warblers. They face a hard time, for in spite of a few advantages such as spotting predators, a really severe freeze brings mainly misery.
Cold comfort for some creatures
Winter wildlife: Advantages
Predators are more visible as camouflage works less well in snowy conditions. Icy weather kills plant pests such as slugs and snails, and hopefully, the larvae of the horse chestnut leaf-miner moth, which has been attacking conker trees over much of Britain since 2002, causing them to drop their leaves early.
Mice, voles and shrews can stay alive and well under the snow for weeks.
Fish under ice are safe from land predators (such as herons).
Winter wildlife: Downsides
Frozen water means that fish-eating birds such as kingfishers cannot find food and will starve.
Frozen ground means that many birds will be unable to probe for invertebrates such as earthworms, which are their main sources of food.
In really severe cold, small birds are likely to freeze to death, especially at night. Some species such as wrens will gather together, occasionally dozens at a time, in a single nestbox, to keep warm overnight. Josephine Forster
Cold facts: The big chill by numbers
£10.5m was spent on emergency road salt in 2009-10 by local councils.
1,489,730 tonnes of road salt was ordered by councils this year, down from over 1.5m tonnes last year.
2,000 flights have been cancelled by British Airways over the past week.
£40m amount of total loss to BA from disruption caused by the weather.
282 extra deaths per day were recorded in England and Wales between 3 and 10 December.
-19.6C The temperature recorded in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, on 19 December – the lowest in Britain.
£13bn The estimated total cost to the economy of the freezing weather that began 27 days ago.
21,000 calls to AA's breakdown service were made on 22 December – an average of 900 calls an hour.
7,000 pipes burst in homes in Yorkshire, twice as many as normal.
4m letters and packages have remained undelivered.
600,000 passengers were stranded at Heathrow between 17 and 21 December as snow closed the airport.
Compiled by Josephine Forster and Joseph KingOne of the Vatican’s top legal minds has opened the way for a revision of the Catholic position on Anglican orders by stressing they should not be written off as “invalid.”
In a recently published book, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, calls into question Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 papal bull that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.”
“When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in a community, we cannot say that nothing has happened, that everything is ‘invalid’,” the cardinal says in volume of papers and discussions that took place in Rome as part of the “Malines Conversations,” an ecumenical forum.
“This about the life of a person and what he has given …these things are so very relevant!”
For decades Leo XIII’s remarks have proved to be one of the major stumbling blocks in Catholic-Anglican unity efforts, as it seemed to offer very little room for interpretation or revision.
But the cardinal, whose department is charged with interpreting and revising Church laws, argued the Church today has a “a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity” which could be revised on the Anglican ordination question.
“The question of validity [regarding the non-recognition of Anglican orders, while the Pope would give pectoral crosses, rings or chalices to Anglican clergy], however, is not a matter of law but of doctrine,” he explains in a question and answer format. “We have had, and we still have a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity: this is valid, and that is not valid. One should be able to say: ‘this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid another context’.”
Cardinal Coccopalmerio also recalled Pope Paul VI’s meeting with then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, in 1966. It was a famous meeting as the Pope gave the archbishop his episcopal ring and also, according to the cardinal, a chalice.
“What does it mean when Pope Paul VI gave a chalice to the Archbishop of Canterbury? If it was to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, it was meant to be done validly, no?” he explains. “This is stronger than the pectoral cross, because a chalice is used not just for drinking but for celebrating the Eucharist. With these gestures the Catholic Church already intuits, recognises a reality.”
Pope Francis has also pushed ahead with a number of symbolically important ecumenical initiatives such as travelling to Sweden to mark the 500th anniversary of the reformation. The Pope has also called for Christian denominations to act as if they are already united and leave the theological disagreements to be resolved later.
Yet the major difficulty for the Catholic Church in recognising Anglican clergy would be the perception of validating women priests, something that was strongly ruled against by John Paul II.
The new collection of papers also includes the records of two discussions that took place between Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI - when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - and the former Anglican Bishop of the Diocese in Europe, Geoffrey Rowell.
On Anglican orders, Bishop Rowell quotes Cardinal Ratzinger as saying: “we cannot do anything about Leo XIII’s words but there are, however, other ways of looking at things.”
While the Pope Emeritus does not follow up with any suggestions, he does accept that Anglican eucharist services have value.
“When an ecclesial community, with its ordained ministry, in obedience to the Lord’s command, celebrates the eucharist, the faithful are caught into the heavenly places, and there feed on Christ,” he says.
Elsewhere in his contribution, Cardinal Coccopalmerio distinguishes between the “differences” and “divisions” between Christians: the latter, he stresses, should only be over fundamental things such as the divinity of Christ.
“Today, Churches are divided, or, rather, they say that they are divided because they lack common elements which, however, are not fundamental because they are not a matter of faith,” he explains.
“We say: ‘you don’t have this reality, which is a matter of faith, and therefore you are divided from me. But in fact it isn’t a matter of faith, you only pretend it to be.”
While a revision of Leo XIII’s position on Anglican orders would be a milestone, the cardinal also stresses the situation is currently somewhat “unclear.”Czech Republic’s national hockey team coach is reportedly set to resign from his post amid bribery allegations.
Vladimir Ruzicka, head coach of the Czech Republic’s 1998 Olympic gold medal-winning team, is being accused of taking money from parents eager to have their sons play for a minor hockey team he runs, according to a report from TV Nova Sport.
Ruzicka, 52, co-owns and coaches Slavia Prag, the minor hockey team, the report said.
Drafted in the fourth round of the 1982 NHL draft by the Toronto Maple Leafs, Ruzicka played 233 career games, suiting up for the Boston Bruins, Edmonton Oilers and Ottawa Senators.
As coach of the national team, Ruzicka also has led the Czech Rep. to two world championships in 2005 and 2010.
Big scandal in Czech hockey. National coach Vladimir Ruzicka was asking for bribes from parents in exchange for kids could continue to (1) — Roman Jedlicka (@jedli) June 9, 2015
play hockey in Slavia Prag club (he was coach and co-owner there). It is expected Ruzicka is gonna resign tonight and Czech team will be (2) — Roman Jedlicka (@jedli) June 9, 2015
without head coach (end). — Roman Jedlicka (@jedli) June 9, 2015The long-awaited Texas African American History Memorial will be unveiled Saturday morning at a ceremony at the Capitol grounds.
The event marks the culmination of about 20 years of hard-fought efforts by lawmakers to create a memorial honoring African-American history. A foundation for the memorial raised nearly $3 million for its creation.
"We are thrilled the day has come where African Americans’ stories of struggle, resolve, and triumph will be honored on our Capitol grounds," said state Rep. Helen Giddings, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, in an emailed statement.
Within an hour or two of that milestone celebration, however, the Capitol grounds are to become the setting for a rally planned by a White Lives Matter group, as well as a counterprotest planned by Smash Fascism Austin, according to Facebook pages for these groups.
White Lives Matter member and protest organizer Ken Reed said the group was unaware of the monument unveiling event when it planned the protest. Reed said the group aimed to protest against what it considers the unequal application of hate crime laws, but that the memorial ceremony had "nothing to do with why we’re there" and the group is "not trying to interrupt or disrupt their event."
"We feel that the hate crime law is unfairly and unjustly applied to white folk, white people, as opposed to minorities," Reed said. "We’re asking for equal application of the law."
Counterprotesters didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday but described their goal on their Facebook page as "to turn out in overwhelming numbers, drown out their message of hate, and show them the people of Austin will not stand for fascists organizing on our streets."
Shawn Williams, spokesman for the Texas African American History Memorial Foundation, said members of the organization are aware of the protests, and "there is no concern, but the Texas Department of Public Safety is taking the necessary precautions."
Williams noted that the events are scheduled at different times: The memorial unveiling is slated to start at 10 a.m., followed by a barbeque lunch open to the public. The Smash Fascism Austin protest is scheduled for 11 a.m. and the White Lives Matter protest is scheduled for noon.
Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Victor Taylor said he couldn’t speak to specific security measures, but the agency will, as always, monitor the events and adjust vigilance and security measures accordingly.
The Capitol is public space, so any group may freely gather there as long as it doesn’t interfere with another organization’s scheduled event, said Chris Currens, director of special projects at the State Preservation Board.
In response to questions about the planned protests, Giddings said, "This day is not about exclusivity, but about bringing people together."
"The focus of the unveiling ceremony will be on celebrating the rich history and contributions of African-American Texans," Giddings said. "Saturday will be historic and meaningful not just for African-Americans, but all Texans who value the complete history of our state."USM Alabama Down RUN PASS Total Down RUN PASS Total OVERALL.......... 17 38 55 OVERALL.......... 48 25 73 1ST DOWN......... 8 16 24 1ST DOWN......... 22 16 38 2ND DOWN-SHORT... 1 0 1 2ND DOWN-SHORT... 6 2 8 2ND DOWN-MIDDLE.. 1 1 2 2ND DOWN-MIDDLE.. 3 3 6 2ND DOWN-LONG.... 6 9 15 2ND |
good friends, and sometimes in non-critical situations, Johnson would ease up so Crawford would hit well against him. This would vex Crawford's teammate Ty Cobb, who could not understand how Crawford could hit the great Johnson so well. Johnson was also friendly with Babe Ruth, despite Ruth's having hit some of his longest home runs off him at Griffith Stadium.
In 1928, he began his career as a manager in the minor leagues, taking up residence at 32 Maple Terrace, Millburn, New Jersey, and managing the Newark Bears of the International League. He continued on to the major leagues, managing the Washington Nationals/Senators (1929–1932), and finally the Cleveland Indians (1933–1935). His managing record was 529–432, with his best team managed being in 1930, when the team finished 94–60, 8 games out of first place. In seven seasons, he had five winning seasons, with the only two losing seasons being at the beginning of his tenure with Washington and Cleveland, though his teams did not come close to winning the pennant, finishing 12 games behind in his last season. Johnson also served as a radio announcer on station WJSV for the Senators during the 1939 season.[16]
Baseball Hall of Fame [ edit ]
Walter Johnson pitching
Johnson was one of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. Johnson, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner were known as the "Five Immortals" because they were the first players chosen for the Baseball Hall of Fame.[17]
Politics [ edit ]
Walter Johnson retired to Germantown, Maryland. A lifelong Republican and friend of President Calvin Coolidge, Johnson was elected as a Montgomery County commissioner in 1938. His father-in-law was Rep. Edwin Roberts, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1940 Johnson ran for a congressional seat in Maryland's 6th district, but came up short against the incumbent Democrat, William D. Byron, by a total of 60,037 (53%) to 52,258 (47%).[18]
Joseph W. Martin, Jr., before he was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1947 to 1949 and 1953 to 1955, recruited Johnson to run for Congress. "He was an utterly inexperienced speaker", Martin later said. "I got some of my boys to write two master speeches for him – one for the farmers of his district and the other for the industrial areas. Alas, he got the two confused. He addressed the farmers on industrial problems, and the businessmen on farm problems."[19]
Personal life [ edit ]
Walter married Hazel Lee Roberts about 1914 and they had five children. His wife died in August 1930 from complications resulting from heat stroke after a long train ride from Kansas.[20]
At 11:40 pm, Tuesday, December 10, 1946 Johnson died of a brain tumor in Washington, D.C., five weeks after his 59th birthday, and was interred at Rockville Union Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland.[22][23]
Legacy [ edit ]
Johnson circa 1910s
Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, is named for him. The monument to him that once stood outside Griffith Stadium has been moved to the school's campus. The school's yearbook is called The Windup and its newspaper is called The Pitch.
and its newspaper is called. A baseball field in Rockville, Maryland, is named for him.
A small high school baseball league in Kansas is named the Walter Johnson League. The League schools are Sedan High School, Oxford High School, Udall High School, West Elk High School, Flinthills High School, and Cedar Vale/Dexter High School.
A large recreation park (Walter Johnson Park) is named after him in Coffeyville, Kansas, where he maintained a part-time residence for several years.
The Bethesda Big Train, a summer collegiate baseball team based in Bethesda, Maryland, is named in his honor and features a Walter Johnson sculpture in front of their stadium. [24]
The baseball field in Memorial Park, in Weiser, Idaho, is called Walter Johnson Field.
Johnson was the first American League pitcher to strike out four batters in one inning. [25]
Johnson holds the record for most three-pitch innings by any major league pitcher with four. [26]
In 2009, a statue of Johnson was installed inside the center field gate of Nationals Park along with ones of Frank Howard and Josh Gibson.
The Walter Johnson baseball field in Humboldt, Kansas.
Walter Johnson Road in Germantown, Maryland.
He was also called "Sir Walter", "the White Knight", and "The Gentle Johnson" because of his gentlemanly sportsmanship, and "Barney" after auto racer Barney Oldfield (he got out of a traffic ticket when a teammate in the car told the policeman Johnson was Barney Oldfield).[27]
In 1999, The Sporting News ranked Johnson number 4 on its list of Baseball's 100 Greatest Players, the highest-ranked pitcher.[28] Later that year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
In 1985 Jonathan Richman recorded the song "Walter Johnson", which dwelt on Johnson's personality and behaviour as an exemplar of what can be good in sport.[29]
In 2015, he along with Nap Lajoie, Christy Mathewson and Cy Young were named the "Greatest Pioneers Group." They were voted for by baseball fans online as part of the Franchise Four competition and were "selected as the most impactful players". The results were announced at the 2015 MLB All-Star Game.[30]
Johnson's gentle nature was legendary, and to this day he is held up as an example of good sportsmanship, while his name has become synonymous with friendly competition. This attribute worked to Johnson's disadvantage in the case of fellow Hall of Famer Ty Cobb. Virtually all batters were concerned about being hit by Johnson's fastball, and many would not "dig in" at the plate because of that concern. Cobb realized that the good-hearted Johnson was privately nervous about the possibility of seriously injuring a batter. Almost alone among his peers, Cobb would actually stand closer to the plate than usual when facing Johnson.[31]
Statistics [ edit ]
Career Statistics:
Pitching
W L WP GP GS CG Sh SV IP H HR BB SO HBP BFP ERA WHIP 417 279.599 802 666 531 110 34 5,914.1 4,913 97 1,363 3,508 203 23,749 2.17 1.061
Note that official MLB stats show 3,508 career strikeouts, with 70 in his first (1907) season. Stats at the websites of Baseball Hall of Fame, ESPN, Baseball Reference and Baseball Cube (see "External Links", below) all show 3,509 career strikeouts, with 71 in his first season. This has resulted in minor differences seen in references to Johnson's record when reading media and Wikipedia articles of other 3000 strikeout club pitchers.
Hitting
G AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI SB BB SO AVG OBP SLG OPS 933 2,324 547 94 41 24 241 255 13 110 251 *.235.274.342 0.616
* Strikeouts not counted for batters until 1913 in the AL, 1910 in the NL.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Kavanagh, Jack (1997). Walter Johnson: A Life (Diamond Communications) ISBN 0-912083-94-8
(Diamond Communications) ISBN 0-912083-94-8 Thomas, Henry W. (1995). Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train (University of Nebraska Press: Bison Books) ISBN 0-9645439-0-7
(University of Nebraska Press: Bison Books) ISBN 0-9645439-0-7 Treat, Roger L., with contributions by Clark Griffith (1948). Walter Johnson King of the Pitchers (New York: Julian Messner)
Further reading [ edit ]“This is a clear example of the consequences of using siege as a military strategy,” says Brice de le Vingne, MSF Director of operations. “Now that the siege has tightened, the doctors we support have empty pharmacy shelves and increasing lines of starving and sick patients to treat. Medics are even resorting to feeding severely malnourished children with medical syrups as they are the only source of sugar and energy, thereby accelerating the consumption of the few remaining medical supplies. As well as supplying food, an immediate medical evacuation of sick patients, and an urgent resupply of medicines is the only way to stave off a situation that is now catastrophic.”
The situation in Madaya is an extreme example of sieges that are in place in many parts of Syria, enforced by both the Syrian government and by Armed Opposition Groups. MSF is very worried about the potential for similar situations to arise in other besieged zones.
“Madaya is now effectively an open air prison for an estimated 20,000 people, including infants, children and elderly. There is no way in or out, leaving the people to die,” says de le Vingne. “The medics we support report injuries and death by bullet and landmine wounds from people that tried to leave Madaya. The desperation is getting so acute that yesterday there were scenes of rioting as people tried to seize the last remaining food available at the MSF-supported food-distribution point, intended to provide for the most vulnerable.”
MSF has been supporting a medical facilities and a food distribution point in Madaya since August 2015, when the siege started tightening around the town. Although difficult, at first it was still possible to arrange supply of food and medicines, but it has more recently become totally impossible to get anything through the siege lines.
MSF has specific concerns also for the medical staff it is supporting. They are working under unbearable conditions, with already big medical needs now exacerbated by food insecurity and nutrition concerns, and there is an urgent need to resupply them with basic medical essentials.
Furthermore, the current sub-zero temperatures in this mountainous area cause increased suffering, particularly for sick patients who are less able to recover in the freezing cold. Fuel for heating must be included in the humanitarian aid, as people trying to collect firewood in the surroundings risk being shot or blown up by landmines.
MSF calls for immediate medical evacuation of sick patients to a safe place for treatment. And MSF equally calls for immediate and unhindered access for life-saving medical supplies, as well as food, for the civilian population in Madaya.
This access must be sustained, given that a one-shot distribution now will not alleviate the problems in the months to come.Wheelchair users in Tullamore are afraid that they will be “trapped” on the train when travelling from Dublin as the station's wheelchair lift is out of order once again, a local councillor has said.
The lift has been out of order for the much of the last month and has been a major source of anxiety for local with mobility issues, Cllr Declan Harvey says.
The Fianna Fail man says that he has been contacted by a number of people who were criticising the length of time it has taken Irish Rail to repair the problem.
“One wheelchair user's train pulled into Platform 2 and after wating 30 minutes it was decided to reverse the train back to Platform 1 to enable this lady to get off.
“On another occasion she was stranded on the footbridge for 40 minutes because a member of staff had to come from Clara Station to lift her and her wheelchair down the stairs. Other passengers also had to assist.
“It appears that there is no communication between Irish Rail, the driver or station even though the lady always contacts the station before travelling. The lady feels trapped now when travelling on the train. She is afraid that she won't be able to get off and this is taking away her independence.”
Cllr Harvey also revealed that he was also contacted by an elderly gentleman from Tullamore who travelled home by train after having major surgery in Dublin.
“He arrived in Tullamore to find that the lift was not working and it took him a considerable amount of time, assisted by family, to get across the footbridge. This gentleman was in considerable pain and this caused him a lot of unnessary stress.”
“This is an ongoing issue at Tullamore Train Station and should be addressed once and for all by the station master.”
In a statement issued to the Offaly Independent, Irish Rail apologised to customers about any inconvience caused.
“We are awaiting on the arrival of a part from our supplier. In the meantime we would advise all customers who require assistance when travelling to call Tullamore Station on 05793 21431 or Athlone station on 0906473300 in advance.”The genetically modified mouse is five hundred times more sensitive to the smell of explosive than a normal mouse
Scientists have genetically modified mice to enable them to sniff out landmines. They hope the GM mouse, known as MouSensor, could one day become a useful tool to help deal with the dangerous legacies of past wars.
More than 70 countries are contaminated by landmines, a constant reminder of previous conflicts. "Long after wars have ended, communities are still impeded from going back to their normal, daily activities because of all these mines still affecting their land," said Charlotte D'Hulst of Hunter College, New York, who led the team that developed the MouSensor.
One approach to clearing landmines is to use HeroRats, giant pouched rats that are trained to sniff out landmines by the Belgian NGO, Apopo.
Two of these, with a human handler, can clear an area of 300 sq metres in less than two hours. It would take two people about two days to do the same. One disadvantage of the HeroRats system, however, is that the rats need nine months' training before they are ready for landmine detection.
D'Hulst wanted to improve on the HeroRats concept by creating a genetically modified "supersniffer" mouse, sensitive to the specific odour of the explosives in landmines, TNT.
Scientists recently found a receptor in the mouse's olfactory bulb (the collection of neurons in the nose that detects smells) which specifically recognised a chemical called DNT – a less explosive, but similar-smelling, version of TNT. D'Hulst modified a mouse's genes to give it a much larger proportion of DNT receptors in its nose compared with the nose of a normal mouse.
In a normal mouse's olfactory bulb, there are 10m neurons in total, with about 4,000 specialised for a particular odour. D'Hulst's GM mouse has 10,000 to 1m neurons specialised for DNT, increasing the animal's ability to detect the smell of the explosives 500-fold. She will present the latest results from her work this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans.
So far, the mouse has not been tested in the field and D'Hulst has yet to work out the best landmine-clearing protocol for her MouSensors. She said one approach might be to take advantage of the fact that the mouse would probably change its behaviour when it came across a landmine.
Given its extreme sensitivity to TNT, the mouse would probably have some sort of seizure when it sniffed explosives, said D'Hulst, because so many neurons in its olfactory bulb would be firing at once. And that seizure might be detectable by some device implanted into the mouse.
"We are thinking along the lines of implanting a chip under the skin of these animals that would wirelessly report back to a computer when the animal's behaviour is changing upon being triggered by a TNT landmine," said D'Hulst. Once the location of a landmine had been identified, a bomb-disposal expert could go in and neutralise it in the normal way. The mouse itself would be safe from the landmine, since it would be too small to trigger an explosion.
Ben Lark, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross weapon contamination unit, said biosensors such as the GM mice would only be one way of detecting landmines and only in certain situations.
"They wouldn't replace other means," said Lark. "There are three different types of approach: the manual approach, which is people with detectors; machines, such as a flail; and then you have biosensors – which are traditionally dogs. You never use one means on its own.
"The other thing is, the moment you have a minefield you have lots of mines together. If you have too many it saturates an area. I would assume if the mouse had such super-rodent powers it would be overwhelmed fairly quickly."
Developing the MouSensor technology to detect landmines is a proof of concept for D'Hulst. GM mice could be created to detect a range of other odours too, she said, for example to diagnose tuberculosis by sniffing compounds on the breath of sick individuals.
The bacteria that cause TB emit compounds that can be sniffed out in saliva samples, she said. However, developing a GM mouse that could detect them would not be a trivial task – researchers would first have to identify the neurons in the mouse's olfactory bulb that detected the TB odour in question (from the millions of possibilities in the mouse's nose) and then identify and modify the correct parts of the genome to create their desired biological sensor.
As for the landmine-detecting mouse, D'Hulst said she would need to carry out more tests and work with the NGOs involved in landmine disposal to work out the best way to develop the technology. "If we have to put a time on [testing in the field], we hope it will be within five years," she said.Evan Mathis is a two-time Pro Bowl talent seeking a new team, one with which he will likely finish his accomplished NFL career.
According to his agent Drew Rosenhaus, it might take Mathis a couple of days, if not weeks, to figure out where that might be. But Mathis has quite a few options.
Rosenhaus said 10 teams have expressed interest in signing Mathis, who was cut by Philadelphia last week so the Eagles could trim his $5.5 million salary off its books.
"We're prepared to be patient and find the right team, and right situation for him," Rosenhaus said of Mathis, who spent seven games with the Dolphins in 2008, a season before the former University of Alabama standout became a starter with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Though Rosenhaus woudn't name the teams going after Mathis, the Dolphins have expressed interest in signing the 10-year veteran, according to a team source.
However, Miami has not made Mathis an offer as of Friday, and sources say the Dolphins aren't willing to bid high on the 33-year-old lineman, who has started 78 games in his 10 seasons.
Whether Miami's stance changes likely depends on how the team feels about left tackle Branden Albert's recovering from the ACL injury he suffered in November, and the coaching staff's confidence level in Dallas Thomas, Billy Turner, Jamil Douglas and Jeff Linkenbach, who are competing for the Dolphins' starting guard spots.
Earlier this week, coach Joe Philbin encouraged Dolphins fans and the media to be patient with Thomas, Turner and Douglas, three youngsters the team drafted the past three seasons. The Dolphins' offensive guard options will collectively earn $2.41 million in base salary if they make it to the Dolphins' 53-man roster, which is significantly less than what Mathis will likely earn this season.
Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly discusses the details behind the release of guard Evan Mathis at Eagles mini camp on Tuesday. Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly discusses the details behind the release of guard Evan Mathis at Eagles mini camp on Tuesday. SEE MORE VIDEOS
"One of the things that I've assured the teams that are interested in Evan is that I'm simply not going to identify who they are, and talk about them because they have a set roster at this point," Rosenhaus said. "But there are 10 teams, 10, that have expressed bona fide interest in signing Evan.
"I can tell you that this deal will happen at any time, or it may still take between now and training camp to get it done," Rosenhaus continued. "There are several teams that are in the mix right now, and we don't want to discourage anybody from pursuing it in the event that there will be collateral damage if they don't get him."
The Dolphins have roughly $9.5 million in cap space for this season, but they probably want to carry that cap space over to the 2016 season, when the Dolphins already have $155 million in contracts committed to 47 players. Next year's salary cap is projected to be around $150 million, which hints that the Dolphins have some belt tightening to do.
"Obviously the contract is a factor for any player. Evan has gone to the last two Pro Bowls and we want to make sure he's compensated like a Pro Bowl player," Rosenhaus said. "While Evan is a veteran, basically the first half of his career he was a reserve who didn't play very much. In my opinion, and in Evan's opinion, he has a lot more tread on his tires than most players at his position."
Rosenhaus said Mathis is flexible on the length of the contract, but the agent is confident Mathis will land a multi-year deal because he's graded out by ProFootballFocus.com as the top rated offensive guard the past two seasons.
"He wants to win. He wants to go to a good organization. [He] would love to play in a scheme that fits his style, but we think he's scheme versatile," Rosenhaus said of Mathis, who spent the past two seasons playing in a zone blocking scheme like the one the Dolphins have run since Philbin arrived. "Obviously the contract is a big factor because that's the only reason he's not in Philadelphia right now."It wasn’t just the bar fight that ended the promotion at the popular spot — it was an influx of underage patrons.
There will be no more Center City Sips in the plaza outside the Comcast Center this year.
The al fresco bar, which is an extension of the Chops steakhouse in the ground floor of the tower, had become one of the most popular spots for the Wednesday night happy hour, drawing crowds of more than 1,000 people each week.
But it was also the location of the July 26 bar fight involving multiple patrons that was captured on video and went viral.
Chops has not participated in the promotion since that melee. In fact, the outdoor bar has been closed entirely each subsequent Wednesday. Proprietor Alex Plotkin isn’t sure if it will be open this week or not — but he definitely won’t be offering Sips specials.
“We have ended our Sips season for 2017 and hope to do it next year,” Plotkin told Billy Penn.
That’s not by choice. Ceasing participation until further notice was a directive handed down by Liberty Property Trust, which is landlord for the restaurant and the rest of the building. The goal of the temporary injunction, per LPT Senior Vice President John Gattuso, is to restore an environment that’s welcoming to all kinds of people, from the after-work crowd to families to visitors from out of town.
“We want to make sure that the original intent of the dining area on the plaza is maintained,” Gattuso said. “There’s nothing wrong with happy hour or incentivized specials for people to come enjoy food and drink,” he added, “but we wanted to move away from something that has more of a ‘fraternity’ feel to it.”
According to Gattuso, the brawl caught on camera was the last straw. Throughout the summer, LPT had noticed not only larger and larger crowds at Sips — for which they engaged additional Wednesday night security guards — but also younger people in them.
“We had expressed some concerns for several weeks in advance,” Gattuso said. “Given the size of the crowd and the age of the crowd, it was time for us to reassert the focus on after-hours dining.”
That Sips attracts lots of underage people has become a citywide joke.
But the Center City District and the Pa. Liquor Control Board are taking it seriously.
“The CCD has retained additional police to patrol on Wednesday evenings through the balance of the month,” said CCD Vice President of Marketing and Communications Michelle Shannon in an emailed statement. “The PA LCB has also deployed additional personnel to address any underage drinking.”
Some venues are better at checking IDs than others. “When one [underage] person gets served, then they text all their friends and it’s a swarm,” a Chops bartender explained, asking to remain anonymous. “When we were closed last week, you should have seen the line at Uptown. It wrapped all the way around the corner across the street.”
Uptown Beer Garden, which has an entrance across the street from the Comcast plaza (though the address lists it as a block away), has a very strict 21+ policy, said proprietor Teddy Sourias, who also runs Bru, U-Bahn and Cinder. His security guards turn away five or six people on a normal Sips night, he said. But the week after the fight, when Chops was closed, they denied entry because of fake IDs to many more people than usual, to the tune of several dozen.
“The LCB checked on us, did a surprise visit, and we were 100 percent fine,” Sourias said. “Thing is, you can’t let in more people and think you’re gonna make more money. It just doesn’t work that way. That’s how fights happen.”
After this Sips season ends on Aug. 30, the Center City District plans to meet with participants in September “to discuss a course of action for next year.”
Potential changes to the promotion have not yet been revealed. A Center City bartender and a proprietor indicated to Billy Penn they’d heard rumors the CCD might institute a cover charge for Sips attendees, but the District did not confirm (or deny) that idea.
Sourias was skeptical about whether a cover charge would have any effect, anyway. “I think they should raise the prices by $1, that would keep away the people we don’t want to come in,” he said, referring to people who load up on cheap drinks and then have the potential to become sloppy or violent.
Gattuso said Liberty Property Trust is interested in changes to the promotion that would encourage people to eat more. “I think a rebalancing so it moves to embrace good food along with happy hour [is what’s needed],” he said.
He indicated great respect for the Center City District’s success in helping revitalize downtown and making it attractive — especially to “that millennial workforce, the best and brightest, who are going to fuel successful companies for the next 10 or 20 years. We’re open to collaboratively working with our tenants and also the CCD and other vendors to make [Sips] even more successful in a way that’s supportive.”
Gattuso added that he believes Chops to be one of the premier steakhouses in the city: “Part of the development team for the new tower is from Europe, and they rave about the food and steaks there. And the service is exquisite.”
Plotkin also hopes the promotion returns to his restaurant in 2018. “We were doing great,” he said. “Sips was a tremendous success. We’re looking forward to doing it next year.”The Deputy Prime Minister said he will continue to lead the Liberal Democrats "for some time", despite Mr Gove's claims that friends of Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, are trying to get rid of him.
Speaking on his Call Clegg LBC 97.3 radio show, Mr Clegg insisted there "no leadership contest in the Liberal Democrats".
He also cast doubt on Mr Gove's knowledge and suggested the minister has his own designs on leadership of the Conservative Party.
"The day you rely on Michael Gove for insight into what happens in the Liberal Democrats I tell you you really will be lost in a completely impenetrable maze," he said. "Obviously Michael, who is a perfectly nice chap, doesn’t know the first thing about it. Of course he knows a thing or two about leadership ambitions but that’s a different matter."
His comments come the day after Mr Gove described himself as the "heir to Blair", sparking speculation he would like to be a contender to take over from David Cameron one day.
Mr Clegg was responding to a caller who described Dr Cable as a "73-year-old Marxist" in reference to the minister's position on the left of the Liberal Democrats.
"I’ve been leading the Party for several years and will continue to do so for some time, because I believe very strongly that of course my leadership has been controversial because I’ve led my Party for the first time since it’s been founded into coalition," he said.
"That’s obviously cost us short term popularity, but I am so firm in my view that what we did in 2010 by going into coalition in the national interests, given the absolutely economic peril we were in was the right thing to do."
Mr Clegg said he believes the party will "emerge strongly before the next general election", despite its poor showing in opinion poll. It is currently trailing in fourth position behind Labour, the Conservatives and the UK Independence Party.
He also insisted Dr Cable is not "a Marxist" or any other kind of communist.Was Michael Jackson Framed?
The Untold Story
By Mary A. Fisher
GQ, October 1994
The untold story of the events that brought down a superstar. Before O.J. Simpson, there was Michael Jackson — another beloved black celebrity seemingly brought down by allegations of scandal in his personal life. Those allegations — that Jackson had molested a 13-year-old boy — instigated a multi million-dollar lawsuit, two grand-jury investigations and a shameless media circus. Jackson, in turn, filed charges of extortion against some of his accusers. Ultimately, the suit was settled out of court for a sum that has been estimated at $20 million; no criminal charges were brought against Jackson by the police or the grand juries. This past August, Jackson was in the news again, when Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s daughter, announced that she and the singer had married.
As the dust settles on one of the nation’s worst episodes of media excess, one thing is clear: The American public has never heard a defense of Michael Jackson. Until now.
It is, of course, impossible to prove a negative — that is, prove that something didn’t happen. But it is possible to take an in-depth look at the people who made the allegations against Jackson and thus gain insight into their character and motives. What emerges from such an examination, based on court documents, business records and scores of interviews, is a persuasive argument that Jackson molested no one and that he himself may have been the victim of a well-conceived plan to extract money from him.
More than that, the story that arises from this previously unexplored territory is radically different from the tale that has been promoted by tabloid and even mainstream journalists. It is a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions on the part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.
Neither Michael Jackson nor his current defense attorneys agreed to be interviewed for this article. Had they decided to fight the civil charges and go to trial, what follows might have served as the core of Jackson’s defense — as well as the basis to further the extortion charges against his own accusers, which could well have exonerated the singer.
Jackson’s troubles began when his van broke down on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles in May 1992. Stranded in the middle of the heavily trafficked street, Jackson was spotted by the wife of Mel Green, an employee at Rent-a-Wreck, an offbeat car-rental agency a mile away. Green went to the rescue. When Dave Schwartz, the owner of the car-rental company, heard Green was bringing Jackson to the lot, he called his wife, June, and told her to come over with their 6-year-old daughter and her son from her previous marriage. The boy, then 12, was a big Jackson fan. Upon arriving, June Chandler Schwartz told Jackson about the time her son had sent him a drawing after the singer’s hair caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Then she gave Jackson their home number.
“It was almost like she was forcing [the boy] on him,” Green recalls. “I think Michael thought he owed the boy something, and that’s when it all started.”
Certain facts about the relationship are not in dispute. Jackson began calling the boy, and a friendship developed. After Jackson returned from a promotional tour, three months later, June Chandler Schwartz and her son and daughter became regular guests at Neverland, Jackson’s ranch in Santa Barbara County. During the following year, Jackson showered the boy and his family with attention and gifts, including video games, watches, an after-hours shopping spree at Toys “R” Us and trips around the world — from Las Vegas and Disney World to Monaco and Paris.
By March 1993, Jackson and the boy were together frequently and the sleepovers began. June Chandler Schwartz had also become close to Jackson “and liked him enormously,” one friend says. “He was the kindest man she had ever met.”
Jackson’s personal eccentricities — from his attempts to remake his face through plastic surgery to his preference for the company of children — have been widely reported. And while it may be unusual for a 35-year-old man to have sleepovers with a 13-year-old child, the boy’s mother and others close to Jackson never thought it odd. Jackson’s behavior is better understood once it’s put in the context of his own childhood.
“Contrary to what you might think, Michael’s life hasn’t been a walk in the park,” one of his attorneys says. Jackson’s childhood essentially stopped — and his unorthodox life began — when he was 5 years old and living in Gary, Indiana. Michael spent his youth in rehearsal studios, on stages performing before millions of strangers and sleeping in an endless string of hotel rooms. Except for his eight brothers and sisters, Jackson was surrounded by adults who pushed him relentlessly, particularly his father, Joe Jackson — a strict, unaffectionate man who reportedly beat his children.
Jackson’s early experiences translated into a kind of arrested development, many say, and he became a child in a man’s body. “He never had a childhood,” says Bert Fields, a former attorney of Jackson’s. “He is having one now. His buddies are 12-year-old kids. They have pillow fights and food fights.” Jackson’s interest in children also translated into humanitarian efforts. Over the years, he has given millions to causes benefiting children, including his own Heal The World Foundation.
But there is another context — the one having to do with the times in which we live — in which most observers would evaluate Jackson’s behavior. “Given the current confusion and hysteria over child sexual abuse,” says Dr. Phillip Resnick, a noted Cleveland psychiatrist, “any physical or nurturing contact with a child may be seen as suspicious, and the adult could well be accused of sexual misconduct.”
Jackson’s involvement with the boy was welcomed, at first, by all the adults in the youth’s life — his mother, his stepfather and even his biological father, Evan Chandler (who also declined to be interviewed for this article). Born Evan Robert Charmatz in the Bronx in 1944, Chandler had reluctantly followed in the footsteps of his father and brothers and become a dentist. “He hated being a dentist,” a family friend says. “He always wanted to be a writer.” After moving in 1973 to West Palm Beach to practice dentistry, he changed his last name, believing Charmatz was “too Jewish-sounding,” says a former colleague. Hoping somehow to become a screenwriter, Chandler moved to Los Angeles in the late Seventies with his wife, June Wong, an attractive Eurasian who had worked briefly as a model.
Chandler’s dental career had its precarious moments. In December 1978, while working at the Crenshaw Family Dental Center, a clinic in a low-income area of L.A., Chandler did restoration work on sixteen of a patient’s teeth during a single visit. An examination of the work, the Board of Dental Examiners concluded, revealed “gross ignorance and/or inefficiency” in his profession. The board revoked his license; however, the revocation was stayed, and the board instead suspended him for ninety days and placed him on probation for two and a half years. Devastated, Chandler left town for New York. He wrote a film script but couldn’t sell it.
Months later, Chandler returned to L.A. with his wife and held a series of dentistry jobs. By 1980, when their son was born, the couple’s marriage was in trouble. “One of the reasons June left Evan was because of his temper,” a family friend says. They divorced in 1985. The court awarded sole custody of the boy to his mother and ordered Chandler to pay $500 a month in child support, but a review of documents reveals that in 1993, when the Jackson scandal broke, Chandler owed his ex-wife $68,000 — a debt she ultimately forgave.
A year before Jackson came into his son’s life, Chandler had a second serious professional problem. One of his patients, a model, sued him for dental negligence after he did restoration work on some of her teeth. Chandler claimed that the woman had signed a consent form in which she’d acknowledged the risks involved. But when Edwin Zinman, her attorney, asked to see the original records, Chandler said they had been stolen from the trunk of his Jaguar. He provided a duplicate set. Zinman, suspicious, was unable to verify the authenticity of the records. “What an extraordinary coincidence that they were stolen,” Zinman says now. “That’s like saying ‘The dog ate my homework.’ ” The suit was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Despite such setbacks, Chandler by then had a successful practice in Beverly Hills. And he got his first break in Hollywood in 1992, when he co-wrote the Mel Brooks film “Robin Hood: Men in Tights“. Until Michael Jackson entered his son’s life, Chandler hadn’t shown all that much interest in the boy. “He kept promising to buy him a computer so they could work on scripts together, but he never did,” says Michael Freeman, formerly an attorney for June Chandler Schwartz. Chandler’s dental practice kept him busy, and he had started a new family by then, with two small children by his second wife, a corporate attorney.
At first, Chandler welcomed and encouraged his son’s relationship with Michael Jackson, bragging about it to friends and associates. When Jackson and the boy stayed with Chandler during May 1993 |
simply an exercise in post-Sopranos anti-heroism, but rather a thoughtful deconstruction of marriage filtered through second-wave feminism and the nuclear family of the ’80s.
Television anti-hero offspring tend to be either forgettable (A. J. Soprano), replaceable (Bobby Draper), or surrogate (Jesse Pinkman). But Taylor’s Paige demands a more prominent place in The Americans’ narrative. She is representative of the cultural and jingoistic propaganda that permeated the Cold War. She has been taught to love her parents and God, and to hate the Soviets and communism. Much like the viewer, Paige is being asked to consider her instilled patriotic bias while managing the inherent conflict of suburban teenagedom. She is discovering herself, her sexuality, her beliefs. She has a boyfriend, the next door neighbor. Sure, his father is an FBI agent (Noah Emmerich), but which rebellious teen hasn’t dated someone whose family seemed repugnant to their own?
As The Americans moves through its penultimate season, Taylor—and Paige—come of age on screen gracefully, in navigating the two most terrifying endurances of the 1980s: the perpetual fear of the Cold War ending in nuclear holocaust, and feathered hair.
Traditionally, TV teenaged roles are played by people in their twenties who have already experienced that transition to adulthood. But for you, Paige’s coming of age has paralleled your own. Has it been difficult to live out those years on camera?
It’s not difficult because I always kind of forget how old I am, in a weird way. Even though I’m a little bit older than Paige, I still felt similar to her. I also wasn’t far enough away that I really had to trace back and think about what it was like when I was a teenager; I’m only nineteen now. A lot of the feelings she has are still really relatable. Even though it’s this huge fiasco and catastrophe that her parents are spies, and it’s not something that people think they can relate to, there are so many relatable aspects to it. She likes a boy but her parents don’t like the boy—so many basic concepts underneath all the hugeness of it.
And how much do we know about our parents’ lives while we’re teenagers?
Yeah, exactly. You learn so much about everyone around you and you learn about yourself throughout those years, and I think Paige has a much more escalated experience of that, but still, [her story relies on] that same concept of adolescence and growing and learning.
Keri Russell was a Mouseketeer and then lived out her early twenties on Felicity. Is she a resource for dealing with the inherent complications of a public life on and off screen?
She’s dealt with her fame and her career in such an admirable way. I don’t see her as this famous person because she’s so private, but at the same time, she seems so open and loving and accepting to everybody that you almost wonder how she can be so private while you feel so close to her. It’s been really nice to work with her and grow up around her, and see how she answers questions in interviews and strays away from [talking about] her personal life.
In many ways, Paige is a stand-in for the audience: She’s an American by birth as well as culturally, and she’s being asked to empathize with the people we’ve been taught are the enemy. Is that a fair representation of your role?
“I’ve had someone come to me in the middle of the street and point at my face, ‘I hate you!’ and then they’re like, ‘Not you—Paige. She’s just the worst.’”
Definitely. That’s why it’s so weird to me when people really hate Paige, or they really want her to die, or to be broken up into a suitcase like [Annelise from the season three episode “Baggage”]. I’m like, “No, I’m in the position you’re in!” I’ve had someone come to me in the middle of the street and point at my face, “I hate you!” and then they’re like, “Not you—Paige. She’s just the worst.”
People are like, “How could you not support your parents? They love you.” Well, how can you support my parents? They’re the ones you’ve been taught to think of as the enemy for all these years! But now you watch one TV show and you love them and hate me because I’m a proud American? It’s a testament to the writers and how they have [engendered] such a great paradigm shift within the audience that now they despise the [actual] Americans in the show.
It’s an interesting time to be on a series that revisits the Cold War, given that US-Russian relations again dominate headlines. Is that something you and the show are aware of creatively or do you try to separate past from present?
I’m not sure how it goes in the writers’ [room], but it’s [not] something that we bring up. The show is so authentic to the 1980s and the Cold War that that’s all you think about. You’re in this era, there’s no space to relate it or tie in the time period that is now. But I’m sure that as a viewer it’s really easy to make those connections.
Those of us who grew up in the ’80s will tell you that the fashion was horrible and the music was worse. In living through the ’80s on the show, are there any artifacts of that era that you’ve come to identify with or appreciate?
I think the thing that I appreciate the most is that they don’t all have cell phones. And Paige doesn’t go home and tweet, “Oh, I wish my life was different.” She just has to deal with things herself. She reads books and talks to her pastor, talks to her parents, instead of looking on the Internet and [googling]: “What do I do now that my parents are spies?” They have to deal with things in such a different way. Even in the spy world, Elizabeth can’t text Philip, “I see someone coming around the corner!” They have to be so much more present and aware of the things around them.
Elizabeth and Paige Jennings are exceptionally strong women. In a patriarchal culture and industry, The Americans shows us the Cold War not just through a Soviet lens but a feminist one as well. It must be special, especially so early in your career, to be able to play a role and be part of a series that defies those patriarchal constructs.
That’s one of my favorite parts about Paige. And that’s why at first when they were bringing Matthew Beeman [Daniel Flaherty] back I was kind of angry. I’m so proud of the fact that I was one of the only teenage girls on TV who didn’t have a boyfriend and her main problem wasn’t the fact that the boy didn’t like her back or something silly like that. She actually had real problems at home and she’s smart and strong; I was über proud of that.
“I’m so proud of the fact that I was one of the only teenage girls on TV whose main problem wasn’t the fact that the boy didn’t like her back or something silly like that.”
With the self-defense that Elizabeth and Paige are [practicing]—you never see a mother teaching a daughter, it’s always the father teaching self-defense and the more aggressive stuff. And [it’s done] in such a cool way. We’re not just like, “This is a feminist show, this man is weaker.” It’s just that we’re able to show that a woman can be really strong and a man can be really sensitive and that’s OK—and they both do their jobs so well. It doesn’t make Philip any less of a soldier.
I can’t see it happening, given the artistic integrity of the series and the traditions of cable, but if The Americans were to have a spin-off featuring Paige in her twenties, what would it be about?
I would like to think it would be Paige working at the CIA. Maybe she got an internship from Stan and joined the Jennings family business, pulling a Martha [Hanson, played by Alison Wright] and gathering information. Hopefully her pants aren’t as tight and her hair hasn’t gotten any bigger, and she’s lost the low ponytail she wears the entire fifth season.
The series is renewed for a sixth and final season. What do you want to do next?
I would love to do some kind of comedic something. The past few years, [I’ve been] doing way too many crying scenes. Comedy is what I trained in and I’ve always wanted to do more—just to try something different and show people that I smile. FLSometimes I just have to shake my head. Now and again, particularly around Christmas the "pseudo-intellectuals" come out in full force. I like to call them armchair scholars. They make grand claims about conspiracies and theories regarding the cosmos and put forward claims that attempt to debunk any positive aspects our traditional culture has to offer. I call them armchair scholars because they tend to sit in their lazy-boy surfing the "top of the pops" type of educational channels on their boob tube. These "scholars" also gather information from Youtube and other secular media sources that typically seek to instigate controversy rather than provide truth. These theorists are also the same kind of people who will take bits of information from many different sources in the media, and then combine them to form their own queer form of paganism, or should I say, "plaganism." They rarely verify their sources to see whether or not what they have learned is true, and rarely do they read actual books regarding the topic they are "experts" in. One "pseudo-theory" proposed by these lazy-boy academics that continues to float around the internet like a foul flatulent emission that obstinately lingers in the air is the claim that the story of Christ was really just a plagiarized version of the Egyptian sun god Horus.
This popular claim takes the Nativity story and twists it to fit the armchair scholar’s peculiar'religious' beliefs. It usually starts with ‘the fact’ that the story of Jesus borrowed heavily from the Egyptians and their sun god Horus. The claim mentions that the wise men are symbolic of three stars in the sky, Horus was born of a virgin, helped the weak, performed miracles, and so on. In typical bad scholarly fashion some supposedly ‘convincing’ charts or diagrams will flash on the screen, and then challenge the story of Christ based on this so-called evidence. A popular movie called Zeitgeist, released in 2007, seems to have only fed the fire. I am not going to go point by point on why this claim of Jesus borrowing from the Egyptians’ is so ridiculous, because well it is RIDICULOUS, and besides, others have beat me to the punch. So I will provide you with two sources that give you more objective facts regarding Horus, and this will illustrate to you that these theories regarding Jesus are sheer and utter fabrications. Besides, as Catholics we acknowledge the Church and its magisterium as "the" authority when it comes to understanding Christianity. We have a long history of traditions and original documents that verify the historical Jesus. As technology improves and as new documents are discovered and archived, we are finding more and more evidence of the historical Jesus Christ.
The – It just happened to be the first source I found. I have seen this posted on many websites, as it has been aggregated many times, and I don’t recall the original source of the article. You can read the article from the link above. As you can see it does a very good job at explaining each claim, one at a time. For the more skeptical and those who like to read long and boring things I have also provided you with a which outlines in very great detail the actual story of Horus. It really makes me wonder why so many will blindly go along with this fascination in attempting to debunk Christ’s birth. It seems to me, that there are agendas at work against Christianity, but I won’t get into that, as I wouldn’t want to label myself as one of those crazy theorists! Have a Merry Christmas season full of the historical Christ as taught by the Catholic Church.
P.S. January 1st, is a Holy Day of ObligationNot to be confused with Obstruction of justice
Obstructionism is the practice of deliberately delaying or preventing a process or change, especially in politics.[1]
As workplace aggression [ edit ]
An obstructionist causes problems. Neuman and Baron (1998) identify obstructionism as one of the three dimensions that encompass the range of workplace aggression. In this context, obstructionism is "behaviors intended to hinder an employee from performing their job or the organization from accomplishing its objectives.".[2]
In politics [ edit ]
Obstructionism or policy of obstruction denotes the deliberate interference with the progress of a legislation by various means such as filibustering or slow walking which may depend on the respective parliamentary procedures.
As political strategy [ edit ]
Obstructionism can also take the form of widespread agreement to oppose policies from the other side of a political debate or dispute.
Mass media [ edit ]
In September 2010, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show announced the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, an event dedicated to ending political obstructionism in American mass media.
"We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles."[3]
Tactics [ edit ]
The most common tactic is the filibuster which consists of extending the debate upon a proposal in order to delay or completely prevent a vote on its passage.
Another form of parliamentary obstruction practiced in the United States and other countries is called "slow walking". It specifically refers to the extremely slow speed with which legislators walk to the podium to cast their ballots. For example, in Japan this tactic is known as a "cow walk", and in Hawaii it's known as a "Devil's Gambit". Consequently, slow walking is also used as a synonym for obstructionism itself.[4]
Notable obstructionists [ edit ]
John O'Connor Power, Joe Biggar,[5] Frank Hugh O'Donnell, and Charles Stewart Parnell,[5] Irish nationalists; all were famous for making long speeches in the British House of Commons.[6] In a letter to Cardinal Cullen, 6 August 1877, The O'Donoghue, MP for County Kerry, denounced the obstruction policy: "It is Fenianism in a new form."[7] The tactic deadlocked legislation and 'the autumn Session of 1882 was entirely devoted to the reform of the Rules of Procedure with a view to facilitating the despatch of business.'[8] Sir Leslie Ward's "Spy" cartoon of John O'Connor Power appeared in Vanity Fair's "Men of the Day" series, 25 December 1886, and was captioned "the brains of Obstruction".
Two other famous obstructionists are Jesse Helms and Mme Flemington.[9]
Newt Gingrich brought obstructionism to the United States Congress "crippling the congress" in an attempt to make the minority rule.[10]
John Boehner "chalks up his theatrical obstructionism to the reality of being minority leader" further developing obstructionist tactics.[11]
Mitch McConnell has been accused of obstructionism for his tactics during the Obama administration.[12]
Chuck Schumer has been labeled as obstructionist for similar tactics during the current Trump administration.[13]
References [ edit ]
Jane Stanford, 'That Irishman The Life and Times of John O'Connor Power', Part Two, 'Parliamentary Manoeuvres', pp 77–84, 'A Change of Government, pp 105–107.Death to weak ties
In social network theory, weak ties (characterised by links to external or more distant social networks) are deemed to be highly important to information flow within a system as a whole, acting is bridges between different social groups, which gives them access to greater diversity of ideas and a broader number of “argument pools” overall. Cutting weak ties, by social ostracism, blocking or unfriending, severs information flow. The end state of this is that the group — characterised now only by strong ties — becomes an intellectual “monoculture”, and any subsequent cultural evolution is towards more extreme versions of itself. This is known as “epistemic closure”. Cass Sunstein’s writes in his famous paper, The Law of Group Polarization.
Group polarization arises when members of a deliberating group move toward a more extreme point in whatever direction is indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendency.
When skeptical voices are muted, communities veer towards more radical positions, as in-group factions try to make themselves socially dominant by iterating on existing ideas. This is a feedback loop, as the fewer competing ideas a person is exposed to, the more radicalised they become, and thus the more likely they are to sever weak ties. By the same token, they’re less likely to build new ones, preferring the strong ties of the in-group. By this stage, investment in the group also passes the point of no return.
In recent years there has been a trend within such groups to subscribe to “Shared Blocklists”; curated lists of those deemed to be “known abusers” or similarly emotive language. In fact, they are largely directories of ideological opponents or just genuine skeptics, who offer crucial critical voices that have been proved to thwart groups moving towards extremist positions or views divorced from reality (See the Asch Conformity Experiments).
Shared blocklists are like an ideological ad-block that increasingly warp the subscriber’s sense of reality.
Social policing
As myths begin to harden, criticism of your narrative carries a heavy social cost by ensuring even mild critique is emotionally equated with the most vile behaviours of the imagined Other. Nuance is equated with apologetics for said vile behaviours (see Talk to the limbic system below). When new chapters of a mythology begin to unfold that appear to support key elements of the narrative, as happened during #DongleGate episode in 2013, critical voices are unwelcome, especially in the community heartland.
When former attorney Ellen-Beth Wachs questioned certain elements of the emerging #DongleGate narrative on the FreeThoughtBlogs site she was immediately accused of having sympathies with the Other of their narrative (You can read her account here). She was bombarded with Thought Terminating Cliches and her behaviour associated with the worst behaviour imaginable (see Talk to the limbic system).
Social policing sometimes descends into particularly nasty behaviour, such as abusive comments, doxxing, abuse and threats. Sadly, this is often excused, ignored or denied by the in-group (see Denial and Noble Cause). If the target refuses to recant, or “doubles down”, ostracism, unfriending unfollowing, and permanent association with the Other is almost inevitable, perhaps even banishment to the purgatory of a shared Blocklist. With such a harsh climate inside the in-group, the only form of social expression is not criticism, but innovation of and iteration of key beliefs (see Death to weak ties).
Such rigid enforcement of Reputational Boundaries cannot but help veer towards extremist views increasingly at odds with reality, and epistemic closure. Which brings us to…
Talk to the limbic system
Advocates of certain myths often compete for in-group attention and try to gain socials status by competing to say most outrageous controversial statements that promote the narrative. The best ones get retweets and shares before people have time to reflect on, or even read supporting articles / evidence in the first place.
This strategy often aims to link powerful signs and symbols from the background culture (words like misogynist, bullingdon, TERF, ISIS etc) to signs and symbols used by the Others that feature in your narrative (a logo, photo, name of opposing group, a hashtag). Repetition is important for the goal is for this link to become “canonical” and irreversible by transferring the negative emotional state from the old symbol to the new. This ensures instant revulsion of the symbols of the Other.
In prehistory, this may have involved associating the emotion evoked by dangerous animals (fear and loathing) with the symbols or markings of rival clans on tribe. Today, we associate terms of revulsion or mockery with hashtags, names of online communities or websites, in-group signifiers such as twibbons or personal adornment.
If left unchecked, this process sees a surreal descent into the “fear pornography” of the conspiracy world or “outrage pornography” of the social justice left (or historically, the religious right).
Selective use of evidence
Only evidence that supports the narrative is promoted and emphasised and receives a “signal boost” (retweets, shares, copypasta). Contrary information and argument methods — often emotionally associated with the Other — are ignored, ridiculed and sidelined. Thought Terminating Cliches are deployed to try and dismiss opposing evidence, or it is ridiculed as fake (often without supporting evidence) or classified as deliberate misinformation (Also see Denial.)
Low standards of evidence
Evidence does need to stand up to scrutiny if Social Policing is done correctly. Cite such evidence as if it were infallible (i.e. in conspiracy circles “we’ve got the official documents”). Visual “evidence”, such as graphs and charts, are more likely to go viral due to our inherent visual bias. New species of evidence, such as cryptic screenshots and photos montages covered in red boxes and arrows, are a new innovation in this field.
Thought terminating cliches
Coined by Robert J Lifton in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Thought Terminating Cliches were described as the process when…
“…the most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
The internet is a habitat where the Thought Terminating Cliche thrives. When conspiracy theorists want to dismiss an event that contradicts their narrative, they use the term “false flag” or when pointing to their sacred texts they say “We’ve got the official documents”. In feminist circles, there are terms like “mansplaining” that are designed to immediately dismiss the argument without engaging with its content. In Scottish nationalist circles one just need mention association with “Westminster” to dismiss an opponent. The most ubiquitous and multi-purpose Thought Terminating Cliche, used by virtually every group, is of course “troll”.
The more a community veers towards extremism the more baroque such terminology becomes, as more and more intellectual avenues are walled off.
Personal revelation
For much of human history, and certainly within pre-literate or oral cultures (which outside of the small literate elite was almost everybody) personal experience was all we had to go on. Even within educated elites it was held in high regard, and such experiences formed background texture of reality. The historian Norman Cohn wrote in Europe’s Inner Demons that St Augustine;
“Regarded it as sheer impudence to deny that fauns [Roman demons] were having intercourse with women, considering the many testimonials to that effect.”
If your narrative allows for “lived experience” to be beyond question, despite the well known problems with constructed memory, eyewitness testimony, and other routine failures of human cognition, it broadens the scope for what can be considered “facts”. If personal revelation can be put at the centre of your narrative and seen as infallible without the need for any supporting evidence you are onto a winner.
Infallibility
As a natural consequence of effective Social Policing, key characters in the narrative should find themselves beyond criticism, or criticism of them and their behaviour becomes and in-group taboo. Indeed, the Others in the narrative are usually defined by criticism of these infallible characters (a cardinal sin) and as such conceptually chained to negative emotions (see Talk to the limbic system). The polarised narrative typically allows no room for nuance of grey areas; people are either fully good or fully bad.
Origin myths
Particularly in the case of controversial hashtags, there is often heated debate around its origins that cast a shadow on its meaning. Indeed, this is often the key point of contention and is often rooted in Selective use of evidence. In the #GamerGate controversy, (at least) two broad narratives developed to what this symbol represents; a flag held by misogynists who want to drive women out the gaming community, or the banner of people who want to stamp out corruption and nepotism in the gaming press.
Each origin story for the meaning of the symbol has its own set of characters (mythologised versions of real people) and key episodes and dramas. The same is true of the #FTBullies controversy in the secular community, which developed widely different narratives on the origins of the schism. Each narrative evolves a canonical list of “chapters” with associated moral fables and meanings. Over time, as the war between mythologies intensifies, different canonical narratives crystallise and within each certain chapters are “lost” or marginalised (on the web they are not lost, but rather the signal is turned down — fewer inbound links — as their importance to the overarching grand mythology becomes less useful). Competing hashtag mythologies value different chapters or attribute vastly different meaning to them.
Historically, this occurred to the Bible, which crystallised from a wide variety of early Christian texts that added sometimes radically different perspectives to the faith. When Christianity was co-opted by the Roman State, certain books, such as Gospel of Judas and the Book of Enoch were either lost to history or retained only by fringe groups.
The structure of myth has historically been used as a storehouse of knowledge, a means of making the “seamless flux” of reality more understandable by organising crucial knowledge in a comprehensible structure. Empirical facts needed for survival, such as how to know if a tuber was ready to be cooked, or how to navigate using only starlight, were threaded together with colourful myths that can be thought of as aids to memory. For thousands of years, ignorant of the physics of metallurgy, blacksmiths knew how to forge swords just by following ritual behaviour prescribed in myths.
Modern hashtag mythologies can — if they so choose — dispense with the need for empirical facts altogether. Indeed, in the Big Noise of the internet, what constitutes a “fact” is becoming increasingly opaque. These myths can be composed of opinion, half-truths, assertions and orphaned fragments of media devoid of context. This problem is magnified when groups exclude or ignore important information to preserve group cohesion. Although it is increasingly difficult, it is better to begin with material facts and build up towards an overarching narrative, than to reach down for facts amongst the exponential expanse of the internet to validate pre-existing mythologies.
Noble cause
If one is fighting for a noble cause or some kind of “cosmic struggle”, all behaviour is justified, however underhanded, abusive or distasteful. This often goes hand in hand with Infallibility, and often excused as “punching up” when the group imagines itself as persecuted. Many times, it is at best punching sideways or in some cases punching down. Orwell wrote in Notes on Nationalism:
“There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when “our” side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.”
This should be familiar to anyone who has spent time in the trenches of a Hashtag war and witnessed the despicable behaviour, hypocrisy and double standards on display therein.
Denial
If people exist that do not fit into your narrative, claim they do not exist (sockpuppets, shills), have been brainwashed by the Other (denial of agency) or are deliberate agitators (trolls). This is especially effective when the narrative relies on an imagined dominant group or caste.
Ubiquity
By constant blogging and producing media, the amount of information selling your narrative makes it “true” by sheer ubiquity. This is where access to large media platforms acts as a crucial vector of your version of reality, especially when comments are heavily policed or non existent. Cite each other as supporting evidence to form a web of self-supporting information. (Natural News cites Infowars and vice versa). As the narrative grows, the more ubiquitous the “reality” it describes.
Canonicity
Aim to dominate trusted sources like Wikipedia and cite only sources that promote this narrative (see Ubiquity) ensures that you control the “canonical” version of reality. Those with a passing interest will take this for the “real” version of events. If you cannot dominate such sources, claim they have been infiltrated by the Others of your narrative.
The edit war surrounding the #GameGate controversy was recently subject to a massive arbitration case on Wikipedia in which 27 editors were named, with 11 receiving topic bans and one a site-wide ban. Interestingly, the media coverage of the case led by the Guardian — criticised by Wikipedia as “completely ridden with factual errors” — spread widely online and was duplicated by nine other websites, altering public perception of what had actually occurred and supporting a particular narrative (see Ubiquity).By Michael Saltsman
There’s at least one minimum wage fact that both Republicans and Democrats agree on: Opposing an increase, as Republicans typically do, is a political loser. So confident are Democrats in the effectiveness of this “wedge” issue that they’ve made it a key part of their 2014 strategy to retake control of the House of Representatives.
But as is often the case in politics, “effective” is not synonymous with “true.” The case in favor of a higher minimum wage is built on a bewildering number of misleading statistics and straight-up falsehoods, some of which were recently rehashed on the pages of the Washington Post by former Obama administration economist Betsey Stevenson.
It’s time to correct the record.
Let’s start with job loss, a defining issue of any minimum wage debate. Opponents of this policy argue that raising business’ labor costs will (absent the ability to increase prices) force them to scale back on employee hours and jobs. Stevenson argues that this consequence is a figment of the conservative imagination, citing “many” studies which show a higher minimum wage has no impact on employment.
However, “many” is not the same as “most,” and Stevenson crosses the line from professor to pundit when she classifies wage hike-related job loss as a myth.
In a comprehensive, 182-page summary of the research on this subject from the last two decades, economists David Neumark (UC-Irvine) and William Wascher (Federal Reserve Board) determined that 85 percent of the best research points to a loss of jobs following a minimum wage increase.
As in any academic discipline, there are outliers. But even the outliers are problematic: For instance, the famous (or rather, infamous) New Jersey study that associated a higher minimum with increased employment was later refuted in the same academic journal that originally published it. More recently, the paper that the President relied on to make his case for a higher minimum was debunked in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Of course, the goal of minimum wage policy is not to reduce employment, but rather poverty. Indeed, Stevenson says explicitly in her commentary that a higher minimum wage will achieve this end. But empirical evidence refutes her point. Twenty-eight states raised minimum wages in the four years prior to passage of the last federal minimum wage increase. Economists from Cornell and American Universities, writing in the Southern Economic Journal, found no associated reduction in poverty rates.
One reason is poor targeting. According to the Census Bureau, roughly 60 percent of people living in poverty don’t currently work, and thus can’t benefit from a raise. Of those who do work and would be covered by the President’s $9 proposal, Census Bureau data show that the majority live in families far above the poverty line. Across all covered minimum wage earners, the average family income is $50,789.
Were there no other consequences to raising the minimum wage, imprecise targeting would be a minor drawback. But a study published in the Journal of Human Resources found that a higher minimum wage can actually increase the proportion of families living at or near the poverty line, as the resulting reduction in work hours (or a loss of employment altogether) leads to less take-home pay rather than more.
Stevenson covers other oft-cited reasons to raise the minimum wage, including the argument that, adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage would already be above $9 an hour. But inflation rates can both rise and fall, which means a minimum wage that truly kept up with inflation since its inception in 1938 would only be $4.12 today—not the current $7.25.
Stevenson’s broader point is that people are "stuck" waiting for the federal government to give them a raise. Yet research from economists at Florida State University and Miami University finds that two-thirds of minimum wage earners receive a bump in pay in their first 1-12 months on the job.
For the small number of truly-disadvantaged individuals who remain at the minimum wage for a longer period of time, Congress has put in place a significant income supplement in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit. A single parent with two children receives an additional $5,200 in income from this credit, bumping their effective hourly wage from $7.25 to $9.76. Some states have added to the federal EITC, boosting the wage even further.
Undoubtedly, wage hike advocates will continue to be creative in their pro-minimum wage arguments—focusing on the hefty profits of restaurant corporations instead of the far-smaller profits of their affiliated franchisees, for instance, or describing $13-an-hour tipped restaurant employees as “subminimum” wage earners. But no amount of spin can erase the consequences of a wage hike for the poor and others in the entry-level job market.
Saltsman is research director at the Employment Policies Institute.MUSKEGON, MI – A 53-year-old Muskegon man lawfully took matters into his own hands early Wednesday when an intruder forced his way halfway into the man’s home.
The incident occurred around 12:32 a.m. Wednesday, July 17, at a home in the 1500 block of James Street in the city of Muskegon, police said.
The homeowner was asleep when he was awoken by the sounds of someone pushing the air conditioning unit out of his window. As the alleged intruder began to enter the man’s home, the man grabbed his.40 caliber Glock and fired one shot over the suspect’s head, police said, scaring the suspect off.
The suspect had made it half way into the house, about mid-torso, when the homeowner fired the shot, police said.
When officers arrived to the scene, the suspect had already fled the area.
The homeowner wasn’t able to get a description of the suspect before authorities arrived, police said.
It wasn’t clear whether the suspect had been hit by gunfire, but there was no evidence at the scene to indicate he had, police said.
Officers discovered a bullet hole in the window glass and a shell casing in the area. The air conditioning unit was located on the ground, police said.
A suspect as of late Wednesday afternoon had not yet been identified, police said.
Authorities are not seeking charges against the homeowner.
Former Muskegon County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Brett Gardner, who is now an adjunct professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, said Michigan Law addressing homeowner’s habitation rights – also known as the Castle Doctrine -- allows a person to defend themselves if they feel they are in great bodily harm from an intruder.
“Michigan is a stand your ground state, but it’s a stand your ground state if you’re not committing any crimes,” Gardner said.
Gardner said if a person violates a homeowner or his or her residence and the homeowner is in "fear" of great bodily harm "or death" that homeowner "can use deadly force against any intruder."
"Case law indicates when you're in your home, a person entering while you are there, creates that kind of risk. You have a right to be safe and defend your own home," Gardner said.
Gardner said state law indicates: “Deadly force in the state of Michigan is appropriate (in these types of cases) and becomes self defense.”
In addition, police said the man had the proper registration for the weapon and proper license to carry it.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Muskegon Police Department at (231) 724-6750 or Silent Observer at 72-CRIME.
Email: hpeters@mlive.comWASHINGTON — When North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a sweeping voter identification law last year, Democrats, civil rights organizations, and the Department of Justice all quickly decried the effort as a blatant attempt to suppress the vote of minorities in the state.
But as the 2014 election draws closer, where vulnerable Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is up for re-election, minority activist groups see a high potential for the law to mobilize and actually increase voter turnout in a low turnout year, especially among African Americans.
The law's centerpiece, a requirement that all voters present identification, doesn't go into effect until 2016, but a slew of other provisions have caused groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP to sound the alarm bells in advance of November's election. The law limited early voting, got rid of pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, ended same-day registration, and determined that ballots mistakenly case at the wrong precinct but in the right county will no longer be counted. The ACLU and the NAACP filed suit against the state, as did the Obama administration. Attorney General Eric Holder called the provisions "aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African Americans," on the part of the state legislature.
While they are battling the law in court, the NAACP has embarked on an aggressive effort to register voters in the hopes that putting the law at the center of their political efforts will have a profound impact on November's election. They are planning on sending 50 volunteers into counties across the state to "engage in intense issue-based voter registration and voter empowerment campaign," said Laurel Ashton, a field coordinator for the group. Other groups too have committed big resources to voter efforts — including Planned Parenthood Action, which plans to spend $3 million in the state.
The NAACP maintains this is a nonpartisan effort — many of their workers are going into counties that are deeply Republican and majority white. But the group has protested strongly against the state's Republican-controlled legislature, including the state's speaker of the house, Thom Tillis, who is the frontrunner to challenge Hagan. Polls have shown the race to |
ÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ |
sound prurient. But physically, what kind of picture did you have
of her in your head? Did you see a picture online?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, the picture that they sent me. The
pictures that I saw on their Twitter, and the original Facebook that they had, that is the picture that I saw.
MANTI TE'O: Attractive girl?
MANTI TE'O: Very.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Did she sound this way to emotionally connect with
you?
MANTI TE'O: Yes.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Now looking back at it, can you see how you were
manipulated?
MANTI TE'O: To be honest -- to be honest with you,
I thought it was natural. It seemed natural. It seemed like, even
though I just met her, she knew a lot about me already. No red
flags popped up. Initially when I started to talk to
her, obviously, I didn't see her yet, so I asked other people
who knew of her and who had history with her, "Is this girl real?"
And all of them said, "Yeah, she's real." So that kind of gave me confidence, that, yeah, I'm fine.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Who are these people that you reached out to?
MANTI TE'O: I reached out to my cousin and asked him.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Your cousin who?
MANTI TE'O: Shiloah, my first cousin. I asked him do you know
this girl Lennay? And he said, "Yeah, I know this girl Lennay."
And I said, "Is she real?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, she's real, bro,
she's real."
JEREMY SCHAAP: He knew her?
MANTI TE'O: I guess he was in the same situation that I was
in. He just didn't talk to her.
JEREMY SCHAAP: He was duped, as well?
MANTI TE'O: I talked to a former Oregon State quarterback who used to talk to her, as well. Who used to talk to her, as well.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Who was that.?
MANTI TE'O: Lyle Moevao. I asked him, and I still have the messages from him. "Hey, do you know who this Lennay girl is." He said "Yeah. I know her." He was like: "What's up?" I said, "We're just talking." He said, "I know her. She's real, bro. She's kind of weird. But she's real."
JEREMY SCHAAP: Did they indicate they'd ever met her?
MANTI TE'O: I didn't ask that.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Yeah, why would you?
MANTI TE'O: I assumed that, you know, if she's real, then
that means she's real.
JEREMY SCHAAP: I don't want to sound like I'm prying, of course, the
whole thing is prying. But how would you -- had you had
girlfriends before? Serious girlfriends? Serious romantic
relationships before this?
MANTI TE'O: Yes.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So here's somebody you've decided to commit to
exclusively, and there's no physical contact?
MANTI TE'O: Nope.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What was so appealing about this relationship that you
didn't need that?
MANTI TE'O: It was the spiritual aspect that took over. The
spiritual aspect -- where in my past relationships, spirituality
wasn't a big thing. It was something, but it wasn't in the
forefront. She would always tell me that. "Manti, the only man I
love more than you is -- well, two men, is God and my dad: I'll
never put you in front of God." She would say stuff like that,
and, we'd say prayers at night before we'd go to sleep. Then
when we'd wake up in the morning, obviously, because I was on
the phone, she'd say another prayer. She would always tell me to
be humble. For me, that's what drew me in.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What about Skype-ing?
MANTI TE'O: I tried. I often asked to FaceTime, and she'd come on and, on my side, it would be a black screen. I'd be like, "I can't see you." And she would say, "Well, I can see
me, and I can see you. What are you saying that you can't see me?"
JEREMY SCHAAP: She wouldn't say, "My camera was broken"? She was just
like "Oh, you can't figure it out"?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, it was just "I can see you, and I can see
me in the corner. What do you mean you can't see me?"
JEREMY SCHAAP: You must have had something in the back of your mind
that you call people to say "Hey, is she real?"
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: When did these calls begin?
MANTI TE'O: In the beginning. In 2010. When it first started.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Long before the Purdue game?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, long before that.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So by the time, the relationship is growing, and it's
already confirmed in your mind that this is a real person?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And there are no suspicions anymore?
MANTI TE'O: Nope. No.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So, you're speaking every day, you're communicating,
what, on Facebook?
MANTI TE'O: No, after April 28th, it was all phone, all
phone.
JEREMY SCHAAP: That's a lot of phone time.
MANTI TE'O: Yes.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And over the summer, what's going on other than
speaking on the phone every night? Did you make plans to see each other?
MANTI TE'O: Yes. So I made plans to see her on July 4th
weekend. And that weekend, our coach scheduled it so that, if
you want to go home and celebrate the holiday with our families,
we could.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You were going back to South Bend at this point?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, we were going back to South Bend for
summer training, and I was going to go see her. And my parents
knew, they knew; they said, "That's a good idea to go down there and see her." But my
dad called and told me that, "Hey, son, to let you know we have a
family reunion that same weekend. I know you're planning on going to see Lennay. But we would love to see you at the family reunion." My family is my No. 1 thing. I called her and said I was going to see my family in Utah.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Did that frustrate you?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, it was very frustrating, very, very
frustrating.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And you were remaining exclusive at this point?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh, Yep.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What had she told you about herself? Who do you
think this person is, other than somebody that's been in a car
accident? I mean, you know, what's her background and all of
those things?
MANTI TE'O: She told me she was a Stanford alum. She went to Stanford. After her
dad passed away, she took over her dad's business, Clark's Construction. Supposedly. I don't know if that's real.
JEREMY SCHAAP: A construction business in L.A.?
MANTI TE'O: A construction business in L.A.. Clark's
Construction. She was a twin of her brother, Noa. She had two
sisters, Jean and U'i U'ilani, and two older brothers, Kekoa and Kainoa. And she was part Tongan, part Samoan and part Japanese. Her mother was full Japanese, and her dad was Samoan.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How had she gotten to know so many Samoan football
players?
MANTI TE'O: That I don't know. That I don't know. The Tuiasosopo who she is related to, very well known football player.
JEREMY SCHAAP: She said she was related to a Tuiasosopo?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, he have, her dad was a Tuiasosopo, but
ended up taking on the mom['s name] or something and, that's why her name
was Kekua.
JEREMY SCHAAP: This has been going on over the summer. The timeline
seems much longer. Like years and years. But really we're
talking about an intense relationship only from April 28, and only a
few weeks after that she gets out of a coma, so mid-May until
September. So less than four months.
:
MANTI TE'O: Correct.
[Te'o was asked about a photo he was sent after the accident.]
MANTI TE'O: So the brother later on, a couple days after
the accident, sent me a picture of a silver-grayish, Ram 1500
that was --
JEREMY SCHAAP: A big truck?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, the truck that she was supposedly in or
she was in there with a couple of her cousins and she was the
designated driver, and she got hit by a drunk driver.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So this whole time she's in the hospital?
MANTI TE'O: This whole time.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So when are you told she has leukemia?
MANTI TE'O: We find out roughly the end of June, and
early July, in that area. Yeah, around that area.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So this only intensifies your feelings for her,
obviously?
MANTI TE'O: Correct.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Who told you she had leukemia?
MANTI TE'O: She did, and her brother did.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How often are you speaking to her brother at this
point?
MANTI TE'O: Once in a while, he would pop in. "Hey, what's
up, man, how you doing?" Or when Lennay would be in pain and she
was going through her operations, he would give her the phone
and take it from her because she couldn't go through the
operation with her phone, so he'd take it and I'd talk to him.
"Hey, how's she doing?"
JEREMY SCHAAP: At this time, you never Google her, you never look for
other signs of her existence?
MANTI TE'O: The only time of Googling I did was when she
got in an accident and [I] went on to try to see if there was any
news of the accident and couldn't find any. I didn't find any.
JEREMY SCHAAP: One thing that is interesting, you know,
Samoan community is so tightly knit. So many people have
connections to each other?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Was it -- I mean, would you hear about her from other
people in the community? Did you ever make any inquires with
people, like, "Hey, you're from L.A., you're Samoan, do you?"
That kind of stuff?
MANTI TE'O: No, I just kept what our conversations were between Lennay and I felt were sufficient.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So she's got leukemia now. At this point or at any
point, is there any kind of request for money? Is there anything that, you know, that would suggest some kind of financial motivation here?
MANTI TE'O: Early on, she said that she was
going to send me money, actually. And she wanted to send it and she wanted
to directly deposit it into my account. So she wants to know my
checking account number, which I didn't give her.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Why not?
MANTI TE'O: I'm not giving my checking account number. I
don't care who you are. I'm not giving my checking account
number out to you. Then she went on and asked my best friend,
Robby. Hey, Rob, I want to help you guys out with groceries or
help you guys pay for the bills for the house. I've saved up
some money, you know. Give me your checking account number, and
I'll put it in there.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And he did what?
MANTI TE'O: He didn't. I told him, whatever you do, do not
give out your checking account number.
JEREMY SCHAAP: That didn't raise any alarm bells for you?
MANTI TE'O: No, because when she did that, when she asked
me, I actually went to the credit union and asked them, "Hey, if
somebody wanted to put money into my account and they asked for
my checking account number, could they pull money out?" And they
told me no. So that red flag went immediately down.
JEREMY SCHAAP: But you went to the credit union and checked it out?
MANTI TE'O: Yep, at Notre Dame.
JEREMY SCHAAP: The student credit union?
MANTI TE'O: Yes.
JEREMY SCHAAP: That's where you had your checking account?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So you did your due diligence?
MANTI TE'O: Yep.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So this is moving rapidly now. This relationship,
she's still in the hospital. When do you get back to school for
the duration in the fall of 2012?
MANTI TE'O: When did I get back in school?
JEREMY SCHAAP: Yeah, when did you arrive back in South Bend [from] Hawaii before the season? When was that?
MANTI TE'O: I stayed in South Bend from the beginning of
June all the way through.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What did your friends and your family know about this
relationship at that time?
MANTI TE'O: They just knew her as my girlfriend the first
connection that my family had with her, like I said, going back
to the spiritual thing, Lennay and I started a thing called
SOAP, which stood for scripture, observation, application and
prayer. So she would pick out a picture one day, and we'd talk
about our observations of it, and how it could apply to our
lives, and then we'd say a prayer on helping us apply that
scripture and what it's teaching us for our lives, and we'd do
that every day.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Every day?
MANTI TE'O: Every day. She would send me a scripture, and
we'd do the same thing. And I'd send her a scripture the next
day. It was funny because a couple days later, my dad would say
to me, what do you think of saying this with the old man, and
share spiritual shots and I would say, "Hey, Dad, guess what?
Lennay and I are doing something similar called SOAP." And he was
like, "Can I join in?" And I said sure. So my dad joins in, and so
so does my mom and my sister. So we have this big group going
on. This big SOAP group, sending scriptures to each other observations. I still have them on my phone.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You've still got them?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And this happened every day?
MANTI TE'O: We'd slack off sometimes, and my dad would say, "Who is slacking now? Whose turn is it to send the scripture?" But for the most part it was every day.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You even came up with an acronym for it?
MANTI TE'O: Yep, SOAP.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Who came up with the acronym?
MANTI TE'O: She did. She said it was something they did in
the church group.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What kind of church did she say she belonged to?
MANTI TE'O: I don't know. She said her uncle ran it.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Her uncle?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Do you think, looking back now, that your faith,
your devoutness was used against you to lure you in?
MANTI TE'O: I think that for anybody who knows me, they
know that my faith is big. They need to see that somebody else
felt the same way and brought us together. So it helped -- it
helped.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Made you closer?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, I guess it did what they wanted to do.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So you're back now. Season is coming up. You're still
able to maintain phone contact every night?
MANTI TE'O: Yep. She's still fighting leukemia. I have my
own stuff for leukemia. You talk about red flags, it kind of just went off when I was
with my best friend, Carlo. His mom is a cancer survivor. So I
told his mom about my girlfriend. I said, "My
girlfriend's going through cancer," and she said, "If she ever
wants to talk, have her call me." I said, "She's on the phone right
now." And she said, "Well, let me talk to her." So I gave her the
phone. And the conversation was all cancer lingo. They were
talking about this, and talking about.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So Lennay knew the right things to say?
MANTI TE'O: The right things to say about cancer. Talking
about semesters, trimesters, stuff like that I don't know. Only they would know.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Manti, you said you had your own thing about cancer.
What do you mean?
MANTI TE'O: I lost both my grandfathers to cancer. My dad's dad, I haven't met. My dad's dad passed away when he was 10.
JEREMY SCHAAP: When you were 10?
MANTI TE'O: When my dad was 10.
MANTI TE'O: My other grandfather, the one I'm named for, passed away on Jan. 28, 2012. Two days after my birthday.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And you were very close to him?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah.
JEREMY SCHAAP: I know you lost a brother? When was that?
MANTI TE'O: August 17, 1994.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How old was he?
MANTI TE'O: Four months. Four months old.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What kind of an impact did that have on you?
MANTI TE'O: Whenever you lose somebody, it brings your family closer together. You realize what really matters in life, and the people around you. Remembering experiences like that.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What was the cause of his death?
MANTI TE'O: They said SIDS.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So, she's going through leukemia or acute leukemia.
You're getting ready for the season. What do you -- is your
mother, your grandmother, Annette, at this point, is her health
starting to fail? Or was her death very sudden?
MANTI TE'O: Grandma was always sick. She had diabetes. It
was sudden from our point of view, but it wasn't surprising that
she passed.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How do you find out about her death?
MANTI TE'O: Mom and Dad call me the morning of Sept.
12 and tell me that Grandma passed away.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What was that like for you?
MANTI TE'O: I lost my grandfather, and then I just lost my grandma. The patriarchs of our family, in less than a year, gone. The house that we used to run into, and they'd both be in there. Grandma cooking and Papa lifting weights in the back. No longer there.
JEREMY SCHAAP: This is a terrible day. You're thousands of miles from
home. Your parents, your grandmother, and you get a phone call
that she's gone.
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: It's later that day. What happened?
MANTI TE'O: Later that day, I get a text message.
JEREMY SCHAAP: It was later that day?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, later that day I get a text message from
her brother. Just saying "Bro." That was it. I wondered why her brother was contacting me. Couple minutes later, I get the call from her brother Kekua, the oldest.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Not the one that you've been speaking to before?
MANTI TE'O: Correct, correct. He's telling me, he's crying, screaming, and he's just telling me, "She's gone! She's gone!" He's mumbling, "She's gone, she's gone, bro', she's gone."
And I'm sitting there wondering who is gone? Why is he telling me that somebody's gone. Lennay's supposed to get home on September 11th, the day before. She was fine, you know? She was going home, she was fine. People were saying that she's getting better. I get a phone call that she's gone. They tell me Lennay's gone.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How did it hit you?
MANTI TE'O: I was angry. I was confused. To say the least. Everybody, they saw.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Teammates?
MANTI TE'O: I guess I was on ESPN on the time I was on the
phone getting the news. They were saying something about me, about what to
expect, something positive. And I dropped the phone --
JEREMY SCHAAP: You mean, when you get the phone call from the older
brother, you're watching ESPN and you're actually on the screen?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, I'm not watching ESPN; it's on in the
locker room, and the guys are on.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And they're talking about you?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, they're talking about me, and I dropped
the phone. I walk around the corner to get to the hallway, where
nobody is. And as I walk, they said something positive about me.
And one of my teammates said, "Hey, look at you, bro, on ESPN." And I
was just mad. And there was a garbage can, and I hit the garbage
can, and it flies, and I remember my teammates saying, "Is that how you really
feel, bro? I thought you'd be happy." Stuff like that. I started crying and crying, punching the wall.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And this has got to be -- I know you talked about
this before. This feels like the lowest point of your life?
MANTI TE'O: Correct. I'm in the hallway. My best friend
is with me. Couple of my teammates are with me. Prince Shembo's with me, and Coach [Bob] Diaco's with me in the hallway. And Coach Diaco kept telling me, I remember he kept telling me, this
is where your faith is tested. This is where your faith is
tested. And eventually took me into the players' lounge just to
get away because everybody was standing around looking.
JEREMY SCHAAP: It's a hell of an act, if you weren't being deceived?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You think about somebody calling you a few hours after
your grandmother dies and telling you that this woman you've
develop a very close relationship with has also died. What
kind of person would do that?
MANTI TE'O: Looking back on it now? I don't know. I really
don't know. One, to lie about it, and two, to coordinate this death on the same day
that I lost my grandmother, I don't know.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Did Lennay know that your grandmother had died?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, she did.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You had called her?
MANTI TE'O: Yes.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You called her a few hours before after you find out
that your grandmother's dead, and what does she say?
MANTI TE'O: Well, she called me and I had already found
out that grandma is dead. I was angry. I didn't want to be
bothered. So Lennay was just trying to be there for me. I just
-- I just wanted my own space. We got in an argument. She was
saying, you know, I'm trying to be here for you. I didn't want
to be bothered. I wanted to be left alone. I just wanted to be
by myself.
Last thing she told me was just know I love you. That was it. She tweeted a few hours later She sent her condolences after I talked to her, to my parents about my grandmother.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Via text?
MANTI TE'O: Text message. And a few hours later I found out that she passed away.
JEREMY SCHAAP: I mean, this is an act of almost inconceivable cruelty.
MANTI TE'O: Now that I look at it
JEREMY SCHAAP: So, what had you told your teammates, your friends
about your relationship at this point?
MANTI TE'O: Before she died?
JEREMY SCHAAP: Yeah?
MANTI TE'O: Nothing, really. I didn't really talk about
her. The only two people who really knew of she and I were my
roommates I'd be talking to her in the living room, and Zeke [Motta] would walk by, and he would say, "Is
that Lennay?" I would say "Yeah." And he, he'd say, "Tell her I said
hi." And she said hi. She would talk to Zeke. Lo Wood who was
a cornerback for us, he unfortunately got hurt in fall camp,
and she would tweet at him and say, "Hey, Lo, keep your head up. Just have faith in God. " And Lo Wood would come up to me and say, "You have the sweetest girlfriend."
JEREMY SCHAAP: The theory that people are positing that Manti made
all of this up to promote his candidacy for the Heisman Trophy,
how do you respond to that?
MANTI TE'O: Well, when they hear the facts, they'll know. They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You would have had to be telling people about a
fictitious girlfriend for months to eventually say she died to
garner sympathy because you had been telling people about your
relationship for a long time. Especially your family.
MANTI TE'O: Especially my family.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How often did your father and mother communicate with
Lennay?
MANTI TE'O: My dad didn't really communicate with Lennay
at all. My mother kind of more so did. Lennay supposedly, I told you she
wasn't Mormon, but she expressed that she wanted to become
Mormon, and my mom, being a convert to the church, to the LDS
church, I told Lennay, "Well, my mom's a convert to LDS
church." "So," I said, "if you have any questions, ask Mom. She can
tell you her experience." So she did. My mom had lengthy conversations with her about her
experiences about being a convert and what she thought and shared with Lennay things to look for and things that she should do.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Why did your father later tell reporters that you had
met Lennay?
MANTI TE'O: That's on me. A child's biggest goal is to get the approval of his or her parent. Lennay was actually -- she was actually in Hawaii, and, you know, I made -- she said that.
JEREMY SCHAAP: In Hawaii?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, in Hawaii.
JEREMY SCHAAP: When?
MANTI TE'O: It was when I got home from one of the bowl
games. We were having New Year's. Our family always New
Year's Eve party with our neighbors, and I just got home from
one of the bowl games. I find out that she's in Hawaii.
So I tried to see if I could see her. She's on the opposite
side of the island, supposedly celebrating the birthday of her nephew, Kingston. And she said she expressed her wants to come and see me, and she said that she was going to but her mom said
that she wanted Lennay to stay with the family and celebrate Kingston's birthday party with them.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So, what do you mean it's on you?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, a few days later, I asked my dad if I
could go sleep over at one of my friend's houses and that while I'm
sleeping over, I'm going to go try and meet up with Lennay.
I go to my friend's house, which was about 15, 20 minutes
from where she was at. It was close, but I didn't have a car,
and she did. But she said that her brothers were using it and
she couldn't get there. So we ended up not meeting.
So when I got home, Dad asked, "Hey, did you get to see her?"
And, to avoid all the questions, I just said "Yeah, Dad, I saw her."
JEREMY SCHAAP: Do you think he would have been suspicious?
MANTI TE'O: I wasn't thinking as far as suspicion, I was
thinking my dad would say, oh, operation shutdown.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What do you mean?
MANTI TE'O: He would just probably have said I don't support this relationship,
and that's a risk that I wasn't willing to take at that time.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Because you sought his approval?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And you wouldn't have continued the relationship if he
had said that he didn't like the way she was treating you?
MANTI TE'O: No, I just knew that Dad would say --
probably, yeah. I knew that Dad would probably be suspicious of
it. And by him being suspicious of it, I didn't want to risk the
chance of me telling Dad that I didn't meet her. His suspicion
turned into him saying; OK, I would recommend you, you know, back away.
JEREMY SCHAAP: How often did your parents think that you guys had
met?
MANTI TE'O: I think just that once.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Just that once?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, that's the only time they asked me.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So that week you get the news about Lennay, and when
is the first time you can remember -- it was hard for me to figure
this out -- that the story became public? That your grandmother
and your girlfriend had died? Do you have any idea? Like the
first memory of the media you told? Or was it Coach [Brian] Kelly?
MANTI TE'O: It was Coach Kelly. Coach Kelly released it.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So he talked about it before you ever did?
MANTI TE'O: Before I did, yes.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And it was how long afterwards was it? The next day?
The same day?
MANTI TE'O: I don't remember accurately. But I know that I
was called in, and that's when I was interviewed, after Coach Kelly announced it.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You did a lot of interviews. It was a big
story during the season. One of the stories of the college
football season. You described your relationship in a way that
suggested you had met her. Explain.
MANTI TE'O: That goes back to what I did with my dad. I
knew that -- I even knew that it was crazy that I was with
somebody that I didn't meet, and that alone people find out that
this girl who died I was so invested in, and I didn't meet her
as well. So I kind of tailored my stories to have people think
that, yeah, he met her before she passed away. So people
wouldn't think that I was some crazy dude.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You knew this was crazy, so you said you met?
MANTI TE'O: Exactly.
JEREMY SCHAAP: So looking back on that now, was that a smart thing to
do?
MANTI TE'O: No, out of this whole thing, that is my
biggest regret. And that is the biggest, I think, that's from my point of view, that is a mistake I made.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You were embarrassed?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, I was.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Why?
MANTI TE'O: Because I knew that how everybody's reacting
now, I knew it was going to happen. So I chose to be less crazy,
be looked at as less crazy as somebody who had total faith into
this individual, who committed himself to this individual, who cared about this individual without
even seeing her, to have done that without even seeing her, people would consider it crazy.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Were you concerned that people would just think this is really
weird? Here's this big football star, and he had this woman he
really cared about, but he never even met her?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah, I was concerned. That was a big concern for me.
JEREMY SCHAAP: The stories are now -- the season is ramping up, and
you guys win some big games, but the story is getting bigger,
and bigger, and bigger. What are you thinking as this becomes a
national story? Manti Te'o overcomes his grief to lead Notre Dame?
MANTI TE'O: What do you mean what am I thinking?
JEREMY SCHAAP: About the fact that you talk about this woman, and "I loved
her, but I never met her"?
MANTI TE'O: I'm just -- to be honest, I'm just thinking
of the season. I'm thinking of, you know, dedicating the season
to my grandma and Lennay. Playing the best I can play. Just trying to do my best to help my team win. The whole story part about it, I didn't really pay attention.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Why didn't you go to Lennay's funeral?
MANTI TE'O: Because Lennay's funeral was the same day of
the Michigan game. And because, before Lennay passed away, we
had a conversation where she asked me if she passed away, if I
could go to her funeral? I told her no, I'm not going to talk like
that. I'm not going to talk like that. She said, "Tell me this, if
anything happens, promise me that you'll send me white roses and say
you'll play." She said, "All I want is white roses." And leading up
to the funeral, her siblings kept telling me that their mom told
them she didn't want me to come. They didn't want -- and I
didn't want myself -- I didn't want that to be the first time
that I saw her was lying in a coffin. That's why I didn't go.
JEREMY SCHAAP: What about the roses?
MANTI TE'O: I sent them two dozen white roses, and my
parents sent a little gift themselves.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Like a bouquet?
MANTI TE'O: Yeah.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Where did they send them to?
MANTI TE'O: To their supposed house where Lennay stayed.
21503 Water Street, Carson, Calif.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You sent roses to that address?
MANTI TE'O: Uh-huh.
JEREMY SCHAAP: And your parents sent a bouquet?
MANTI TE'O: To that address, Yep.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Do you know what that address really is?
MANTI TE'O: No.
JEREMY SCHAAP: You still don't know?
MANTI TE'O: I've heard that it's foreclosed. That's
all I know.
JEREMY SCHAAP: There was no reason for you ever to believe that the
flowers were returned or anything like that, or nobody showed up
to deliver them and nobody was there?
MANTI TE'O: Yes, they accepted it, and they sent me a
picture of the roses, of them getting it. They sent a picture of
the roses -- the flowers that my parents sent -- they sent it to
my parents. As proof that they got it.
JEREMY SCHAAP: I mean, it's unfathomable, this whole thing. You're
still trying to make sense of it?
MANTI TE'O: Still today.
JEREMY SCHAAP: Before I get |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.